Neste Oil has announced plans to build a new biomass-to-liquid diesel plant in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The plant will produce what the company calls NExBTL renewable diesel fuel at the rate of 800,000 tonnes per year after it begins operating in 2011. Neste will spend about €670 million (a little over $1 billion at current exchange rates) on the facility which will use Neste's processes to convert a mix of palm and rapeseed oils and animal fat into a high-quality diesel fuel. Neste already has a smaller plant in Finland using this process with another one the same size as the Dutch plant that was announced for Singapore last fall. The NExBTL fule is claimed to reduce total life cycle CO₂ emissions by 40-60 percent compared to petroleum diesel. Neste also has a variety of ongoing research projects to use non-food vegetable oils, wood waste and algae for diesel fuel production.

[Source: Neste Oil]

It's easy to argue that road taxes are quite unfair because they're flat: You pay fees to drive around; it doesn't matter how much you actually use the car.

The Netherlands has decided to improve the country's road tax by taxing according to the vehicle type, usage, hour and roads the vehicle is using. The system uses GPS, a car transmitter and a standard cell phone GSM network to send this information to a central computer that processes the information. Once these figures are calculated, the driver is charged. Congestion and the environment are both taken into consideration in the rate scheme. Using a highway that enters a city in peak hours while driving an SUV will be taxed more than driving a small car in a rural area where private vehicles are more of a necessity.

Dutch officials hope the system will reduce CO₂ emissions and congestion, because the Dutch government claims that there is no more room to build more roads. Critics say this system is an attack on privacy: a computer will know where and when you've driven, although the company that implements the system guarantees that this information won't be stored once translated into money. The system starts in 2011 for freight transport and will be expanded to include cars in 2012. Full deployment of the system is scheduled to be completed in 2016. A similar system has been under study in the UK.

[Source: Qué!]

Ford in the Netherlands has declared its campaign to retrofit older cars with DPFs (Diesel Particulate Filters) a success. More than 9,000 motorists chose to install the soot-reducing devices in their vehicles, and they got them almost for free: Ford reduced the price of the DPF so it would match the amount of the government's subsidy to install such devices in passenger cars. A similar promotion was held in Germany last September.

Retrofitting DPFs in your car is not an easy task to do (some would even say troublesome), but Ford reached a partnership with the Nederlandse Rijksdienst Wegverkeer (RDW) to officially approve the procedures. Starting January 1st, all diesel Fords sold in the Netherlands have a DPF installed as standard.

[Source: Ford Netherlands]

A common charge car drivers hurl at GPS systems is that they're unnecessary for anyone with maps and the brains to use them. But what about cyclists using unfamiliar bike lanes? The Dutch cyclists union ENFB has started a volunteer effort to map the numerous bike lanes for GPS, many of which are inaccessible by cars and thus not used by navigation companies like Navteq. States project leader Kees Bakker, "This is really a Dutch problem. Other countries have very few dedicated bike lanes and in those countries car route finders can be used by cyclists, too. But here in Holland, car route finders are unaware of the best cycle lanes."

Mapping bike routes are more difficult than mapping roads. The volunteers have to note, for example, if the lane surface is hard or a dirt road. Surrounding scenery and how well lit is the lane are also important tidbits for the GPS maps. And with the goal to map the entire country, it's not a small project, either. The volunteers, though, enjoy it and love meeting to discuss their favorite routes.

Related: From cameras to Vision (software): How GPS companies map the world

[Source: Reuters via Washington Post]