Renewing Interest in Renewable Energy
Posted by Karen Thomas on Wed, Aug 18, 2010 @ 11:15 PM
It was only a few years ago, renewable energy and fuel alternatives were all over the place. Fleet owners, independent operators, and regular car owners were hitting up their local Chinese restaurant for excess corn oil, and spending thousands of dollars retrofitting their vehicles (including sixteen wheelers) to burn fuel more efficiently. While major corporations including Wal-Mart and FedEx have incorporated hybrid vehicles into their fleet – renewable energy isn't the norm in the transportation industry. Oil spills and oil dependencies in general though have renewed interest in renewable energies.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy was created with the intention of, “Recognizing the need to reevaluate the way the United States spurs innovation, the National Academies released a 2006 report, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm”, that included the recommendation to establish an Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E) within the Department of Energy (DOE). The America COMPETES Act (PDF 39 KB), signed into law in August of 2007, codified many of the recommendations in the National Academies report. Authorized but without an initial budget, ARPA-E received $400 million funding in April 2009 through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA),” (http://arpa-e.energy.gov/About/About.aspx.)
Today, the New York Times posted/printed an article detailing the ARPA's $400 million dollar budget dedicated towards the transportation industry and improving the use of renewable energies.
According to the New York Times article, a number of renewable energy projects are already in the works. Lighter batteries, (the article stated a pound of gasoline holds about 35 times more energy than a pound of lead-acid batteries and about six times more than lithium-ion batteries) that automatically shut down when a vehicle stops is just one type of ARPA-funded project. The battery spoken of is intended to ultimately be no larger than the size of a flashlight battery.
“ARPA-E invested $3.2 million in a battery developed with a materials genome in a start-up company, run by Professor Ceder, that is exploring magnesium. In batteries today, whether they are lithium-ion or old-fashioned lead-acid, an atom shuttles between the positive and negative terminal, carrying a single electron, as the battery charges and discharges. But a magnesium atom would carry two electrons, so a battery storing a given amount of energy could be nearly halved in size and weight,” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/business/energy-environment/19fuel.html.)