Archive for July, 2010

Enterprise announces the first rental car available in the US with zero gas and zero emissions.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car announced this week that they will begin to offer completely electric vehicles at 5,000 of their rental locations. The 100 percent electric Nissan Leaf will roll onto Enterprise lots starting in January 2011.

The Nissan Leaf is the first all electric vehicle made available to the general public for purchase. This car requires no gas … that’s right no gas! The cars can be charged using a standard 110-volt home outlet, or a 220-volt or 480-volt commercial charging station. EVs can travel up to 100 miles per day on one charge, which allows for the typical commuter’s travel of 40 miles per day. Does a car that runs on electricity still make you a little nervous? Well, find out the facts here.

The Nissan Leaf is just the first of many EVs Enterprise hopes to make available for customers. In order to accommodate the needs of EV rental cars, charging stations will be installed at select locations. Enterprise is making EVs available in a limited number of branches to make certain that it can properly train its employees to show customers how to use and charge the EVs.

This is just one new initiative in a long list of programs that Enterprise Holdings has established in the past few years that focuses on the environment. Here are some highlights of moves the company has made in the past four years:

• In 2007 the Enterprise Institute for Renewable Fuels was founded to research and develop the creation of biofuels from algae, soybean and camelina. The institute has been awarded approximately $75 million in research grants.
• A commitment to reduce both energy use and energy costs by 20 percent over the next five years through the company’s new sustainability initiative called the 20/20 Vision.
• In 2010, the 5 millionth tree was planted through the company’s 50 Million Tree Pledge, a partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation and US Forest Service.
• Enterprise partnered with TerraPass on certified offset projects that work to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. These projects offset 42,000 metric tons of carbon, which, based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards, is equivalent to saving 4.8 million gallons of gasoline and 98,000 barrels of oil.
• Over the past several years the Taylor family and their companies have contributed or pledged more than $120 million to environmental initiatives. For more information about the full environmental platform, visit www.keystogreen.com.

Lee Broughton, director of sustainability for Enterprise Holdings, which owns and operates Enterprise Rent-A-Car as well as the Alamo Rent A Car and National Car Rental brands, talked about this new program in a recent press release. “As a company, we are committed to manage our business responsibly and for the long term,” said Broughton. “Bringing electric vehicles to our fleet is one more way for us to leverage our leadership position to balance the needs of our customers, partners and the world around us.”

For more information about Enterprise and sustainability go here.

Read more Dollars & Sense.

Images provided by Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

Senators Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) announced Thursday that the bipartisan electric vehicle legislation they authored won bipartisan approval Wednesday by the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee. According to the senators, the bill will reduce the country’s excessive dependence on foreign oil while creating American jobs.

The “Promoting Electric Vehicle Act of 2010,” approved in Committee 19-4, includes initiatives to increase the introduction of electric cars and trucks throughout the country, significantly reducing gas consumption and creating domestic jobs.

“At a time when consensus in the Senate is rare, the overwhelming and bipartisan support for the electric vehicle bill is a significant win for smart energy policy. The passage of this bill out of the Senate Energy Committee puts us on the path to electrifying our nation’s car fleet,” Dorgan said. “I’ll continue pushing my other colleagues in the Senate to endorse this bill, which will help us break our addiction to foreign oil while boosting the economy by putting more electric vehicles on U.S. roads.”

“Our goal should be to electrify half our cars and trucks within 20 years, which would reduce our dependence on oil by about a third, from about 20 million to about 13 million barrels a day,” Alexander said. “Republicans and Democrats agree that electrifying our cars and trucks is the single best way to reduce our dependence on oil, and the fact that 13 Democrats and six Republicans supported this bill in the Energy Committee shows that the Senate can pass this bill as a good, bipartisan step forward to reduce our dependence on oil.”

“It is outstanding to see bipartisan support for trading in the dirty, expensive fuels of the 19th century for the clean, efficient fuels of the 21st century,” Merkley said. “The bottom line is that electric vehicles save families money on fuel, cause less pollution, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. I’m proud to partner with Senators Dorgan and Alexander in the drive toward a stronger America.”

If passed by the Congress and signed into law, the bipartisan “Promoting Electric Vehicle Act of 2010” would create “deployment communities” across the country, where targeted incentive programs for electric vehicles and charging infrastructure systems would help demonstrate rapid market penetration and determine what “best practices” would be helpful for nationwide deployment of electric vehicles. The goal is to put the nation on a path to electrify half its cars and trucks by 2030, which if achieved, would cut U.S. demand for oil by about one-third.

Currently, the U.S. transportation sector is 95 percent reliant on petroleum and accounts for more than two-thirds of total national petroleum consumption. The U.S. imported more than 60 percent of its oil in 2008 at a cost of some $380 billion – or nearly 60 percent of the total trade deficit.

Senator Dorgan is a senior member of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee and chairs the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee. Senators Alexander and Merkley are members of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee.
Source: Chattanoogan.com

San Diego July 14th 2010-Evoasis Internal Release

As many of you know, I have been talking for the last 3 years about “Inflection Points” which in retrospect can be viewed as an event or events that trigger a paradigm-shift in industries, societies or social orders. I firmly believe that what I was fortunate enough to witness on July 13th, 2010 in Lancaster, California by gracious invitation from Micheal Austin, VP of BYD America, marks a turning (Inflection) point in Americas future and that of the planet and society as a whole. China, as most people know, is a major investor/innovator in renewable energy. They have to be. There is not enough oil left in the world for a rapidly growing country like China to plan their energy security needs without making use of as much renewable resources as possible. Several hundred million cars will also be operating in China and India in the next 30 years. We have roughly 700 Million cars on the planet now and it is predicted this will increase to 1.2 Billion cars by 2035, mostly in Asia which is experiencing high-growth and increased standards of living. Forget global warming for a second. Lock yourself in the garage with the engine running in your car for 10 minutes and see how good you feel afterwords. It may be getting hotter but that doesn’t matter if we’re choking on toxic fumes anyway. They “get-it” in China and are planning to clean up their coal plants, use renewable’s where possible and run electric and hybrid-electric vehicles to keep the emissions (and oil imports) to a minimum. It’s vital to do that here as well. Even as we fight over oil spills and partisan politics, the cars keep rolling, the toxins keep emitting and our economy and our children face a bleaker (and less healthy) future.

Now for the “good news”…

BYD Company of China in Partnership with KB Homes, a California home builder, have achieved a “world-first” by creating a “Zero Net” excess energy usage home, which combines BYD batteries, power control systems, storage batteries and solar panels. Using only 4 Kilowatts of solar, combined with a 10 Kilowatt Hour Lithium Ion battery pack, the thermally-efficient EnergyStar(tm) compliant home uses the latest appliances, insulating materials and smart-grid system protocols to capture, store, feed-in or demand off-peak (low-cost) grid energy in multiple, automated combination’s throughout the daily cycle-of-energy demand and usage.

Mass production of these systems is near, with costs low enough to justify adoption in most new-build construction projects in the “solar-friendly” parts of the U.S.  The system will pay for itself in under 10 years in most cases and can be financed into the purchase price of the home at the time of sale, which at today’s low interest rates, makes this decision a “no-brainer”.

We expect to see this become the “norm” in the Southwest portion of the U.S.  as well as other “sunbelt” regions. Adding additional solar and using the EV battery as a secondary storage “asset” will provide low-cost/no-cost driving for electric vehicles in their local operation and of course, low carbon footprints for the owner/occupants. Evoasis, who work closely with BYD on energy efficient building and transportation solutions, wish to send our heartfelt congratulations to the BYD and KB teams, along with a hearty “well done” to the City of Lancaster and its forward-looking leaders. We at Evoasis/Utiligen have marked this date in our calendars, July 13th, 2010, as Energy Independence Day. Each year on July 13th, we will issue an update on the number of new homes employing these systems and the amount of fossil-fuel saved and the associated carbon-emission reductions.

Thanks BYD, for “changing the game” and bringing us to the next Inflection Point. Lets all work together to move the world toward its green future.

Sincerely,

Angus Clark-Chairman-Evoasis/Utiligen

KB Homes Lancaster California development is the first Zero Net energy home

BYD's e6 Electric vehicle is roomy and "rangy" with a 60 Kilowatt Hour battery and DC Rapid-Charge capability

Stella Li, BYD's Senior Vice President arrives for the Grand Opening

Lancaster's City Manager opens remarks and introduces participlants

Energy storage and control is handled in the garage with a small "appliance" that monitors and routes energy use to the home and/or grid.

The e6 EV can charge from the home and/or feed power back into the home if needed during high-demand energy periods

Designed with the interior room of a "cross-over" vehicle, the e6 is Best-in-Class for its range, affordability, rapid-charge capability (minutes not hours) and payload/capacity

LANCASTER, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The City of Lancaster, BYD and KB Home today announced the completion of a new earth-friendly prototype home utilizing BYD’s solar, battery and LED Lighting systems. During the grand opening event to be held today at KB Home’s Alamosa community in West Lancaster, the three parties, who began working on this futuristic home just a few months ago, will unveil the state-of-the-art technology that will potentially lead to more affordable solar electricity and energy storage options for Americans across the country.

The City of Lancaster has made the advancement and research of such green technologies a priority and continues to help drive innovation in its community. As such, Lancaster has waived all local municipal development fees for the project and fast-tracked it through the approval process, allowing construction to begin almost immediately.

“This remarkable new house is truly the home of the future,” said Mayor R. Rex Parris. “This type of cutting-edge initiative is precisely what happens when you combine the brain power of one of the nation’s premier homebuilders with one of the world’s most forward-thinking energy companies. The City of Lancaster is proud that our residents will be among the first to benefit from the cost savings and environmental protection offered by homes such as this. We look forward to building upon this successful collaboration with KB Home and BYD well into the future.”

KB Home began construction on the home in late March 2010 in association with BYD. BYD’s green energy technologies were incorporated into a new model home at KB Home’s Alamosa community in Lancaster. The home was built to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ENERGY STAR^® guidelines and includes many earth-friendly features. BYD provided renewable energy-related materials, including solar panels, energy storage batteries, and LED energy-saving lights. KB Home also installed an electric vehicle outlet to demonstrate the home’s ability to charge BYD’s F3DM and e6 electric vehicles, which were on display at the home.

“At KB Home we are constantly seeking out new technology that will improve the quality of life for our homeowners,” said Steve Ruffner, president of KB Home’s Southern California division. “This collaboration has driven innovative thinking as we incorporate cutting-edge technologies so that future homeowners can enjoy the comforts of greener living.”

“BYD continues to be impressed with the support of City and County leaders in Lancaster and LA County to drive green policy and these energy-efficient technologies. These are real solutions for real people available today for mass-market adoption. BYD is ready and excited to deliver these green technologies at reasonable prices and our association with KB Home demonstrates that,” said Stella Li, Senior Vice President of BYD.

This home and four other KB Home model homes at Alamosa are now open to the public daily for tours. For more information, including community hours and driving directions, call 888-KB-HOMES or visit www.kbhome.com.

Source: Business Wire/Yahoo