By Tom Kessler

The battlefield cry “charge” is taking on new meanings. Portable fuel cell systems from SFC Smart Fuel Cell AG won first and third prizes in the U.S. Defense Department’s inaugural Wearable Power Competition, the DOD announced.

Nearly 170 designs competed in the event, which was established by Department of Defense Research and Engineering to “encourage innovation in energy systems carried by personnel during field missions.” The systems, attached to a military vest, were required to provide 20 watts of average electric power, have peak-power capability up to 200 watts and weigh no more than 8.8 pounds.

The M-25 Portable Fuel Cell from DuPont and SFC, won the $1 million first prize. The AMI team from Ann Arbor, MI, won the $500,000 second place prize. SFC and partner Capitol Connections LLC of Middleburg, Va., took third place and $250,000 for their JENNY fuel cell.

These portable devices are used to power a range of field equipment that includes GPS navigation systems, communications equipment, computers and robots. The devices weigh up to 80 percent less than conventional power sources.

The winners were announced Oct. 4 at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif.

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By John DeFore

Not long ago, a City of Austin crew spent the day installing new “No Parking” signs along the streets of my neighborhood. Two big Ford F450 trucks sat outside my home-office window for hours while the men dug holes and planted posts — and their engines ran the entire time.

Not wanting to be the block’s eco-scold, I said nothing as the trucks rumbled. But the waste of fuel nagged at me even after the noise was gone, and I eventually called the city to find out why workers would be allowed to run their engines like that. Surely the city didn’t approve of polluting the air all morning just so the truck would be pre-air-conditioned when workers took a coffee break?

After calls to three or four city departments, I found a public works supervisor with some answers. All work trucks keep their engines running, she told me, because of the LED arrow boards mounted on them which warn drivers to keep their distance. “You can’t turn the engine off and keep the arrows going, because your battery will die down,” she said.

It was easy to see how a safety-based practice might serve as an excuse to keep the cab cooled off, even when running the arrow was unnecessary: In my case, the truck was parked on a dead-end block where no traffic could approach from behind it. The woman I spoke with agreed that conserving fuel wasn’t the easiest topic to raise with work crews. “They’ve been here a while,” she said, “and when I mention this they kind of get, ‘Well, fine, what do you want us to do for safety?’”

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British Petroleum (BP) has announced plans to bring cellulosic ethanol to market in the U.S., through a partnership with bio-fuel developer Verenium, a company that makes biofuels from rice straw, sugarcane stalks, switchgrass and wood chips. The partnership could help speed the availability of lower cost, more environmentally friendly biofuels, according to an announcement by both companies this week.

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By Tom Kessler

Almost 90 percent of the car shoppers who visit Kelley Blue Book’s Web site say they are concerned about the future of our environment, company research shows. Among survey respondents, 80 percent agreed that individuals should make lifestyle changes to help reduce CO2 emissions. And 75 percent of KBB shoppers reported that they have made changes to further the betterment of the environment. The most frequent lifestyle changes cited were:

• recycling (54 percent)
• cutting back on driving (46 percent)
• purchasing a fuel-efficient car (31 percent)

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By Barbara Kessler

The upside of high gas prices is becoming evident as Americans flock to dealers of small and hybrid cars, revealing that we can, if whacked in the wallet, lower our greenhouse gas emissions.

There’s another silver lining not so readily apparent, but quite compelling. According to researchers at the University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB) when people curb their driving, both by slowing down and driving less, traffic fatalities decline as well.

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By Barbara Kessler

Who would have thought we’d be hoping that gas prices had settled in at $4 a gallon? Instead, U.S. government tracking shows that they are creeping past that benchmark, ranging from an average high of $4.59 in California to a low of $3.95 in Texas this middle week of June. It’s making the math a little harder: For awhile there, people in most parts of the country could figure that their 15-gallon tank would cost about $60 to fill. But Californians are now looking at more than $68 and drivers in New York ($63.90) and Washington ($64.95) are facing only slightly less pain. And pity the West Coast truck or SUV driver with a 20-gallon tank, they’ll need nearly $100 to top off.

Are Americans in shock? Um, yeah. Several people we talked to at the pump last week say they’re feeling trapped, but are trying to seize what control they have, making modest changes and thinking about ways out of the oil crunch… Watch the report.

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By John DeFore

The era of mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell vehicles has finally arrived — although the “mass” part of that statement is debatable.

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By John DeFore

As anyone can tell you who has touched the hood or tailpipe of a car after a long drive, much of the energy produced by a tank of gas goes not to forward motion but to producing heat. A typical car’s engine is said to waste around two thirds of its energy generating heat, in fact, making it a frustratingly inefficient use of limited resources.

One of the groups working to combat this inefficiency, Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques, part of a group that bills itself as “the largest organization for applied research in Europe,” thinks it is near the point

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By John DeFore

Biofuel research company Origin Oil has filed a patent on a device that promises to facilitate the industrialized production of algae, knocking down some of the barriers to petroleum-free fuel.

The new Helix BioReactor, which a company announcement this week describes as a “breakthrough technology,” is an effort to

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By Barbara Kessler

Seemed like a trifling issue not long ago, but it’s time – probably about $2 per gallon past time — to look at our driving habits. Obviously, we should drive less. And given the current price of a gallon gasoline ($3.75 to $4) our wallets and the environment are surely in accord on that. You’re probably already shopping closer to home and bundling errands. Short of buying a new more fuel efficient car, you’re now left with one other option: Change how you drive to curb your car’s appetite. Some tips:

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By John DeFore

Nissan Motor Company took the occasion of its financial-results stock exchange reporting (nearly $7 billion in profits from $90+ billion revenues in fiscal 2007) Tuesday in Tokyo to make an announcement of interest to those of us who don’t own stock. In 2010, the company plans to release an all-electric car in the United States and Japan, which should make it the first major auto company to do so.

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By John DeFore

With the chorus of ethanol critics becoming impossible to ignore, biofuel advocates are under pressure to pursue options that don’t threaten the world’s food supplies. Researchers at the University of Texas announced late last month that they’ve developed a promising contender:

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