FRANKFURT, Germany — Ford announced a major push into electric vehicles in Europe, vowing to convert its entire passenger car lineup on the continent to electrics by 2030.
Ford will spend $1 billion to revamp its factory in Cologne, Germany, and make it a base for production of zero local-emission cars using Volkswagen’s mechanical framework, Stuart Rowley, president of Ford of Europe, said during an online news conference Feb. 17.
Lordstown Motors has released an update on its business plans that includes several bits of news.
The Ohio-based EV builder confirmed that it has signed a multi-year battery supply agreement with LG Chem for the Endurance. The upcoming electric pickup will use 2170 cylindrical cells like the ones used in Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y.
A patented technology to convert landfill gas to ethanol has been garnering attention, most notably from the City of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Plans are in the works to contract an independent engineering firm to conduct a technical, economic feasibility study for the technology at one of the city’s landfill sites.
The process was developed and patented by Bio-Thermal-Energy Inc. of Cedar Rapids, specifically to improve economics and reduce environmental impacts of landfills. Studies suggest the new process generates a net annual revenue, without a subsidy, and reduces carbon emissions from the landfill by more than 50%.
Honeywell, an international licensor of processing technology and supplier of engineering services, catalysts and equipment for the global refining and gas processing industries, has introduced a single-stage UOP Ecofining technology offering for the production of renewable diesel fuel.
The company notes the new single-stage technology is a fast-to-market, low capital cost solution that is ideal for repurposing an underutilized hydrotreating or hydrocracking unit, producing higher yields of renewable diesel fuel than other single-stage technologies.
The 2023 Baja 1000 challenge makes a lot more sense now.
Electric pickup truck fans, rejoice: you will soon have the option to buy one more vehicle. This is especially important for Nikola Badger‘s orphans, who thought they would eventually drive a pickup truck powered by hydrogen. That pickup truck is coming, and it challenged the Tesla Cybertruck even before it was revealed. Guys, meet the SCG 010 Zero.
This is the name of the vehicle Jim Glickenhaus plans to put on the 2023 Baja 1000 to beat the Tesla Cybertruck if Elon Musk accepts the challenge Glickenhaus proposed on December 30, 2020. At the time, he called that vehicle the Boot, which won the Baja 1000 in its class in 2019 and 2020.
With a recent order, Amazon Inc. is adding hundreds of compressed natural gas (CNG) trucks to its fleet as it looks for ways to reduce emissions in its operations, according to a recent article from Reuters.
The article goes on to say that due to various degrees of economic and social lockdowns – and restrictions implemented in the wake of COVID-19 – the country’s delivery sector experienced a spike in activity. Last year’s truck volumes exceeded 2019 levels. As the trucking sector increasingly looks to lower emissions, more and more companies are turning to clean fuels to meet their climate goals. Reuters writes that a majority of the country’s freight is delivered with medium- and heavy-duty trucks, which account for 20% of the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“Urgent action.” Those are the words Shell and Deloitte used to describe what it will take to get the world’s trucks and buses to produce net-zero emissions by 2050. Their report, Decarbonizing Road Freight: Getting into Gear, offered 22 solutions that could be employed over the next decade to help address the factors — economic, technical, regulatory, and organizational — behind decarbonization.
Let’s put the problem in perspective. According to Huibert Vigeveno, Shell downstream director, road freight is currently responsible for around 9% of global CO2 emissions. And freight is expected to double by 2050 which will add to the existing problem. The 2015 Paris Agreement, which the U.S. just rejoined under President Biden’s leadership, requires road freight emissions to drop 60% by 2050 from their 2018 levels. That is a significant challenge.
The largest U.S. automaker, General Motors, has pledged to become carbon-neutral by 2040, an ambitious plan with a deadline a decade sooner than many global automakers.
While GM previously had aimed to become a “zero-emissions automaker” by 2050, the news unveiled Thursday both ramps up and codifies the company’s plans. The commitment includes a strategy to “eliminate tailpipe emissions” from light-duty new vehicles by 2035.
The amped-up ambition shows how global automakers are increasingly setting more aggressive paths to transition away from fossil fuels, the resource that has been the key to powering their industry for a century. Most are embracing batteries as the next-generation fuel resource and prioritizing electrification as the key technology that will power vehicles of the future.
ECB Group Paraguay, a Brazil-based producer of biodiesel, and Shell Trading (U.S.) Co. have signed a multi-year contract that will provide more than 500 million liters of renewable diesel and renewable jet fuel per year to Shell, one of the world’s largest energy companies. The contract is expected to run from 2024.
A new study published by researchers from Environmental Health and Engineering Inc., Harvard University and Tufts University shows corn ethanol emits 46 percent fewer greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than gasoline.
According to EH&E, conventional wisdom based on a prior analysis completed by the U.S. EPA estimated that corn ethanol achieved only a 20 percent GHG reduction. EH&E’s topical review of the latest science, however, shows that corn ethanol is less carbon intensive and more climate-favorable than previously thought.
