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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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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By Bill Sullivan
Charles Harris is here, there and everywhere. While the rest of the Winston Solar Car Team dotes over “Sun Hunter”, the eighth such vehicle in the organization’s nearly 20-year history, the captain surveys the scene, making sure everyone is playing his or her proper role.
“Everyone here is motivated. You don’t have to [...]

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