Techtrend

Valeo Sees Opportunity in Drive for Fuel Efficiency
By William Diem
WardsAuto.com, Mar 19, 2010 9:00 AM

PARIS – Valeo SA is trying to recover from its lack of growth over the last decade by focusing on technologies that will improve automotive efficiency.

For Valeo President Jacques Aschenbroich, the theme of the Geneva auto show “was not the rebound of the auto industry, but the search for the technical solutions of the future. Carbon-dioxide reduction is our guiding principal for the coming years.”

Valeo to supply PSA second-generation stop/start system, beginning with C3 Picasso next year.

The French supplier has been showing analysts and customers a slew of new products that would improve fuel economy.

These range from saving 0.3 oz. (180 g) of weight in a set of four door locks to an intelligent thermal management system that would deliver hot or cold water to the engine’s cooling circuit, as required to reduce emissions and improve performance 10%.

“We’ve talked about intelligent cooling for five or six years, and people weren’t very interested,” says Martin Haub, group vice president-research and development and product marketing. “Today, we can’t satisfy all the customer demands for prototypes.”

While all the big markets are demanding better fuel efficiency, Europe’s goal of 95 g/km of CO2 emissions in 2020 is the most ambitious. The fines for missing the interim goal of 130 g/km in 2018 will be ?95 ($131) per gram per car.

To avoid this, auto makers are willing to pay suppliers from ?20-E50 ($28-$69) per gram saved, Haub says.

Valeo is reorganizing into four product areas: propulsion, thermal control, visibility and driver aid and comfort. In addition, nearly 100 different departments are being consolidated into 16 product groups. Purchasing, human resources and logistics are being organized globally. Overall, Valeo, under Aschenbroich, is organizing itself more like its customers.

Valeo already has booked most of its anticipated OEM business for 2013, when it expects sales to reach ?10 billion ($13.7 billion), up from ?7.5 billion ($10.3 billion) last year.

Among the new products Valeo is showing:

Aquablade: A windshield-wiper system that dribbles the water out of the blade as it moves, instead of spraying the entire windshield. Direct reversible wiper motors, already on the market, save 3.8 lbs. (1.7 kg) over a system using mechanical links, and the precise delivery of water means auto makers can save another 4.4 lbs. (2 kg) by using a smaller wiper fluid supply tank.

Intelligent cooling: A key element is the water-cooled condenser. Instead of having its own air-cooled condenser in front of the car, the water-cooled unit can be located next to the passenger compartment, saving some tubing.

An electronic-control unit monitors the heat in the system and the heating or cooling required by the engine, air conditioning, EGR system, high-tech battery and oil cooler. It also delivers the proper solution using intelligent valves. The system can improve fuel economy 10%.

Second-generation start/stop system that adds regenerative braking: This goes into production in July for PSA Peugeot Citroen, which launched start/stop in 2004. Valeo has a second contract in Asia.

Where the first generation was worth about 6% fuel-economy improvement, the next generation takes it to 10%. During engine braking, the alternator produces energy for a collection of 10 ultracapacitors. They deliver the energy back to the motor to add up to 5 kW (7 hp) for several seconds to turn the engine during startup.

E-Supercharging: Valeo is working with an unnamed supplier of superchargers on the concept of using the energy stored by the ultracapacitors to power a supercharger, which would add 15 kW of energy for several seconds to the engine during launch.

“This is a downsizing enabler,” says electronics-engineer Henri Trintignac, because it adds boost independent of engine speed. The result would be an engine like the Volkswagen 1.4L, with both a supercharger for low-load operation and a turbocharger for high-load boosting.

A robust clutch that takes over some engine damping duties: Small engines need a damper to prevent vibrations, and a dual-mass flywheel is often the best choice. Valeo has introduced what it calls a long travel damper to tackle tough noise, vibration and harshness problems with downsized engines.

Charger-inverter for plug-ins and electric vehicles: The device uses the same power electronics for two functions. That’s because when the vehicle is being charged, the motor obviously is not being used. So a single coil and associated elements can be shared, saving 4.4 lbs. (2 kg) from components and cables, as well as cost.

With all its ideas, Valeo says it can bring emissions of 173 g/km down to 95 g/km; extend the range of an EV 2%; and bring diesel emissions, including oxides of nitrogen, down to tough Euro 6 standards without special NOx aftertreatment.

Obviously, it all costs money. But with pressure from both regulators and increasingly from customers, the French supplier expects half its revenues in 2013 to come from its CO2-reduction products.

A recent visit by engineers from Dongfeng Nissan Co. Ltd. to France offered some confirmation of Valeo’s optimism, says Olivier Raby, an engineer who has been working on the Aquablade windshield wiper.

He says he showed the system to the visitors, including a video portraying how end users would perceive the product. “They asked me how much, and I told them a figure that I won’t tell you,” Raby says.

The system is expensive, compared with the standard solution, but the Dongfeng-Nissan visitors said it was “cheap.”

“They said customers would pay for it,” Raby says.

Original Subscrpit:
http://wardsauto.com/ar/valeo_fuel_efficiency_100319/index.html

Oxford report: World oil reserves at tipping point

Oxford report: World oil reserves at tipping point
by Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment

The Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (Oxford University) has today published a paper stating that capacity to meet projected future oil demand is at a tipping point and that we need to accelerate the development of alternative energy fuel resources in order to ensure energy security and reduce emissions.

The Status of Conventional Oil Reserves – Hype or Cause for Concern? published in the journal Energy Policy concludes that the age of cheap oil has now ended as demand starts to outstrip supply as we head towards the middle of the decade. The report also suggests that the current oil reserve estimates should be downgraded from between 1150-1350 billion barrels to between 850-900 billion barrels, based on recent research. But how can potential oil shortages be mitigated?

Dr Oliver Inderwildi, Head of the Low Carbon Mobility centre at the Smith School, said:

“The common belief that alternative fuels such as biofuels could mitigate oil supply shortages and eventually replace fossil fuels is a pie in the sky. There is not sufficient land to cater for both food and fuel demand. Instead of relying on those silver bullet solutions, we have to make better use of the remaining resources by improving energy efficiency. Alternative such as a hydrogen economy and electric transportation are not mature and will only play a major role in the medium to long term.”

Nick Owen of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment added:

“Significant oil supply challenges will be compounded in the near future by rising demand and strengthening environmental policy. Mitigating the oil crunch without using lower grade resources such as tar sands is the key to maintaining energy stability and a low carbon future.”

The Smith School paper also highlights that in the past, political and financial objectives have led to misreporting of oil reserves, which has led to contradictory estimates of oil reserve data available in the public domain.

Sir David King, Founding Director of the Smith School, commented:

“We have to face up to a future of oil uncertainty much like the global economic uncertainty we have faced during the past two years. This challenge will have a longer term effect on our economies unless swift action is taken by governments and business. We all recognise that oil is a finite resource. We need to look at other low carbon alternatives and make the necessary funding available for research, development and deployment today if we are to mitigate the tipping point.

The report also raises the worrying issue that additional demand for oil could be met by non-conventional methods, such as the extraction of oil from Canada’s tar sands. However, these methods have a far higher carbon output than conventional drilling, and have been described as having a double impact on emissions owing to the emissions produced during extraction as well as during usage.

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The UK Telegraph ran a story on the report March 23:

Oil reserves ‘exaggerated by one third’

The world’s oil reserves have been exaggerated by up to a third, according to Sir David King, the Government’s former chief scientist, who has warned of shortages and price spikes within years.

The scientist and researchers from Oxford University argue that official figures are inflated because member countries of the oil cartel, OPEC, over-reported reserves in the 1980s when competing for global market share.

Their new research argues that estimates of conventional reserves should be downgraded from 1,150bn to 1,350bn barrels to between 850bn and 900bn barrels and claims that demand may outstrip supply as early as 2014. The researchers claim it is an open secret that OPEC is likely to have inflated its reserves, but that the International Energy Agency (IEA), BP, the Energy Information Administration and World Oil do not take this into account in their statistics. …

rest of article

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The report is available online (for a fee). See:

The status of conventional world oil reserves—Hype or cause for concern?

Nick A. Owen, Oliver R. Inderwildi and David A. Kinga

All of the Low Carbon Mobility Centre, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Abstract

The status of world oil reserves is a contentious issue, polarised between advocates of peak oil who believe production will soon decline, and major oil companies that say there is enough oil to last for decades.

In reality, much of the disagreement can be resolved through clear definition of the grade, type, and reporting framework used to estimate oil reserve volumes. While there is certainly vast amounts of fossil fuel resources left in the ground, the volume of oil that can be commercially exploited at prices the global economy has become accustomed to is limited and will soon decline. The result is that oil may soon shift from a demand-led market to a supply constrained market.

The capacity to meet the services provided by future liquid fuel demand is contingent upon the rapid and immediate diversification of the liquid fuel mix, the transition to alternative energy carriers where appropriate, and demand side measures such as behavioural change and adaptation. The successful transition to a poly-fuel economy will also be judged on the adequate mitigation of environmental and social costs.

Article Outline

1. Introduction
2. Literature survey
3. Sources of ambiguity

3.1. A question of cost: resources vs reserves
3.2. A question of chance: reserves vs production
3.3. A question of grade: conventional reserves vs unconventional resources
3.4. Intentional mis-reporting and withheld information
3.5. Caution: reserve–production ratio (R/P)
3.6. Caution: contradictory figures

4. Global oil reserves

4.1. Review of corrected 2P discovery data
4.2. Published reserves less acknowledged error
4.3. Liquid fuels demand and production forecast

5. Oil price and future resources
6. Key conclusions
References
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Original article available here
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Study sees efficiency as key to meeting energy needs

By TOM FOWLER and BRETT CLANTON Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle
March 11, 2010, 11:10PM

Andrew Liveris, left, Dow Chemical Co.’s CEO, speaks with Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS CERA, during a Q&A session on Thursday.

The big buzz at the CERAWeek conference may be natural gas, but a new study says it’s time to light a fire under energy efficiency to meet future energy demands.

The study, unveiled Thursday at IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates’ annual meeting in Houston, says that of all the options available, efficiency is the best way to improve the supply-demand balance quickly while keeping costs low and greenhouse gas emissions in check.

“It’s the one thing that’s really embraced across the spectrum,” said Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS CERA. Enthusiasm for efficiency is high “around the world, at the top of the energy agenda, whether you’re talking about China, Europe or the United States.”

That enthusiasm will be needed because doubts remain about the other paths to a cleaner energy future.

The “Shale Gale,” as CERA has dubbed the surge in natural gas production, can’t do the job alone, a number of panelists said Thursday on the fourth day of the five-day conference.

“We need to be careful thinking everything will be solved by cheap natural gas,” said Theodore Craver, chairman and CEO of electric giant Edison International.

And expanding shale gas drilling to Europe and elsewhere may not be as easy as some expect, warned Jean-Francois Cirelli, vice chairman and president of GDF SUEZ.

The location of the shales is not as well known in Europe as in the U.S., and shale development requires enormous amounts of water and more rigs per acre than conventional drilling. With their smaller land mass, Europeans are more likely to bristle at drilling, Cirelli said.

And technologies like carbon capture and storage, which many see as a way to neutralize the impact of fossil fuel consumption on the environment, face significant technological, political and economic barriers.
Putting it underground

Underground carbon storage is essentially putting waste under people’s property, said Dan Duellman, director of new generation and carbon capture at American Electric Power.

Texas might be comfortable with the storage, given its long history with the oil and gas industry, he said, but carbon storage might be a harder sell in other parts of the country, never mind getting ratepayers to fund the projects.

The high upfront cost of such projects, which may not always result in usable storage sites, is also hard for utilities to swallow, said Jon Long, vice president of asset development for Entergy.

“Drilling into the ground for oil has a lot more upside potential than storing CO2 in the ground for the long term,” Long said.

Howard Herzog, head of carbon capture and storage programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, noted that the Group of 8 nations is calling for 20 large-scale carbon capture projects in the next decade, but he doubts five will start up in that time.
Not easy to promote

But promoting energy efficiency isn’t easy either, according to the study released Thursday.

Politicians find it easier to support programs that create something tangible and generate jobs than policies that curb consumption.

“This is one of those rare, rare areas where you’ll see CEOs like me stand up and say we need government,” Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris said.

“We need to see more collaboration between the public and private sector to set aggressive efficiency standards for things like buildings, for automobiles, for appliances.”

Efficiency is often taken as a synonym for “sacrifice,” but Yergin noted that the U.S. is twice as efficient as it was in the 1970s, and living standards are higher.

“Energy efficiency really means getting more of the things we want while using less energy by improving the productivity of energy use,” Yergin said.
Reasonable upfront costs

To succeed, energy efficiency also must be seen by businesses as “investment grade” — meaning the projects need to have a competitive rate of return and reasonable upfront costs.

It won’t be some massive technological breakthrough that creates efficiency, IHS CERA Director Samantha Gross said, but a steady stream of small improvements over time.

For example, the average U.S. refrigerator today uses only a quarter of the energy it did in 1975 but is 20 percent larger.

Sharon Hong and Monica Hatcher contributed to this story.

Original Script:
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Solar PV has failed in Germany and it will fail in the UK

Our tariff plan is near-identical to Germany’s – that’s the one that produced woeful amounts of energy, jobs and innovation

This is what it looks like when multi-crystaline solar cells create energy from sunlight. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

Let me begin with a plea to tone down this debate on feed-in tariffs. Jeremy Leggett and I have addressed each other politely and stuck to the facts. I have no ill feelings towards him; I simply believe that he is wrong about solar power. But the level of viciousness displayed on the comment threads, by email and on other sites has to be seen to be believed.

Where does fury of this kind come from? In my experience it’s often associated with denial. People who don’t like the outcomes dismiss the facts and lash out at the bearers of bad news. Could we, just for once, please try to get past this reaction, and judge the case on its merits?

My own instincts press me to support solar power. Like most environmentalists I believe that small is beautiful. I hate pylon lines and I don’t care for the sight of big power plants of any description, wind farms included. I detest the big energy firms which provide our electricity. I am deeply attracted to the idea of being able to produce my own power, just as I love producing my own fruit and vegetables. But my attempts to find the best means of tackling climate change, which I explain at greater length in my book, Heat, have forced me to put my gut feelings to one side. Our choices must be based on the best possible information. Otherwise we waste our lives chasing chimeras.

Against my instincts I have come to oppose solar photovoltaic power (PV) in the UK, and the feed-in tariffs designed to encourage it, because the facts show unequivocally that this is a terrible investment. There are much better ways of spending the rare and precious revenue that the tariffs will extract from our pockets. If we are to prevent runaway climate change, we have to ensure that we get the biggest available bang for our buck: in other words the greatest cut in greenhouse gas production from the money we spend. Money spent on ineffective solutions is not just a waste: it’s also a lost opportunity.

Environmentalists have no trouble understanding this argument when lobbying against nuclear power. Those who maintain that it’s more expensive than renewable electricity argue that we shouldn’t waste our money investing in it. But now I hear the same people telling us that we should support every form of renewable generation, regardless of the cost.

I’m delighted that Jeremy has accepted my bet that solar PV won’t reach grid parity in 2013. I am also happy for the winnings to go to SolarAid. I agree with Jeremy that solar PV is an appropriate technology in Africa, where most people are off-grid and there’s much more sunlight. It’s in this country that it makes no sense.

And I accept Jeremy’s challenge to write a column admitting I’m wrong if he wins the bet (but I won’t accept his subtle slippage, substituting “near” for “at”). If I am wrong, it won’t be the first time. In 2005, before I had crunched the numbers, I called on green NGOs to switch from supporting windfarms to promoting “decentralised microgeneration projects”, which I considered a more attractive option. After I discovered just how badly this would set back efforts to decarbonise our power supplies, I changed my views. What would it take to change his?

Jeremy and I can speculate about how useful solar electricity will be in the UK until we’ve worn our keyboards out. Until our bet closes in 2013, by which time billions of pounds will have been committed, no one will know which of us is right.

But you don’t have to rely on speculation to see how this is likely to pan out. As the old cookery programes used to say: “Here’s one we prepared earlier.” The German experiment, almost identical to the UK’s, has now been running for ten years. An analysis published in November by the Ruhr University (pdf) shows just what it has achieved.

When the German programme began in 2000, it offered index-linked payments of 51 euro cents for every KWh of electricity produced by solar PV. These were guaranteed for 20 years. This is similar to the UK’s initial subsidy, of 41p. As in the UK, the solar subsidy was, and remains, massively greater than the payments for other forms of renewable technology.

The real net cost of the solar PV installed in Germany between 2000 and 2008 was ?35bn. The paper estimates a further real cost of ?18bn in 2009 and 2010: a total of ?53bn in ten years. These investments make wonderful sense for the lucky householders who could afford to install the panels, as lucrative returns are guaranteed by taxing the rest of Germany’s electricity users. But what has this astonishing spending achieved? By 2008 solar PV was producing a grand total of 0.6% of Germany’s electricity. 0.6% for ?35bn. Hands up all those who think this is a good investment.

After years of these incredible payments, and the innovation and cost reductions they were supposed to stimulate, the paper estimates that saving one tonne of carbon dioxide through solar PV in Germany still costs ?716. The International Energy Agency has produced an even higher estimate: ?1000 per tonne. There are dozens of ways in which you can save carbon for 100th of the cost of solar PV at high latitudes.

The Ruhr University paper comes out against using feed-in tariffs to stimulate wind power as well, but in this case it shows that large-scale wind power in Germany is likely to become cheaper than conventional power by 2022, at which point subsidies will become redundant. It makes no such prediction for solar PV. It reinforces the point I made in my first sally: while Germany, like the UK, belongs to the European emissions trading scheme, any carbon savings made by feed-in tariffs merely allow polluting industries to raise their emissions. The net saving is zero. The paper suggests that a far more cost-effective mechanism would be to crank down the emissions cap under the trading scheme – then let renewable technologies fight it out to offer the biggest carbon saving per euro.

As for stimulating innovation, which is the main argument Jeremy makes in their favour, the report shows that Germany’s feed-in tariffs have done just the opposite. Like the UK’s scheme, Germany’s is degressive – it goes down in steps over time. What this means is that the earlier you adopt the technology, the higher the tariff you receive. If you waited until 2009 to install your solar panel, you’ll be paid 43c/kWh (or its inflation-proofed equivalent) for 20 years, rather than the 51c you get if you installed in 2000.

This encourages people to buy existing technology and deploy it right away, rather than to hold out for something better. In fact, the paper shows the scheme has stimulated massive demand for old, clunky solar cells at the expense of better models beginning to come onto the market. It argues that a far swifter means of stimulating innovation is for governments to invest in research and development. But the money has gone in the wrong direction: while Germany has spent some ?53bn on deploying old technologies over ten years, in 2007 the government spent only ?211m on renewables R&D.

In principle, tens of thousands of jobs have been created in the German PV industry, but this is gross jobs, not net jobs: had the money been used for other purposes, it could have employed far more people. The paper estimates that the subsidy for every solar PV job in Germany is ?175,000: in other words the subsidy is far higher than the money the workers are likely to earn. This is a wildly perverse outcome. Moreover, most of these people are medium or highly skilled workers, who are in short supply there. They have simply been drawn out of other industries. The researchers say that:

“Any result other than a negative net employment balance of the German PV promotion would be surprising. In contrast, we would expect massive employment effects in export countries such as China.”

Germany’s solar exports (?0.2bn in 2006) have been greatly outweighed by its imports (?1.44bn in the same year). And it’s not getting any better:

“Recent newspaper articles report that the situation remains dire, with the German solar industry facing unprecedented competition from cheaper Asian imports.”

The UK’s prospects of building the major export industry Jeremy dreams of are even slighter, as it will now have to take on Germany as well as China and Japan. We’ve missed the boat by years.

While I’ve been taking plenty of flak for arguing this case, I’ve also received a lot of support from green energy experts. Chris Goodall and David Thorpe, for example, have both come to similar conclusions, by working the case out from first principles. If you doubt what I say, I urge you to read their analyses, and the astonishing figures they have produced.

I have no horses in this race: I have no products to sell. I hope that some of you might be able to see that this is an honest attempt to get to the truth of the matter, and to find the most effective means of preventing runaway climate change.

Original Script:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/mar/11/solar-power-germany-feed-in-tariff

Green fuels cause more harm than fossil fuels, according to report

Using fossil fuel in vehicles is better for the environment than so-called green fuels made from crops, according to a government study seen by The Times.

The expansion of plantations has pushed the orang-utan to the brink of extinction in Sumatra, where it takes 840 years for a palm oil plantation to soak up the carbon emitted when rainforest is burnt

The findings show that the Department for Transport’s target for raising the level of biofuel in all fuel sold in Britain will result in millions of acres of forest being logged or burnt down and converted to plantations. The study, likely to force a review of the target, concludes that some of the most commonly-used biofuel crops fail to meet the minimum sustainability standard set by the European Commission.

Under the standard, each litre of biofuel should reduce emissions by at least 35 per cent compared with burning a litre of fossil fuel. Yet the study shows that palm oil increases emissions by 31 per cent because of the carbon released when forest and grassland is turned into plantations. Rape seed and soy also fail to meet the standard.

The Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation this year requires 3¼ per cent of all fuel sold to come from crops. The proportion is due to increase each year and by 2020 is required to be 13 per cent. The DfT commissioned E4tech, a consultancy, to investigate the overall impact of its biofuel target on forests and other undeveloped land.

The EC has conducted its own research, but is refusing to publish the results. A leaked internal memo from the EC’s agriculture directorate reveals its concern that Europe’s entire biofuels industry, which receives almost £3 billion a year in subsidies, would be jeopardised if indirect changes in land use were included in sustainability standards. A senior official added to the memo in handwriting: “An unguided use of ILUC [indirect land use change] would kill biofuels in the EU.”

The EC hopes to protect its biofuel target by issuing revised standards that would give palm plantations the same status as natural forests. Officials appear to have accepted arguments put forward by the palm oil industry that palms are just another type of tree.

A draft of the new rules, obtained by The Times, states that palm oil should be declared sustainable if it comes from a “continuously forested area”, which it defines as areas where trees can reach at least heights of 5m, making up crown cover of more than 30 per cent. “This means, for example, that a change from forest to oil palm plantation would not per se constitute a breach of the criterion,” it adds.

Clearing rainforest for biofuel plantations releases carbon stored in trees and soil. It takes up to 840 years for a palm oil plantation to soak up the carbon emitted when the rainforest it replaced was burnt. The expansion of the palm oil industry in Indonesia has turned it into the third-largest CO2 emitter, after China and the US. Indonesia loses an area of forest the size of Wales every year and the orang-utan is on the brink of extinction in Sumatra.

Last year, 127 million litres of palm oil was added to diesel sold to motorists in Britain, including 64 million litres from Malaysia and 27 million litres from Indonesia. Kenneth Richter, biofuels campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: “The billions of subsidy for biofuels would be better spent on greener cars and improved public transport.”

Original Script:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7044708.ece