Students design extremely efficient vehicles

Energy efficiency is garnering widespread publicity lately while US regulators wrestle with energy and environmental issues. Separately, I couldn’t help but hope that energy czars and policymakers of the future emerge from among 400 students who competed in last month’s Shell Eco-marathon Americas.

Extreme energy efficiency was literally tested when student teams competed to design and build vehicles running the farthest distance using the least amount of energy. The eco-marathon kicked off Mar. 27 with Shell Oil Co. President Marvin Odum waving the green start flag as 48 vehicles tested on the course in downtown Houston.

A team from Laval University in Quebec won the grand prize for a second consecutive year. The fuel efficiency of Laval University team’s entry in the Prototype category was 2,487.5 mpg.

For the Prototype category, teams entered futuristic, streamlined prototypes–experimental vehicles focused on maximizing fuel efficiency through innovative design. Prototype entries included 28 vehicles powered by combustion engines, five by fuel cell-hydrogen technology, two by solar power, and two by diesel fuel.

I am impressed by the design skills of these high school and college students. Maybe someday, I will drive a car designed by one of them. Hopefully, some of them will take their efficiency experience and innovative skills into legislative chambers to help draft future energy policy.

Oil companies and power plants

As a writer for the Oil & Gas Journal, I find myself starting to report more about power plants because oil companies are getting involved in sequestration projects

Shell Oil Co. is contributing $1 million to help finance a planned carbon dioxide underground storage pilot program. The donation is being made to a field test project that will be managed by the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (WESTCARB), a group of 70 organizations led by the California Energy Commission.

Clean Energy Systems Inc. of Rancho Cordova, Calif., will supply CO₂ to test and monitor the long-term effectiveness of sequestration.

Clean Energy Systems has a 5-MW power plant on the Kern County, Calif., site and plans to build a 50-MW plant. The project will inject CO₂ into porous rock 7,000 ft underground over 4 years, beginning in 2011.

WESTCARB is one of the US Department of Energy’s seven partnerships, involving 41 US states and four Canadian provinces. The partnerships are in Phase Three, which focuses on large-scale storage tests involving 1 million tonnes/year or more.

“We live in a world that demands more energy, but less carbon dioxide,” said Edward Hymes, Shell project manager, who added that Shell is looking to “to strike this critical balance.”

Earlier this year, the International Energy Agency concluded the partnerships are unique in that no other country or region has initiated such an ambitious carbon capture and storage effort as the DOE’s sequestration partnerships.