Oil might not seem like it could be home to, well, anything. We’ve seen what oil spills can do to ecosystems, and it’s hard to imagine that anything would actually live in the black blood of industry. However, researchers have discovered tiny organisms do indeed make their home there, and they are an essential part of the reason that oil degrades over time.
Tesla’s (NASDAQ: TSLA ) Model S has been an enormous success. Not only has the all-electric luxury sedan been outselling all comparably priced cars in North America in 2013, but Tesla is expecting sales to increase by more than 50% this year. Most surprising of all, however, is that Tesla is achieving this without spending any money on advertising. How long can this trend continue?
What if a clever business model could lower the retail price of a Tesla compact sedan to less than $20,000, or make an extended range option like BMW’s i3 attainable for under $30,000? Could such pricing make electric vehicle adoption a no-brainer for a larger group of drivers? The business model that helped make the smartphone widely indispensable may offer a clue.
First the good news: Gasoline prices are at their lowest level in months, according to AAA. Now more good news. Flex-fuel prices have been falling, too, and are about $1 less per gallon than regular gasoline now, according to the Kiplinger Agriculture Letter.So maybe you’re scratching your head wondering what flex fuel is and why you should care that it’s cheaper than gas.
E85, or flex fuel, is a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline that can be used in vehicles specially designed to run on it as well as regular gasoline. There are more than 10.6 million flex-fuel vehicles on the road, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. You might even be driving one and not realize it.
A powerful new tool that can help advance the genetic engineering of “fuel” crops for clean, green and renewable bioenergy, has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a multi-institutional partnership led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
The world’s oil prices have stayed high since 2010 — bouncing around $100 per barrel— for two basic reasons. Oil demand keeps rising, and production is struggling to keep up. But why is production struggling to keep up? One big factor has been geopolitical conflict. Wars, unrest, and sabotage have increasingly plagued oil producers like Iraq, Libya, and Syria since 2011. The US and EU sanctions on Iran’s oil industry have also removed a lot of oil from global markets.
Even as electric vehicles gain in popularity, we’re told again and again that internal combustion engines aren’t going away. While that may be true, it would still be nice to kick our addiction to gasoline. Pollution, international turmoil and energy insecurity are getting a bit tiresome. It’s good news, then that Navigant Research is predicting a decline in the amount of gasoline we use.
How do we get information when we want to buy a new car? Often, it’s online with car review websites and automaker’s sites & advertising, and hopefully UCS’s clean vehicle information. But when it comes time to see and test drive cars, you can’t replace going to the new car lot. Unfortunately, recent reports say that many new car dealerships lack the knowledge or desire to effectively sell electric vehicles (EVs).
Power by people; a simple slogan with the hopes of executing the complex task of changing the way people fundamentally think about the ethanol industry. Brian Jennings, executive vice president of the American Coalition of Ethanol, announced ACE’s new campaign as “a fundamental change in how we do and think about this industry.”
The 5th Global Ethanol Focus (GEF) 2014 organised by CBI BIZ will be held on September 24-25, 2014 in Hong Kong, amidst significant changes and expansion in the Asian ethanol market. In its fifth year, GEF has become the must-attend event in Asia Pacific for ethanol players.
