• WilliamsF1 made huge loss in 2006
• A1GP dumps Lola and Zytek for Ferrari
• New president for Porsche Motorsport North America
• Citroen commits to WRC
• Ratt Racing becomes latest EEMS campaign partner
• UK motorsport composites companies acquired
• IMechE Formula One lecture
• Company cars cut CO2 output by more than 40% in four years - ALD Automotive
• VW and Daimler invest in CHOREN Industries’ second-generation biodiesel

• SMMT publishes eighth annual Sustainability Report

• Prodrive F1 project in doubt
• Silverstone redevelopment proposals to be unveiled next week
• RTN to build new Le Mans car
• Backing for Oxford Brookes hybrid Formula Student project
• King Review publishes interim report on low carbon automotive technologies
• ALMS to allow use of E85 and biodiesel

• ITM Power develops home hydrogen electrolyser
• Jason Plato suffers burns in Caparo T1 track test
• LMC casts doubt on resources for biofuels targets
• UPS adds 306 CNG and LPG trucks to U.S. fleet
• Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers to appeal Vermont emissions legislation verdict

• Projected new U.S. CAFE standards would cost U.S. industry 30% increase in powertrain costs
• Campaign for Better Transport issues pre-Budget brief on spending and taxation on transport
• Biofuel Industry associations urge OECD to disavow critical report

According to a report in the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper the Grove, UK based WilliamsF1 Formula One team made a substantial loss of $57 million in 2006.

WilliamsF1’s loss was attributed in large part to the ending of its agreement with BMW under which it had received free engines and the ending of its title sponsorship contract with Hewlett Packard at the end of 2005.

In 2006 Williams raced with customer Cosworth engines for which the team had to pay around $20m before signing a deal for Toyota engines starting in 2007.

The paper also points out that in 2005 WilliamsF1 had made a $60 million profit.

The organisers of the A1 Grand Prix one make single seater racing series that styles itself as the World Cup of Motorsport have confirmed a switch to Ferrari chassis and engines starting at the end of 2008.

A1GP chairman Tony Teixeira said, "Partnering with a world-class organisation like Ferrari will officially position A1GP as one of the most significant motorsport series' in the world.

"Ferrari will add significant value to our brand and in our opinion there is no better partner to progress the series. We will be meeting with our commercial partners over the next few weeks to discuss the multitude of exciting opportunities that this partnership presents.

"Ferrari has a global presence through its dealer network. We will be working closely with them to ensure that they are a part of every A1GP World Cup of Motorsport event."

The new arrangement is bad news for the UK motorsport industry as it will mean the end of the existing chassis supply deal with the Huntindgon, UK based constructor Lola Cars International and the end of the existing engine supply deal with the Derby, UK company Zytek Engineering.

Porsche Motorsport North America has confirmed the appointment of Paul Ritchie as its new president starting in March 2008.

Ritchie, succeeds Uwe Brettel, who will take over new responsibilities in the management of Porsche Motorsport in Weissach, Germany, and was previously CEO for Porsche Engineering Services.

French car manufacturer Citroen has committed itself to competing in the FIA World Rally Championship until at least 2009.

Citroen managing director Gilles Michel the Italian Autosprint magazine, "We are a dynamic company and our presence in the WRC fits perfectly with our image.

We'll be here in 2008 and also in 2009, with the objective of winning both the constructors' and the drivers' titles."

Michel also said that Citroen's future participation in the WRC beyond 2009 would depend on the level of competition in the championship and its coverage on television adding, "The TV coverage is still insufficient and with time this will become a problem."

The Torquay,UK based Ratt Racing Motorsport Engineering organisation has become the latest campaign partner of Motorsport Development UK’s Energy Efficient Motor Sport initiative.

Ratt Racing is demonstrating the positive impact of alternative fuels at the grass roots level of motorsport through the development of bioethanol powered competition cars. This includes campaigning its very successful Britax Mini Cooper, which was converted to run on bioethanol through a process of component testing early in 2007, in the Xtreme Mighty Mini, Dunlop Motorsport News Saloon Car Championship and at the Power Nights events.

Driver Pete Crewes says, “I am delighted with the overall performance of the car and it demonstrates how any engine technology can be suited to conversion to become more environmentally friendly, with additional benefits”.

The UK based companies Amber Composites and Technical Resin Bonders, whose key markets include the motorsport industry, have been bought by a consortium of international investors

Commenting on the purchase of Nottingham based Amber Composites and Huntingdon based TRB Jonathan McQueen who headed the consortium said, “We chose these companies because of their proven product and technology expertise as well as their strong management teams. The use of composite materials is expanding rapidly and we are well-positioned to capitalise on this growth.”

Amber Composites manufactures and distributes a range of composite, tooling and adhesive products for a variety of applications within a diverse range of markets, including motorsport, automotive, aerospace and marine. Technical Resin Bonders reportedly was one of the original companies in the U.K. to manufacture honeycomb sandwich panels and continues to manufacture bonded assemblies, lightweight panel systems and composite structures.

The Midlands Automotive Division of the UK’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers is holding a Formula One themed lecture at the University of Birmingham on October 25.

The lecture titled The Lifecycle of an F1 Car will be delivered by Nick Brown, of the Brackley, UK based Honda Racing Formula One team.

The lecture starts at 7pm and all interested parties are welcome attend.

Company cars are emitting more than 40% less carbon dioxide today than they were four years ago as fleets increasingly turn to low emission vehicles and reduce their annual mileages, according to analysis of vehicles added to ALD Automotive’s 47,000-strong fleet of 47,000 vehicles during the last five years.

Company cars delivered in January 2003 averaged 166.87 g/km of CO2; average annual mileage was 23,782 miles; and the average amount of CO2 emitted clocking up journeys was 6.43 tonnes per vehicle a year. By August 2007 company cars joining the fleet averaged 154.22 g/km of CO2 (7.6% less); average annual mileage had dropped to 15,139 - a cut of more than a third (36.4%) or 8,643 miles - with the amount of CO2 emitted averaging 3.79 tonnes, a reduction of 41.17% over 54 months.

The environmental impact of one person flying from London Heathrow to New York’s JFK Airport is calculated to be 0.61 tonnes of CO2. Therefore, the CO2 savings made by company car drivers taking delivery of a vehicle from ALD Automotive represent the equivalent of four fewer flights across the Atlantic by each person annually. Extrapolated across the UK’s company car fleet of 1.2 million vehicles [HM Revenue & Customs 2005/06 figure] this equates to a reduction of over three million tonnes of carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere each year by company cars alone.

ALD Automotive is working towards obtaining international environmental management standard ISO 140001, and has recently added Honda Civic Hybrids to its pool fleet for use by customers as interim vehicles.

Volkswagen and Daimler have each acquired a minority shareholding in CHOREN Industries GmbH, based in Freiberg, to hasten the market introduction of BTL (biomass to liquid), a second-generation synthetic biofuel. Volkswagen and Daimler have been investigating potential applications, the economic feasibility and the energy balance of BTL jointly with CHOREN since 2002, envisaging an annual production capacity of some 200,000 metric tones of BTL.

CHOREN is currently building the world’s first commercial industrial- scale BTL plant (Beta plant) at its Freiberg site. From 2008, the plant is expected to produce approx. 15,000 tonnes of fuel a year,

sufficient to meet the annual requirements of some 15,000 cars.

CHOREN also plans to build the first reference plant in Germany, a ‘Sigma 1’ plant, with an annual capacity of 200,000 tonnes. It is hoped to announce a decision on the location of such a plant by the end of the year. The planned Sigma plants have the potential to contribute significantly towards realizing the German government’s climate protection targets. 10 to 15 CHOREN BTL plants could save up to 3 million metric tons of CO2 by 2020.

“Volkswagen has been calling for and supporting the development and industrial production of second-generation biofuels, for a long time,” Dr. Wolfgang Steiger, Head of Group Research, Powertrains, underlined. “Compared with the first generation, these second-generation biofuels can in fact as much as triple hectare yields, they do not compete with food production and they help to reduce greenhouse gases by approx. 90%.”

VW and Daimler will also be stepping up cooperation to shape the framework for the sustainable market introduction of BTL fuels. “The realization of Sigma 1 needs a calculable and long-term perspective for the sale of BTL beyond 2015. Present considerations which are exclusively based on CO2 for established technologies will not be sufficient for introducing innovations,” CHOREN CEO Tom Blades commented.

BTL is produced from various types of biogenic feedstock and residue, and thus “hardly competes” with food and fodder production. No adjustment of existing fuel infrastructure is necessary for its distribution and storage and it is compatible with current as well as future diesel engine technology.

Volkswagen says the “socially, ecologically and economically-compatible” cultivation of organic resources for the production of second-generation biofuels could be achieved by taxation on biofuels oriented to both CO2 efficiency (primary criteria) and sustainability criteria such as the use of fertilizers or pesticides, the protection of rainforests, social standards and employment potential.

The UK motor industry's eighth annual Sustainability Report just published reports on how the industry has improved its performance on a range of environmental indicators. At vehicle manufacturing sites energy consumption and CO2 emissions have been cut, water use has been halved and “far less” waste is being sent to landfill. For motor industry products, the report paints a similar picture; CO2 and other tailpipe emissions continue to fall.

Key points include:

- Annual CO2 emissions from UK car and CV manufacturing have fallen 36.5%, from 2.14 to 1.36 million tonnes in four years

- Energy used to make each vehicle fell from a high of 4.3 MWh/unit in 2001 to 2.5 MWh/unit in 2006

- CO2 per vehicle produced came down from a high of 1.3 tonnes in 2001 to 0.7 tonnes in 2006

- Water use per vehicle produced has been cut from 6.2 m3 in 2001 to 3.3 m3 last year

- Total combined waste to landfill is down by more than half, from 80,399 tonnes in 2000 to 39,862 tonnes last year

- Average new car CO2 has dropped 12 per cent in a decade, from 189.9g/km to 167.2g/km saving an estimated one million tonnes of CO2 each year.

The report also reinforces the SMMT’s message that sustainable transport is not simply an issue of vehicle technology or production efficiencies. Ten per cent of CO2 emissions are produced during the manufacture of a car and 5% when it is recycled at the end of its life. However, the lion's share – 85% - is emitted during the 'in-use' phase, in other words when it is being driven.

This, notes the SMMT, underlines the interdependent roles consumers, policy makers and fuel companies play in the drive to more sustainable motoring. Campaigns like ActOnCO2, long-term fiscal signals and wider bio-fuel distribution are just some of the measures that the SMMT’s membership supports, complementing investment in cleaner vehicle technologies to reduce real-world carbon emissions.

SMMT president Graham Smith said, “We are proud of how far we have come on sustainability measures and remain committed to further investment for the future. As well as reporting progress annually, we will continue to work with government and other stakeholders to drive home the message that sustainable motoring – whether private car or commercial vehicle – is a partnership in which we must all take responsibility.”

As well as environmental progress, Towards Sustainability charts the economic importance of what is Britain's largest manufacturing sector. Automotive industry turnover stood at £48.5bn last year with exports valued at £24.5bn, 10.2%of Britain's total. However, it also reveals concerns on job losses. Since the first report was published in 1999, the number employed directly in automotive manufacturing fell by nearly 27%, from 260,000 to 190,800 last year. In the last three years alone two volume car making operations have closed, underlining competitive pressures faced by the industry.

The report was launched concurrently at events in London and at a UK motor industry sustainability reception in Brussels. Hosted by Malcolm Harbour MEP, co-chairman of the Forum for the Automobile and Society and Gary Titley MEP, Labour's leader in Europe, the Brussels reception featured Vice-President and Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry, Günter Verheugen, as guest speaker.

Towards Sustainability collates data from car and commercial vehicle manufacturing sites across the UK, representing more than 98% of UK auto manufacturing operations. It can be downloaded from the home page of the SMMT web site at www.smmt.co.uk

According to the autosport.com website plans by the Banbury, UK based automotive and motorsport development company Prodrive to enter Formula One in 2008 have been thrown into doubt by the news that its negotiations with McLaren over the supply of cars have broken down.

In April 2006 Prodrive’s bid to be the 12th team in the Formula One World Championship was selected by the FIA in preference to a number of others. Prodrive proposed to run its team using chassis and engines supplied by an existing Formula One team but protests from existing F1 teams, which have previously been required to design and build their own cars, have led to a delay in such an approach being approved for 2008.

An FIA International Court of Appeal in London is due to give its ruling on the matter on October 24.

Proposals for the redevelopment of the UK’s Silverstone race circuit near Northampton will go on public display next week as part of a consultation process with local communities,

The planning document showing the proposals, which include a motor sport technology park and education campus, a business park, hotels, restaurants and housing as well as a museum, an exhibition area and an arena for a range of motoring activities, will be available from October 16 on local council websites and in libraries, council offices and tourist information centres in the nearby towns of Brackley and Towcester. The consultation is scheduled to last until November 26 2007.

Racing Technology Norfolk Ltd, the Hingham, UK based company which when part of Audi Sport built the 2003 Le Mans 24 Hour race winning Bentley Speed 8 racecar, has won a contract to build a new Le Mans sports prototype.

The Wakefield,UK based Embassy Racing organisation has commissioned Peter Elleray, the chief designer of the 2003 Bentley, to design an LMP2 chassis for the 2008 Le Mans Series and the 24 hour race and has contracted RTN to produce its main chassis structure, bodywork and wind tunnel models.

RTN commercial manager Graham Muff said, "We're delighted and proud to have been selected by Embassy Racing as their technical partner to deliver the major structures of their new endurance racer. The contract recognises Racing Technology Norfolk's unquestioned credentials in advanced composites and is a big vote of confidence as Racing Technology Norfolk returns to the commercial world. A credit to Norfolk motorsport."

At a press conference ahead of last weekend’s Petit Le Mans 1000 mile round of the US based American Le Mans Series sportscar racing championship the series organisers announced plans to permit the use of E85 fuel and bio diesel beginning in 2008.

With the exception of the diesel engined Audi R10s, in 2007 all cars running in the ALMS have raced on E10 fuel comprising 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline. For 2008, as part of a plan to develop additional alternative fuels, E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline) ethanol option and a bio diesel fuel will be permitted.

ALMS president Scott Atherton said, "We have been working very closely with several governmental and private organizations to confirm the American Le Mans Series' role in the future of leading-edge technologies for alternative fuels and green motorsports initiatives in general.

"At a time when there is an urgent worldwide demand for innovation and new technologies for automobiles, the American Le Mans Series, working in conjunction with our many participating manufacturers, is uniquely positioned to be part of the solution. In brief, the factory teams competing in the Series are developing technologies on the race track today that will soon be in the cars that we all drive on the street. It's a very exciting time, and as a racing series, we couldn't be in a stronger leadership position."

The Formula Student team at the UK’s Oxford Brookes University has won backing from the Abbey bank for its hybrid racing car project.

In July OBU presented a working hybrid car at the 2007 Formula Student competition at Silverstone as part of a Low Carbon Demonstration Event. In 2008 Formula Student will feature a dedicated class for hybrid vehicles.

The 2007 Budget announced a review of vehicle and fuel technologies which could help to decarbonise road transport, particularly cars, over the next 25 years, led by Professor Julia King, Vice Chancellor of Aston University, working with Sir Nicholas Stern. Professor King’s interim analytical report (http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/9/5/pbr_csr07_king840.pdf) was published yesterday alongside the Pre-Budget Report.

Part I: ‘The potential for CO2 reduction’ sets out the environmental challenge for road transport and looks at the scope for emissions savings from more efficient vehicle technologies, cleaner fuels and smart consumer choices.

The final part of the King Review will report in 2008 and will offer policy recommendations to help meet the challenge set out in Part I.

The interim report suggests that in the long-term (possibly by 2050 in the developed world), almost complete ‘decarbonisation’ of road transport is a possibility.

If substantial progress can be made in solving electric vehicle technology challenges and, critically, the power-sector can be decarbonised and expanded to supply a large proportion of road transport demand, around a 90% reduction per kilometre emissions would be achievable across the fleet. If the rate of road transport growth projected by last year’s Eddington report on transport continues, and road use in the UK approximately doubles by 2050, this could deliver an 80% reduction in total road transport CO2 emissions, relative to 2000 levels.

As well as focusing now on the technologies that can achieve the long-term objective of decarbonising road transport, the interim King report says it is important to start reducing emissions in the short term, through development and implementation of improvements to established automotive technologies; emissions avoided now are more valuable than those saved later. This Review's analysis indicates that, by 2030, emissions per kilometre could be around 50% below 2000 levels. This would be partly offset by the projected increase in distance travelled, implying an overall reduction in UK emissions from car use of approximately 30% by 2030.

To achieve this goal substantial progress is needed across the board: cleaner fuels; more efficient vehicles; and smart driver choices.

The report considers all fuels based on their life-cycle CO2 emissions. From the “well” (or the equivalent energy source) to the “wheel”, different fuels result in CO2 emissions at different stages of their production, transport and use. Even conventional fuels, such as petrol and diesel, can be produced in a variety of ways, with very different CO2 impacts.

Biofuels, in moderation, are acknowledged to offer potential advantages over conventional fuels and can occupy part of the transport fuels market over the medium term. But the report says an over-reliance on biofuels, particularly in these early stages, could be counter-productive, putting the world's environmental resources under pressure. Globally, care needs to be taken not to over-expand biofuels demand before technological improvements and comprehensive sustainability safeguards are in place.

In the long term, carbon-free road transport fuel is the only way to achieve an 80-90% reduction in emissions. Given biofuels supply constraints, this will require a form of electric vehicle, with novel batteries, charged by “zero-carbon” electricity (or, possibly, hydrogen produced from zero-carbon sources).

Clean cars, notes the report, are dependent on clean power and, as the world moves towards electric vehicles, countries' road transport CO2 emissions will increasingly be determined by the composition of their power generation sector. Major changes in power generation therefore need to be delivered alongside the automotive technologies. Making progress on decarbonising power generation represents an even more urgent challenge than electric vehicle technologies because of the time it takes to implement. It is essential, says the King report, to take a system-wide perspective and to consider displacement effects and competition for power across sectors: ultimately, decarbonisation of road transport will require decarbonisation of power generation.

The report says that in the nearer term, considerable CO2 savings can be achieved through enhancements to conventional vehicle systems. Technology that can reduce CO2 emissions per car by 30% (on a like-for-like basis) is already close to market and could be standard within 5-10 years. Despite the likely vehicle cost increases (estimated at £1,000-£1,500 per new vehicle), many of these changes are likely to represent good economics to the purchaser, as a result of their impact on fuel economy. However, demand-side and supply-side barriers are currently delaying their deployment. Ensuring these technologies are quickly brought to market constitutes a major policy challenge and will have a major impact on emissions reductions from road transport in the coming years.

Cars that emit 50% less CO2 per kilometre than the equivalent current models could be on the road by 2030, subject to advances in hybrid and battery technologies and industry overcoming cost barriers. Longer term, vehicle technologies to enable a 90% reduction in per kilometre emissions, most likely based on battery-electric propulsion systems, are expected to be found feasible.

Achieving this maximum benefit, however, is dependent on very low-CO2 power generation.

The King report notes that the UK industry currently has strengths in engine manufacture, and high-tech vehicle and systems design and consultancy. There are opportunities for the UK to develop further in both licensing and supplying low-carbon technologies to the mass-market manufacturers, and as a leader in some areas of the electric vehicle market. Long term, with the right approach now, the UK could play a strong role in future electric systems, novel battery and energy storage solutions and in other areas such as biofuels development.

(http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/9/5/pbr_csr07_king840.pdf)

The SEAT Sport UK’s Dunlop MSA British Touring Car Championship driver Jason Plato has been hurt in an incident during filming for the Channel 5 Fifth Gear programme. He was testing a Caparo T1 road car at Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground near Lutterworth in Leicestershire when it burst into flames at an estimated 150mph.

After treatment at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital specialist burns unit and seeing a burns specialist after release from the hospital, Plato still expected to race at this weekend’s final BTCC race meeting at Thruxton Circuit in Hampshire on 14th October, which is also his 40th birthday. There has been no comment from Caparo on the cause of the fire.

- On 7th September 7th the Caparo Atlas Fastenings (CAF) Training School was officially opened at the company’s facility in Darlaston, with five apprentices in place. CAF, which employs 285 people, is part of Caparo Vehicle Products, a grouping of Tier 1 component design, engineering and manufacturing companies supplying the automotive, aerospace, military and motorsport markets. It is the UK’s largest manufacturer of threaded cold forged fasteners and have manufactured forged components at the Darlaston site for over 100 years.

The British listed alternative energy development company ITM Power plc has developed a home hydrogen electrolysis device, planned for production in 2008, aimed at producing hydrogen from domestic windmill installations or off-peak electricity to substitute for gas in central heating systems and cookers. Alternatively, stored hydrogen from the system could be reconverted to electricity using domestic fuel cells or generators for emergency power or lighting, or used to supply the household's car.

Scientists at ITM Power’s Sheffield research centre made the hydrogen have developed and patented new low cost materials which ITM Power says significantly outperform and undercut those currently being used by competitors involved in the production of electrolysers.

Before the end of this year ITM Power plans to unveil a hydrogen home refuelling station for the automotive market, and a converted bi-fuel petrol/hydrogen Ford Focus, expecting its electrolyser to provide enough hydrogen for the car to complete an average daily commuting journey without using petrol.

- ITM Power plc has received a ‘notice of allowance’ for its fundamental patent application from the US Patent Office, and expects that the patent will be formally granted in the near future. The patent application covers both the unique crosslinked hydrophilic ionic materials which underpin the electrolyser and fuel cell developments made by the company in the past several years, together with a “novel” production process. In combination, these developments have allowed ITM to develop low cost platinum free electrolysers and high power density low cost fuel cells.

(www.itm-power.com)

David Jackson, an analyst at LMC International Ltd in London, has calculated that the world would need an additional 100 million hectares of farmland if all countries were to blend 5% of biofuels into road fuels - as many envisage, by 2015. The required land, about half the size of Indonesia, would match roughly the total additional land available for farming on earth, including remote areas of Africa or Brazil. "There's no perfect solution for ethanol or biodiesel from food crops, or from agriculture," Jackson told Reuters in a news report yesterday.

Reuters also reported Frank Gunstone, honorary professor at Scottish Crop Research Institute, saying the world would need an additional 10 million tonnes of vegetable oils a year to meet demand from both the food and fuel sectors, but the last crop year’s increase, to 153m tonnes was 9 million tonnes at best, and the shortfall is already raising prices.

D1 Oils plc, the UK-based biodiesel refiner, is planting 175,000 hectares of Jatropha, a toxic non-food oil-bearing plant,on non-agricultural land in Africa, but says it has yet to be developed into a fully commercial fuel feedstock crop.

Yesterday, European Commission officials are reported by Reuters to be likely to reduce the current €45 per hectare subsidy, introduced in 2004, available to EU growers of biofuels crops including sugar beet, cereals and vegetable oil plants such as rapeseed. The premium was intended to be reduced as the area devoted to biofuels crops expanded beyond 2m hectares, and may fall to €30 per hectare as the crop area approaches 3m hectares.

UPS announced yesterday it was adding 306 alternative fuel vehicles to its "green fleet" by placing an order for 167 Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) delivery trucks while taking delivery of 139 new LPG delivery trucks in North America. Additionally, the company has launched an initiative to use biodiesel in its ground support vehicles at the UPS Worldport® air hub in Louisville.

The CNG trucks will join more than 800 such vehicles already in use in the United States. The propane vehicles are joining nearly 600 propane trucks already operating in Canada and Mexico.

UPS's global alternative-fuel fleet now stands at 1,629 vehicles - the largest such private fleet in the transportation industry - and includes CNG, liquefied natural gas, LPG and electric and hybrid electric vehicles. The company also is working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on a hydraulic hybrid delivery vehicle, deploying technology originally developed in a military R&D contract.

The LPG and CNG trucks currently in the UPS fleet were converted from gasoline and diesel vehicles in the 1980s to run on alternative fuels. The new trucks are originally manufactured for alternative fuel useby Freightliner, and use Cummins Westport engines which are expected to yield a 20% emissions reduction and 10% improvement in fuel economy over the cleanest diesel engines currently available.

The new propane-powered vehicles were manufactured by Workhorse Custom Chassis with engines provided by Baytech Corporation. Propane vehicles emit about one-third fewer reactive organic gases than gasoline vehicles. Nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide emissions also are 20% and 60% less, respectively, than conventional vehicles.

The biodiesel initiative in Louisville is being launched with the support of a $515,000 federal grant that is helping offset some of the cost of building a fuel infrastructure at the airport. The infrastructure will provide a 5% biodiesel blend of fuel to run 366 ground support vehicles starting early next year.

UPS, which just celebrated its 100th anniversary, began deploying alternative fuel vehicles in the 1930s with a fleet of electric trucks that operated in New York City.

(www.ups.com)

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers representing the U.S. ‘Big Three’ issued a release on 5th October giving notice of their appeal seeking to overturn a judge’s decision that the U.S. state of Vermont is legally entitled to set its own fuel economy.

“This case,” said the release, “centres on the critical issue of whether states can regulate a matter - fuel economy - that the law clearly identifies as a federal, national issue. Evidence provided during the trial demonstrates that the federal law is very explicit: states are pre-empted from adopting fuel economy laws; and complex issues such as greenhouse gas emissions must be dealt with comprehensively on the national level.

"Our evidence clearly demonstrated that Vermont's regulation, which is based on California's regulation, is tantamount to a fuel economy standard. At trial, it was undisputed that improving fuel economy is the only way to meet these requirements.

"Automakers are eager to continue fulfilling their role in reducing emissions and increasing energy security, however this appeal is urgent as this legislation applies to model year 2009 vehicles, which consumers will start seeing in early 2008 - just a few months from now."

Adding to the news late last week that £16bn will be invested in the cross-London rail link, the Campaign for Better Transport sets out in a briefing what the Spending Review and Pre-Budget Report due this week might mean for transport spending and taxation.

The Campaign expects an interim report from Professor Julia King, who is conducting a review for the DfT and Treasury on “decarbonising road transport”. Some possibilities for the spending review include:

A purchase tax on new cars with high charges for gas guzzlers and low or even negative charges for low emission vehicles. The Conservatives’ quality of life commission suggested this as a “showroom tax”, and a leaked paper in the Sunday Times said that this was being seriously considered by the Treasury.

As an alternative to this, higher vehicle duty: previous budgets have raised the tax on high emission vehicles but only to £400 a year (the industry according to the Campaign says it would need to be £2,000 a year to make a real difference)

More company car tax reforms, including changing car allowances for business use of private cars to reflect fuel efficiency and emissions.

The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) and the European Bioethanol Fuel Association (eBIO) have called on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to disavow a paper issued last month critical of world ethanol production. The paper, written by the Chair of the Round Table on Sustainable Development at the OECD, explicitly states that it does “not necessarily reflect the views of the OECD or the governments of its Member countries.” Yet, say the biofuels trade bodies, media reports have been portraying the paper as the official position of OECD.

Either way, adverse comment on the results and implications of using food crops for biofuel production have multiplied, before and since the OECD paper was published.

Meanwhile, Robert Vierhout, Secretary General of the European Bioethanol Fuel Association, told a conference last week that rising prices for feedstocks for first-generation biofuels such as wheat and palm oil were prompting biofuels producers to shelve planned plants and cut output at existing facilities. In Germany in particular, reduced tax incentives for biodiesel have reduced demand and Karl Giersberg, the CFO of EOP Biodiesel has suggested that up to half Germany’s current, under-used biodiesel capacity might disappear unless the regulatory environment improves in the next two years.

With rising concern about the environmental and food supply implications of the use of food crops for road fuel, fresh investment may be needed in second-generation cellulosic biofuel feedstocks and refining technologies. One option reported by Reuters’ Planet Ark service on 5 October is a grain-free sorghum variety developed by Ceres, Inc. and Texas A&M University, which grows to 20 ft , produces yields faster than switchgrass, and can be cultivated with less water and fertilizer than maize, to produce four times the ethanol yield per acre of maize; half the cost of a cellusic biofuel refinery is said to be in the harvesting and transport of the feedstock.

- The lead front page story in The Guardian of 6 October covers the first-ever manufacture by genome researcher Craig Venter and colleagues of an artificial chromosome. Venter speculates that designer genomes could lead to alternative energy sources including butane or propane made entirely from sugar, and articifical bacteria which could be deployed to mop up excess CO2,

Global Insight reports that one of the most interesting presentations at its latest annual conference in Detroit was from Phil Gott, Director of Automotive Consulting, of how automakers will be able to meet the stringent new fuel economy regulations in the United States.

Gott has completed a study that examines the ramifications of the passage of a bill currently under consideration in the U.S. Congress. Currently, corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards are set at an average of 24.6 miles per gallon (mpg)—a combination of 27.5 mpg for passenger cars and 22.2 mpg for light trucks. The Senate bill calls for an increase to 35 mpg combined (42.1 mpg for cars, 28.7 mpg for trucks) by 2020, which is generally considered by automakers and industry to be unattainable. Two competing bills in the House of Representatives are being considered: HR 1506 (the "Markey bill") calls for even more stringent standards, upping combined CAFE ratings to 35 mpg by 2019, with a combination of 43.3 mpg for cars and 27.6 mpg for trucks; while HR 2927 (the "Hill-Terry bill") is supported by the industry, and calls for an increase to 32-35 mpg by 2022, with provisos that permit special allowances for automakers under certain new conditions.

Gott's study assumes that the requirement will be 35 mpg combined (45 mpg for cars, 30 mpg for light trucks) by 2020. From that starting point, he examined the market today, including the segments offered in the U.S. market, those vehicles' efficiency, weight, size, and performance, and determined that 35 mpg is 15% better than the fuel economy of the four most fuel-efficient models available today, on average. If the entire passenger car fleet is considered, 35 mpg combined represents an increase of almost 42% from the average 2006 level.

Based on a study carried out by Global Insight Director of North American Research Rebecca Lindland of American consumer preferences in relation to small cars, it was then assumed that U.S. consumers are not going to make a dramatic shift towards smaller cars, as they simply do not fulfil the needs of American consumers.

So, given the assumptions that American consumers will want to maintain their lifestyle, behavioural modification through taxation will not occur (unlikely, given the U.S. political administration's aversion to taxation), and fuel prices will remain elevated at their current levels, what needs to happen to the vehicles themselves in order to meet the government's likely new standards? Or as Gott puts it, "What combination of segments, engines, and drivetrains would give you the lowest-risk, lowest-cost path to 35 miles per gallon by 2020?"

Gott's study concludes that nothing short of a massive shift in powertrain technologies would be required to meet the new CAFE standards. By 2020, nearly two-thirds of the U.S. vehicle fleet will need to be powered by a direct-injection engine (either gasoline or diesel), downsized from the current displacements and turbocharged. Diesel would need to comprise one-third of the market. Half of all vehicles would need to be one of the four forms of hybrid, and half of those hybrids would also need to be diesel-equipped.

According to Gott, the variable cost impact necessary to introduce such a shift from port-injected gasoline engines (the vast majority of U.S. powertrains) to the new configurations would require a “staggering” amount of investment. Automakers would face powertrain costs that are a minimum of 30% more expensive than the current lowest-cost technology, costs that would very likely be passed on to consumers.

But the even bigger impact would come from the investment required in order to build the infrastructure that can make the new technologies.

Automakers would have to make a capital investment in components to install direct-injection technology on 8 million engines for the U.S. market, invest in component plants and suppliers to make components for an additional 8 million hybrids, and construct the equivalent of eight new diesel-engine manufacturing plants at a cost of nearly US$1 billion each, not including associated fuel-injection and emissions controls systems manufacturing. Suppliers would have to be able to make up to 12 million turbochargers a year, or more if two-turbo systems become more common.

Investment in plants, technology, research, and products that can fulfil these goals would have to start occurring now. According to Gott, new drivetrain technologies routinely require 10-15 years before they achieve "mainstream" status in the market, such as the advent of port fuel injection, four-valve cylinder heads, front-wheel-drive, etc.

If the technologies described above are to be available in the quantities mentioned, pretty much the only reasonable way to achieve the likely government standards, massive investments must be made now in order to begin heading down that road. But the big problem is that none of the domestic U.S. automakers has the kind of cash on-hand necessary to undertake that kind of endeavour. Neither has the government shown a willingness to foot any significant portion of the bill either.

This leaves the situation in limbo, with a worrying combination of a populace that resists increased taxes to bring about behavioural change, a cash-strapped domestic industry just trying to stay afloat amid stiff international competition and detrimental economic conditions, and a political body that has proven itself more than capable of creating standards meant to show action on climate change with little in the way of support for making these attainable.

It is highly unlikely that any true changes will come about to CAFE standards before the end of the George W. Bush administration; certainly any legislation passed by Congress will receive a presidential veto, as President Bush has stated that he feels that new mandates should come from experts at the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and not from Congress. However, the writing on the wall says that CAFE increases are only a matter of time, and action will thus soon have to be taken one way or another to pursue these new technologies.

(globalinsight.com, 5 October)