The U.S. Department of Energy today took the wraps off of an online Alternative Fuel Station Locator that should make it a bit easier to find the right fuel if you need something other than gasoline or diesel. Just put in your address, the fuel you're looking for, how wide a radius you'd like the database to include and presto. Instant results. As I still drive a gasoline-powered car (an efficient one, mind you), I can't personally judge the accuracy of the information for local pumps, but if you're knowledgeable about these sorts of things, give the online station locator a test and see how it does.

The DOE's map includes pumps/stations that offer:

• Biodiesel (B20 and above)
• Compressed Natural Gas
• Electric
• Ethanol (E85)
• Hydrogen
• Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)
• Liquefied Petroleum Gas (Propane)

The database should be fairy accurate, as the DOE gathers it's information "from trade media, Clean Cities coordinators, and the submittal form on the AFDC Web site." Then, each station is contacted twice a year to make sure the fuel listed is still available at the site. Happy hunting.

[Source: DOE]

The U.S. Department of Energy has found some money behind the grant funding couch - $130 million to be exact - and wants to hand it over to people working on developing advanced fuel cell technologies. The couch in this case is the President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative which, unsurprisingly given the name, is charged with helping research hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. The $130m could also go to stationary fuel cell projects "to support market transformation that provide real-world operation data." The DOE said in a statement (available after the jump), that it expects the $130m to be split by up to 50 awardees like universities, national laboratories and industry players. Interested parties have until August 27 of this year to submit proposals. For more information, click here.

Also, the DOE is now using a fuel cell-powered Chevrolet Equinox in its fleet. The Equinox will be used by DOE employees in the Washington, D.C. area.

Photo by MikeGroft. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

The weekly email from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) arrived today and it contains one important number: 6.48 billion gallons. That's how much ethanol - almost all of it from corn - was made in the U.S. last year, a total that comes to an average of 423,000 barrels per day. Compared to 2006, this is an increase of 34 percent. Still, more corn will be needed to reach the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007's new Renewable Fuel Standard for 2008: eight billion gallons. A problem? Not according to the Renewable Fuels Association, which says that current biorefinery capacity is 13.4 billion gallons per year. With 57 new refineries on the way, the eight billion gallons will be here before we know it.

[Source: EERE]

EDTA president Brian Wynne officially opened this week's conference with a moment of silence for David Hermance, an engineer for Toyota who recently died while flying his plane off the coast of California. After that quiet moment, the message from Wynne and all of the other speakers at this morning's opening plenary session was up, up, upbeat.

Alexander Karsner, assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy (EERE) spoke on behalf of the Bush administration and told the attendees that, "You are in play," which he explained meant that clean cars are hot in Washington. He said that in all of his meetings in the White House and elsewhere today, electric drive topics are/were a part of the discussion. So, the electric drive industry is doing a good job of getting its message to the administration, but the reverse is not necessarily true. The administration doesn't get the message out well enough that President Bush is highly commitment to cleaner vehicles, Karsner said. To that end, the Department of Energy is sending a lot of representatives to the various sessions throughout the EDTA conference. Karsner said he remembered the long lines during the oil shortages of the '70s and said that this type of situation – not being able to fill up your car with gasoline – should never happen again. His point was that, as he said his veteran father used to mutter under his breath while waiting in line, "America can do better."

Next up was John Bryson, chairman, president and CEO of Edison International. EI is a long-time electric drive supporter, getting their first electric vehicle prototype in 1987. Southern California Edison currently has a fleet of about 300 EVs, including many RAV4 EVs and this year, the company took delivery of a plug-in hybrid van prototype. At the company's Rosemead, CA offices, construction workers are building a hydrogen refueling center and company officials support legislation for consumers who buy PHEVs, because of the vehicles' expected higher environmental benefits.

In the next few years, all 4.7 million SCE customers will get smart meters, Bryson said, which give more information than current home meters and will make charging an EV overnight the obvious choice. Electricity is the only alternative fuel with an existing and ubiquitous infrastructure in place, Bryson said and called on all power utilities to engage with automakers since their work is converging.

The last keynote speaker was James Press, president of Toyota North America. Press had gotten up early today and headed to the pool, where he happened to swim with Jimmy Carter, who Press said was "one of my heroes." It was a fitting chance meeting, since a lot of the reasons Press got involved in building cleaner cars were things that happened during Carter's presidency (the oil crisis and Carter's early promotion of clean energy). Press made the bold statement that the goal should be to, "Free the U.S. of the bonds of fossil fuel." The specific items Toyota is working on in this direction that Press mentioned are things we're familiar with here at AutoblogGreen, like the Lexus LS sedan's first full-hybrid V8 engine and that company engineers are aiming for a 50 percent reduction in the cost of hybrid technology by the middle of 2008, but we don't mind hearing them again. If there was ever a challenge the crossed all segments of society, this is it, Press said. And with that we moved on into the breakout sessions.

You through with that? If so, there's an energy producer out there who could use it.

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) has provided us all with a write up of the many projects in the United States that turn waste products into energy. You can read the details here, or just get the rundown of the projects from the following list (some will be familiar to AutoblogGreen readers, some won't).

• The Ameren Corporation's coal plant in St. Louis, Missouri blends coal with paint solids waste from a nearby DaimlerChrysler auto plant.
• Intrinergy's has gasification units to convert wood waste, shredded plastic automotive parts, and other waste into a gas that will fuel two pipe manufacturing plants in Alabama.
• The Jenkins Brick Company, in Moody, Alabama uses landfill gas to fuel its brick kilns.
• Alza Corporation in Mountain View, California, uses landfill gas to produces three megawatts of power and hot water for Alza's headquarter facilities.
• At Fort Meade army base in Maryland, landfill gas will help fuel boilers.
• Burlington County, New Jersey will build a 7.2-megawatt power plant at the county landfill by the end of 2007.
• The State of Pennsylvania is encouraging pipeline construction by making highway right-of-ways available for landfill gas pipelines.
• FuelCell Energy, Inc. has one operating project and two planned projects in California, each involving fuel cells that use methane from anaerobic digesters as fuel.
• Baltimore, Maryland has an agreement with Johnson Controls, Inc. for electricity, steam, and hot water produced from the methane created at a wastewater treatment plant.
• Six California dairies work with Environmental Power Corporation (EPC) to digest manure and produce 8 million cubic feet of pipeline-quality methane per day. EPC is also looking at a site in Grand Island, Nebraska.
• The University of California, Davis is fueling an advanced anaerobic digester with eight tons per week of food scraps produced at local restaurants to produce both methane and hydrogen gas.

[Source: Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)]

AutoWeek reports that in an attempt to silence ethanol critics the Department of Energy (DOE) points to a study done by Argonne National Laboratory and officially stated that ethanol yields more energy than is used to produce it. More specifically, the study calculates that it takes 740,000 British thermal units (BTU) of fossil energy to make and deliver 1,000,000 BTUs of cornstarch ethanol.

Critics, however, remain steadfast in their stance. Tad Patzek, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, says, "Every argument they make is bogus," and that even if the administration's optimistic assumptions are granted, ethanol at best breaks even.

The DOE's response to those critics so far has been that they don't account for the improving efficiency of ethanol plants or other benefits and adds that the results from cellulosic ethanol will look even better.

It's important to note that the Argonne study is one of several major studies. Beth Lowery, vice president of environment and energy at GM, notes that 9 of the 12 studies she's aware of conclude that producing ethanol has a net positive energy balance. She says that the discrepancies among the studies come from researcher assumptions. Without offering explanation, she adds that the Argonne study is the most important.

Regardless of the DOE verdict on the net energy balance of ethanol, it doesn't appear we're going to come to a decisive conclusion to the debate as a society any time soon. Too many critics distrust the Bush administration-led DOE and EPA.

A 3-page pdf highlighting key points of the Argonne study compiled by the the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) can be found here.

[Source: AutoWeek]

Like I said, it must be hydrogen week around here. The U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy subsection sent out an email yesterday announcing, among other things, that there are now 32 hydrogen fueling stations open in America, and 19 more are on the way. The growing number of stations doesn't mean that it's easy to go fill up a fuel cell car yet, as 21 of these stations are private, used by transit agencies of private fleets. California has the most hydrogen fueling stations, with 16 current and 12 planned stations. Fourteen more states (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Vermont) also have hydrogen available at at least one pump. You can see a list of the stations here.

[Source: National Hydrogen Association via EERE]