Bio Products Opportunity

New Zealand is well on its way to becoming one of the most environmentally friendly nations on the planet, especially if its government has its way. The small nation has a plan to half its transport emissions by 2040 by using biofuels, hybrids and electric vehicles, according to an energy strategy released by Prime Minister Helen Clark. The government hopes that battery-electric vehicles will make up 60 per cent of the market share by 2040, and that hydrogen-powered vehicles make up 25 per cent by 2050. The move is aided by New Zealand’s already largely clean electricity, 65 per cent of which is produced by renewable means (a figure they want to increase to 90 per cent by 2025).

However, the media and private companies aren’t quite as sold on electric cars as the government just yet. EVs have copped considerable criticism from New Zealand’s Dog and Lemon Guide, an influential car magazine. Author Clive Matthew-Wilson attacked the cars for being high cost, range-limited and in constant need of recharging. The author also said that the light-weight materials used for EVs such as carbon fibre, also used in a number of conventional vehicle components such as spoilers, were expensive to make and “incredibly toxic”. The comments (however questionable they may be) have prompted Meridian Energy, a power company that was planning to import a small number of electric cars for a trial, to review the plan, though it currently has no intentions to scrap the trial entirely.

NZ Energy Minister, David Parker, has rejected the claims of Dog & Lemon, saying that much of the technology going into electric vehicles is already used in conventional cars and that the energy used to power them would be largely renewable.

“The Prime Minister recently announced a target of 90 per cent renewable energy in the electricity sector by 2025, so we are set to see amounts of renewable electricity available increasing over time,” he said.

“New Zealand is fortunate to have so much renewable energy available at economic prices the uptake of technologies such as electric cars will see an increasingly sustainable transport fleet.”

(Sources: NZ Herald, The Age)

The World Solar Challenge is celebrating 20 years this year, and continues to go from strength to strength with renewed interest in sustainable transport, as well as continued improvements in technology that have seen the speeds of these vehicles more than double in the two decades that the competition has been running.

The event, in which teams design and build a vehicle capable of running purely on solar power and race them for 3000 km from Darwin to Adelaide across some of Australia’s harshest environments, will run from October 21 to 28 and attracts teams from high schools, universities and research groups around the world. Sixty-one teams from twenty countries will compete this year, with the event expanding to promote sustainable combustion-engine vehicles in its Greenfleet Technology Class as well as prototype experimental vehicles, such as the University of South Australia’s “Trev” electric vehicle and the H2Solar hybrid vehicle from Japan’s Team JonaSun.

The steady increase in solar panel efficiency over the last two decades has helped the competition, with event director Chris Selwood saying that the solar panels being used are twice as efficient as they were when the event started.

“Certainly 20 years ago, most photovoltaic cells were in the realms of experimental devices,” he said. “Winning speed was 67km/h average in the first event.

“At the last event in 2005, the winning team averaged 103km/h and clicked a maximum speed of 147km/h at one point.

“We are now trying to bring some practical attributes to the solar car, that people can get in and out themselves and sit upright.”

Anyone interested in watching the race, or participating in the 2009 event, can find information through the World Solar Challenge website.

(Sources: WSC, The Advertiser)

Reva may be a familiar name to avid followers of electric cars. The Indian-owned company has had success in the UK where it has sold 600 of its G-Wiz urban electric vehicles on a trial basis and is now ready to go into mass production, however its history in Australia is not so rosy. The Reva was essentially banned from Australian roads last year because it was not tested to Australian safety specifications, which can cost on the order of $300,000.

Reva might be on the way to making a comeback here, though, with a modified model that is hoped to pass government safety regulations. The new version is expected to sell for under $20,000, have a top speed of up to 80 km/h (a 15 km/h increase over the original model) and has a range of 80 km. It has previously been classified as a full-size car, but Adelaide’s Solar Shop (who hopes to import and distribute the Reva in Australia) says that it is better suited to a “quadracycle” category, under which it falls in many countries. The main stumbling block to this is that no category currently exists in Australia, and a lack of federal support means that it is not likely to change any time soon.

Reva is hoping the car will prove popular in Australia if released, as an inexpensive form of urban and suburban transportation that emits no pollution and costs approximately 1c per kilometre to run. The Reva vehicles can be charged using a standard household outlet and seat two adults and two children.

(Source: CARSGuide)

Blink and you’ll miss it: for a short period of time yesterday (September 5), the top story on the Sydney Morning Herald’s website wasn’t about the APEC summit or the latest celebrity arrest, but rather about a small startup out of Texas called EEStor, which is secretively working on an “ultracapacitor” which could be used in electric vehicles in place of batteries.

EEStor’s ultracapacitors allegedly combine the best qualities of batteries and capacitors, with the ability to be charged in five minutes (although not through household outlets) and a potential range of 500 miles (800 km). The technology is expected to debut in ZENN low-speed electric vehicles next year, though no public demonstration of the technology has yet been made, leading to skepticism from some corners.

If that can make headlines in the midst of everything else happening in Sydney right now, electric cars might yet have a future in Australia.

Meridian Energy, a New Zealand electricity provider to around 200,000 homes and businesses, is planning to trial the use of electric vehicles early next year. The company’s CEO, Keith Turner, believes that all-electric cars are the next step in the evolution of vehicles (after hybrids and plug-in hybrids) and feels that the required technology has reached a tipping point.

“Advances in motor and control technology, and especially battery technology, mean that all-electric cars will be appearing in the market in the not too distant future,” he was quoted as saying in a recent press release.

The transport sector is a major emitter in New Zealand, unlike Australia where transport accounts for only 15% of total greenhouse gas emissions. Meridian Energy hopes to prove the viability of electric vehicles as a clean mode of transport, as New Zealand’s only certified carbon-neutral electricity provider.

“The prize in making the move to electric vehicles comes when you recharge them with renewable electricity.  Meridian will be able to demonstrate renewable, zero-emission, certified carbon neutral mobility,” added Dr Turner.

“There is no point in somebody feeling good about driving round town in an electric vehicle if the electricity they’re using has come from a coal-burning plant.  All they’ve done is shifted the emissions from their tail pipe to a smoke-stack over somebody else’s town.”

The trial will aim to achieve three main goals:
1. To test how electric cars perform in New Zealand conditions
2. To find out what New Zealanders think about electric cars
3. To encourage the auto industry to look more closely at opportunities in New Zealand.

The specific vehicles to be trialled have not yet been identified by Meridian Energy.

(Source: Meridian Energy, via Scoop)

If you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’d like to take the opportunity to step back from each individual step that we’ve been focusing on here to take a look at the broader perspective.

In 2005, Australia consumed:

- 18,712 million litres of petrol (15,856 ML of which was used in passenger vehicles)
- 8690 million litres of diesel fuel (5,636 ML of which was used in rigid or articulated trucks)
- 1564 million litres of LPG/CNG fuel

Current indicators are that fossil fuel use has increased in the 18 months since this data was recorded; alternative fuel use in transport was not significant enough to appear with these statistics at the time. In terms of fuel production:

- Non-renewable fuel production has increased 446% in the last 30 years
- Renewable fuel has increased 28% in the same period

Clearly these are not the markers of a country that has embraced alternative and renewable fuels, as much of the world is doing. This is both a weakness and an opportunity for us: although we have so far given up the chance to be a world leader in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, we have been able to observe a very rapidly maturing field of fossil fuel replacements and make a sensible decision about which is best for the Australian environment. If you’re interested in knowing who the primary contenders are, read on.

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