More Cars Get 40 MPG; Ethanol on the Hill

A couple of Friday articles of interest:

From More new cars get 40 mpg, but 'cheap' gas keeps buyers away by Chris Woodyard at USA Today:

Automakers are offering more conventional cars that cross the 40-miles-per-gallon threshold in highway driving, but relatively low gas prices continue to hold off buyers.

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"When gas is cheap, no one is going to be rushing out to buy a small car," says Gabriel Shenhar, senior auto test engineer for Consumer Reports.

But automakers are keenly aware of how many were caught short in 2008 when gas prices shot up to a $4.14 per gallon peak in July, so they are adding 40-mpg cars as a hedge.

Two interesting tidbits (my italics):

In past years, few models were able to get a 40-mpg rating without using more expensive hybrid or diesel technology. Now automakers are starting to show they can hit that mark with improved conventional gasoline powertrains for a smaller price premium — or none.

"We found that 40 (mpg) is the new 30. Everyone wants great fuel mileage," Chevrolet spokeswoman Lesley Hettinger says.

From Time for Congress to end its ethanol addiction By Sam Batkins and Doug Holtz-Eakin for The Hill:

Ethanol corrodes engines, reduces miles per gallon (MPG) performance, and has a terrible environmental record.  No wonder Al Gore, a previous supporter, has stated, “[E]thanol, I think, was a mistake.”  As for current Secretary of Energy and Nobel Prize recipient Steven Chu: “Ethanol is not an ideal transportation fuel.”  To an extent, even the EPA agrees. 

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Finally, ethanol has a mediocre environmental mandate.  Some studies have concluded that ethanol increases greenhouse gases (GHG) and is a net energy loser.  The Congressional Budget Office found that ethanol cut GHG emissions at a cost of $750 per ton.  This might sound laudable but the cost of one ton of GHG is roughly $19, according to the European Climate Exchange.

Fortunately, a groundswell of opposition is starting to form in the Senate.  Seventeen senators from across the ideological spectrum (Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)) are opposed to the current policy that showers ethanol with every conceivable protection.  They wrote, “Historically our government has helped a product compete in one of three ways: subsidize it, protect it from competition, or require its use.  We understand that ethanol may be the only product receiving all three forms of support from the U.S. government at this time.”  Leave it to Congress to break all the wrong records.  

Fiji water is from Fiji

Fiji water comes in a beautiful bottle. 



I paid attention to the Fiji bottle for the first time when my wife bought one at the Atlanta airport while we waited for a connecting flight.  I was struck by the bottle.  The graphics and name evoked a serene feeling.  I thought it was a very nice job of marketing.  Someone made filtered water from somewhere nearby seem serene and exotic.  It wasn't until I took a close look at the bottle that I discovered Fiji water was in fact from Fiji.

This water had travelled from halfway around the world to be in Atlanta.  (I won't point out the obvious--it tasted a lot like North Carolina water...)


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Holding the bottle of Fiji water reminded me of a book by Peter Gleick called "Bottled & Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water". 

In its modern form, bottled water is a new phenomenon, growing from a niche mineral-water product with a few wealthy customers to a global commodity found almost everywhere. The recent expansion of bottled water sales has been extraordinary. In the late 1970s, around 350 million gallons of bottled water were sold in the United States — almost entirely sparkling mineral water and large bottles to supply office water coolers — or little more than a gallon and a half per person per year. As the figure below shows, between 1976 and 2008, sales of bottled water in the United States doubled, doubled again, doubled again, and then doubled again. In 2008, nearly 9 billion gallons (over 34 billion liters) of bottled water were packaged and sold in the United States and five times this amount was sold around the world, feeding a global business of water providers, bottlers, truckers, and retailers at a cost to consumers of over a hundred billion dollars.

Americans now drink more bottled water than milk or beer — in fact, the average American is now drinking around 30 gallons, or 115 liters, of bottled water each year, most of it from single-serving plastic containers.

The problems with bottled water are now familiar:  The landfill/recycling challenges of single-serving plastic containers.  The CO2 emitted from transporting water over long distances.


Others have also wondered about the carbon footprint of Fiji water.  In a Fast Company article in 2007,  Charles Fishman writes:

The label on a bottle of Fiji Water says "from the islands of Fiji." Journey to the source of that water, and you realize just how extraordinary that promise is. From New York, for instance, it is an 18-hour plane ride west and south (via Los Angeles) almost to Australia, and then a four-hour drive along Fiji's two-lane King's Highway.

Every bottle of Fiji Water goes on its own version of this trip, in reverse, although by truck and ship. In fact, since the plastic for the bottles is shipped to Fiji first, the bottles' journey is even longer. Half the wholesale cost of Fiji Water is transportation--which is to say, it costs as much to ship Fiji Water across the oceans and truck it to warehouses in the United States than it does to extract the water and bottle it.


That is not the only environmental cost embedded in each bottle of Fiji Water. The Fiji Water plant is a state-of-the-art facility that runs 24 hours a day. That means it requires an uninterrupted supply of electricity--something the local utility structure cannot support. So the factory supplies its own electricity, with three big generators running on diesel fuel. The water may come from "one of the last pristine ecosystems on earth," as some of the labels say, but out back of the bottling plant is a less pristine ecosystem veiled with a diesel haze.

 As Fishman notes, one could make an argument for importing products from distant places if it helps sustain a way of life and helps employ many people.  To what extent does Fiji water support the culture and economy of Fiji?

The plant employs 200 islanders--set to increase to 250 this year--most with just a sixth- or eighth-grade education. Even the entry-level jobs pay twice the informal minimum wage. But these are more than simply jobs--they are jobs in a modern factory, in a place where there aren't jobs of any sort beyond the villages. And the jobs are just part of an ecosystem emerging around the plant--water-based trickle-down economics, as it were.

Are 10,000 Fijians benefiting? Not directly. Perhaps 2,000. But Fiji Water is providing something else to a tiny nation of 850,000 people, which has been buffeted by two coups in seven years, and the collapse of its gold-mining and textiles industries: inspiration, a vision of what the country might have to offer the rest of the world. Developed countries are keen for myriad variations on just what Fiji Water is--a pure, unadulterated, organic, and natural product. Fiji has whole vistas of untouched, organic-ready farmland. Indeed, the hottest topic this spring (beyond politics) was how to jump-start an organic-sugar industry.

Of course, the irony of shipping a precious product from a country without reliable water service is hard to avoid.[Elsewhere Fishman writes "Fiji Water produces more than a million bottles a day, while more than half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water."] This spring, typhoid from contaminated drinking water swept one of Fiji's islands, sickening dozens of villagers and killing at least one. Fiji Water often quietly supplies emergency drinking water in such cases. The reality is, if Fiji Water weren't tapping its aquifer, the underground water would slide into the Pacific Ocean, somewhere just off the coast. But the corresponding reality is, someone else--the Fijian government, an NGO--could be tapping that supply and sending it through a pipe to villagers who need it. Fiji Water has, in fact, done just that, to some degree--20 water projects in the five nearby villages. Indeed, Roll has reinvested every dollar of profit since 2004 back into the business and the island.

The Fishman article is full of many interesting details:

• Worldwide, 1 billion people have no reliable source of drinking water; 3,000 children a day die from diseases caught from tainted water.;
• We pitch into landfills 38 billion water bottles a year -- in excess of $1 billion worth of plastic.
•  24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi.

Fiji Water responded to these concerns in an interview with Adrianne Jeffries at Inhabitat in 2008.  Here is part of what Fiji water is doing to make Fiji Water a "carbon negative product":

• We are reducing CO₂ emissions across our products’ entire life cycle by 25% over the next three years.
• By 2010, 50% of our energy will come from renewable sources like wind to power our bottling facility in Fiji and biodiesel for transportation.
• We are reducing product packaging by at least 20% by 2010.
• We are investing in reforestation and renewable energy projects that will reduce CO₂ in the atmosphere by at least 120% of the remaining life cycle emissions.

Every FIJI Water bottle helps remove carbon from the atmosphere. For example, our one-liter bottle results in removal of about 115 grams of CO₂ (the same effect as shutting down a laptop overnight instead of leaving it on). All together, everyone who drinks FIJI Water in 2008 will help remove more than 20,000 tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere, which is equivalent to planting over 500,000 trees. We have also become the first privately held company to join the Carbon Disclosure Project’s Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration.

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Question:  Of the three Rs, recycling is considered the least impactful. What is FIJI doing to reduce and reuse?

One of the most exciting things we’ve learned through assessing our carbon footprint is that recycling is the single most impactful thing anyone can do to reduce the carbon footprint of any packaged beverage, not just FIJI Water. For example, a consumer can reduce the carbon footprint of a one-liter bottle of FIJI Water by 30% through the simple act of recycling the packaging.

This is why we consider our advocacy for recycling programs and policies some of the most important work we do. Only half of the U.S. population is covered by curbside recycling programs, a number that has not changed over the past decade despite the increase in usage of most types of packaging. Rather than tell people to stop buying packaged products, don’t you think it’s more effective to press for expansion of recycling programs?

Question:  The bottled water business has an innately negative impact on the environment and this impact is worsened when the water comes from as far away as Fiji. How do you justify to your critics shipping water to places like New York City, which has the best-tasting tap water in the United States?

It’s a misconception that bottled water is a substitute for tap water. Bottled water actually replaces other packaged beverages – the increase in bottled water volume over the past few years has mirrored the decline in carbonated soft drinks and sugary fruit drinks. There has actually been no material change in the consumption of tap water during this period of time.

In this 24/7, on-the-go society, we have few healthy eating habits in this country, and bottled water is one of them. Consumption of bottled water has helped eliminated nearly one trillion calories from our diets during each of the past two years – a triumph for health and good nutrition.

For more on Fiji Water's efforts to reduce it's CO2 emissions, see the following pages on their website:

http://www.fijiwater.com/giving-back/environment/carbon-negative-neutral/
http://www.fijiwater.com/giving-back/environment/sustainable-practices/

According to a post at Truecostblog.com, freight ships are 10 times more efficient than trucks shipping the same content.  Fiji water notes the benefit in this map.

The Fiji water experience forced me to reflect on how far my wine and beer travels to reach me.....

Miles per Gallon Rating for the Home

The Earth Advantage Institute has developed a program for evaluating home energy use that they call the "Energy Performance Score" (EPS).  They refer to their evaluation system as an "“MPG” or miles-per-gallon style rating or label for the built environment."

On this page, they note that:

Why is it different?
Unlike other existing rating systems such as HERS (Home Energy Rating System), EPS enables home buyers to assess actual energy consumption between homes, rather than comparing energy efficiency levels that could be similar for both a large and a small home.

The contrast with HERS is an interesting one.  Two homes of different size are analogous to two cars with the same MPG that drive different distances. Valuing an upgrade depends on total energy consumption, not efficiency alone.  Energy consumption is a function both of efficiency and use (i.e., house size, miles driven).

Although the MPG metaphor is a catchy one, EAI is actually offering an assessment of energy consumption--which is the right thing to focus on.

What 100 MPGs looks like in 2010

The Automotive X- Prize was launched in 2006-2007 to inspire the creation of the first safe, practical vehicle to achieve 100 miles per gallon. The prize: $10 million.

The prize was awarded earlier this Fall to 3 teams. (Follow this link to an NPR story.)

The Edison 2 (top right) achieved an MPG above 100 using an internal combustion engine. It took home $5 million. The Li-ion (middle right) is a hybrid. The X-tracer (bottom right) is battery powered.

Because vehicles can achieve their efficiency using different fuel sources, the competition relies on an MPG measure called "MPG equivalent," or MPGe. The denominator for MPGe is created by translating all energy sources used (gas, electricity, etc.) to the energy equivalent of burning a gallon of gas. MPGe has the virtue of allowing one to compare and then combine across energy sources. However, it inherits all the usual problems of MPG--an improvement from 10 to 11 MPGe saves the same amount of energy as the improvement from 50 to 100 MPGe for a given distance of driving. (Aside: A "gallons equivalent" per 100 miles would fix this illusion.) A second fundamental problem with MPGe is that, because it mixes energy sources into a single number, it obscures the cost and greenhouse gas emissions of different vehicles.

Fast Company wrote this about the Edison 2 (top right):

The highly aerodynamic vehicle has wind-shrouds over its tires and weighs a mere 840 pounds on the road, both of which help it with its phenomenal fuel efficiency (for comparison the top-selling, well-known and supposedly eco-friendly 2010 Toyota Prius manages just 50 MPG--half the VLC's ability).

We're particularly taken with the look of the thing. It's by no means conventional, nor is it approaching the sort of design and engineering requirements a real, sale-worthy road-going car would need (although it's got heating, ventilation and passed some of the tests required for a car to go on sale in the U.S.). But it looks extraordinary--much more attractive than the odd electric Aptera, with which it shares some design cues. And this, more than anything, helps it promote the notion of alternative power and alternative design in cars which might help more eco-friendly cars race onto the market.

These cars are not actually ready to be commercialized. As noted in the NPR story:

"I think these cars are very much in their development stages," says David Champion, Consumer Reports' director of automobile testing.
He says car engineers still need to iron out kinks with braking, emergency handling and acceleration.

Where are we now that the X Prize has been awarded? What is the benefit of a 100 MPG vehicle?

The X-Prize is an intriguing example of using "crowd sourcing" to drive innovation. The pursuit of a 100 MPG vehicle has likely stimulated new design and technology ideas that can be used in other vehicles.

As the Fast Company article clearly states, however, the winning vehicles are not "sale-worthy road-going" cars.

Is there any downside to focusing on creating 100 MPG vehicles? The Fast Company article hints at one problem. According to the article, the Prius is "supposedly" eco-friendly because it is a full 50 MPG less than the Edison 2. MPG distorts perceptions and priorities.

If replacing a Prius at 50 MPG with a 100 MPG X-Prize vehicle is exciting (which saves 100 gallons of gas every 10,000 miles), how about replacing a 14 MPG SUV with a Ford Escape Hybrid -- and saving 400 gallons of gas every 10,000 miles?

Even replacing a car that gets 14 MPG with one that gets 20 MPG saves twice the gas of the Prius-to-Edison 2 improvement.

But who can get excited about a 6 MPG improvement?

Of course it is not either-or. Innovation should focus on both achieving new levels of efficiency on the high end and pulling up the efficiency of the low end. But, when progress on the high end is measured in MPG (a 50 MPG leap!), it risks obscuring the true value of improvements at the low end.

Supporting 60 MPG

If you are interested in supporting the 60 MPG target, take a look at this site run by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Environment America. Click on the icon: