Eco Factor: Zero-emission electric aircraft to run on hydrogen fuel cells.
Designers at the University of Stuttgart’s Institute of Aircraft Design have announced that they’ll be building an electric aircraft that will be powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Dubbed Hydrogenius, the aircraft will be equipped with a lithium battery and electric motor, which will use the power from the aircraft’s onboard hydrogen fuel cell system.
Eco Factor: Hydrogen-fuel cell powered electric vehicle.
Designed by a student team from Ohio State University, the Buckeye Bullet 2 broke the 300mph barrier at the Bonneville Salt Flats by averaging 300.992mph in the flying kilometer with a top recorded speed of 304mph.
Eco Factor: Zero-emission DIY ship gets powered by hydrogen fuel cells.
A team of students at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are trying to prove the viability of hydrogen fuel cells by sailing from New York City to Troy on a DIY ship that gets powered by hydrogen fuel cells that were originally designed to power forklifts.
Eco Factor: Hydrogen generating station uses landfill gas as raw material for a clean fuel.
Hydrogen is undoubtedly the fuel the world needs for a green future. Auto makers have already rolled out demonstration vehicles that use hydrogen as a source of energy, but nothing major has happened due to the lack of adequate infrastructure of generating and storing hydrogen fuel.
Eco Factor: Zero-emission concept yacht to be powered by solar energy and hydrogen.
Yachts are meant to be your home on the open waters, but this sea living dream mostly has an effect on the delicate marine environment. Eco-minded designer Adam Voorhees has come up with a green change – a yacht that is designed to run on renewable energy and makes use of sustainable techniques to lower its overall environmental impact.
When Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh teamed up for the movie version of “A Streetcar Named Desire” little did they know at the time that they had created a classic that would live on for years.
But, change is inevitable. Back in 1951 when the movie was created, there were no cell phones, no desktops and laptops and the civil rights movement hadn’t taken hold yet. Back then streetcars were powered by overhead electrical lines.
Today, however, may signal a changing of the guard when it comes to streetcars or trolleys as some call them. What city planners in New Orleans and San Francisco and 50 other cities fail to realize as they are waxing nostalgia is that they can in fact have the retro look and feel of streetcars of old with the new propulsion system of hydrogen fuel cells.
The streetcars of the 1950’s were expensive, tied to unsightly overhead power lines that require much upkeep and are a hazard to streetlight changers, power companies, firefighters and birds. The cost effective solution for cities and towns wanting to add trolleys to their urban landscapes is to go hydrolley (hydrogen trolley) instead.
By going with streetcars using hydrogen fuels cells, no overhead power lines are used and electricity during peak hours is also saved. Safety issues are diminished and the cost and planning of building an intercity streetcar power line grid goes away.
Willie D. Jones at IEEE Spectrum has taken a good look at the merits of hydrogen fuel cell powered streetcars, saying, “At first blush, streetcars may not seem worth devoting much effort to. Many Americans think of them as a quaint anachronism retained by a few cities like New Orleans for nostalgia’s sake. But more than a dozen municipalities around the world have restarted and extended trolley car lines because they attract wealthier riders than buses and inspire new, high-density property development … Choosing a streetcar design based on hydrogen could save such municipalities millions of dollars per kilometer … A 2006 assessment found that roughly one-quarter of the total cost of a planned 16-kilometer rail extension connecting the city and surrounding suburbs would have gone toward installing a catenary system.”
This is where old meets new. The yearning for the past can still stay alive with a few upgrades in the present. A Streetcar Named Desire has a new desire and that is to run on clean, green hydrogen while paying homage to the history that has taken us to this present place in time.
Just north and west of Seoul, South Korea, a company called Foster and Partners has won the right to develop a green master plan community on the islands of KangHwa and OnJin-gun. The sustainable master plan is supposed to be an extension of the Incheon Free Economic Zone.
One of the islands, KangHwa, will be used as a developmental center creating solar panels and wind turbines. The buildings in this center will use biomass energy, hydrogen fuel cells and even have hydroponic roofs.
The other island, OnJin-gun, will become a sustainable resort surrounded by agricultural landscape. Light rail will be used along with smaller roads and pedestrian avenues. The two islands are to be connected with the world’s longest bridge.
Now, within the past 2 years South Korean companies have unveiled their newest hydrogen cars, the Hyundai i-Blue and the Kia Borrego FCEV which one can imagine providing transportation to and from this green master plan community along with the light rail.
The 180 square mile community is expected to balloon in population from 35,000 now to 320,000 residents in the next 10 to 15 years as this master plan is phased in. By that time, there may be many more hydrogen cars on the roads not only around the master community and Seoul but through the entire country as well.
Compared with Tesla Motors co-founder Martin Eberhard, the startup’s other founder — Marc Tarpenning — has kept a relatively low profile. But Tarpenning spoke this morning at IBM’s Almaden Institute 2009 in San Jose, Calif., telling his version of the Tesla creation story that Eberhard and CEO Elon Musk have been fighting over this summer.
Back in 2003, Tarpenning and Eberhard knew they wanted to start a new company, but hadn’t settled on specifics. “We knew we wanted to solve a real problem,” Tarpenning said. “We just couldn’t do another network widget.” Eberhard suggested that they “do oil.” Climate change had yet to become a major mainstream concern in the U.S., but “there was this nagging suspicion about, what if we run out of this stuff.”
The pair looked at cellulosic ethanol and hydrogen fuel cells, but ultimately decided to work on the electric car. Tarpenning said that at the time, about half of the venture capital community was interested in taking a close look at fuel cells, and the other half had already looked at the technology and concluded that “the energy equation doesn’t make sense.”
Settling on electric vehicles, Tarpenning and Eberhard developed the idea of building a beautiful, but expensive “aspirational” vehicle to help improve the image of green cars and bring them into the mainstream. Then the entrepreneurship part began. “Imagination is great,” but “how do you then start a car company?” Tarpenning said. “In Silicon Valley, you have an idea, you immediately incorporate — why not?”
From there, Tarpenning described Tesla’s next three years as a cycle of developing, hitting a milestone, and then seeking fresh capital. When you have a major milestone, you switch gears, said Tarpenning, to seek funds for future development. After hitting its first major milestone in 2004 — the company’s first drivable version of a Tesla car — “the main thing we did is immediately raise money,” he said.
By May 2006, when Tesla had closed its third round of venture capital investment, Tarpenning said the pitch had gotten much easier — and not just because the startup had a drivable mule. The cleantech sector had started to take off and the startup refined its pitch, shifting from the idea of a car with “a bunch of computers in it and it goes real fast,” to a technology and vehicle that could become a key part of the nascent cleantech sector and market for greener cars.
Even so, Tesla ran into trouble late the following year when the transmission failed in durability testing, and in April 2008 had to get a bridge loan. This time, the milestone-fundraise pattern worked against the startup. “We had this big milestone, and we failed it.” These were “dark times” for Tesla, Tarpenning said.
Tesla has since managed to pull itself away from the brink, and Tarpenning noted, has since “received a bunch of money” from the Department of Energy loan program, as well as a million investment from Daimler AG.
But Tesla is far from mass production. And Tarpenning says he’s “a little skeptical” that Tesla will hit its 2011 production target for its own electric sedan. Likewise EVs are nowhere close to mainstream. What’s the biggest hurdle still standing between electric cars and the mass market, according to Tarpenning? “The batteries really aren’t good enough yet.”
