What Does the Delegate News Mean for the Environment?
By Suemedha Sood
06/04/2008
01:40PM
After a long, drawn out battle, Obama has finally clinched the Democratic nomination (numerically speaking) for the 2008 presidential race. So what does this mean for energy and the environment?
Reuters has a nice little Factbox reflecting what the presidential candidates have been saying about climate change, gas prices, oil use, fuel economy and biofuels. Here are the Obama highlights:
- Obama says he would reduce CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them by 80 percent lower than that by 2050. He also says he would require fuel suppliers to cut CO2 use by 10 percent by 2020.
- With crude oil prices at record highs, Obama says he would investigate activities of energy companies and stop filling the emergency oil reserve.
- He also says he would reduce overall oil consumption by 35 percent by 2030 to offset OPEC imports.
- If elected in November, Obama says he would double fuel efficiency standards for automobiles by 2030. As part of this effort, he says he would give automakers tax credits to come up with eco-friendlier technologies.
- For renewable fuels, Obama says that by 2030, he would increase renewable fuel usage to 60 billion gallons of biofuels like ethanol (yep, keeping the corn debate wide open). As for non-food sources, he would call for 2 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol from sources such as switchgrass to be produced by 2013. He would also make it mandatory for all new vehicles to be fuel-flex -- that is, they can run on gas or on biodiesel -- by the end of 2012.
He's said what he plans on doing. Now he just needs to answer the question of how he's going to do it.
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© 2007 The Washington Independent
Comments:
Posted 06/04/2008 03:30pm with
You say “He would also make it mandatory for all new vehicles to be fuel-flex—that is, they can run on gas or on biodiesel—by the end of 2012.” Are you sure you don’t mean gas and ethanol. Gasoline and diesel engine are very different in operating principles.
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A gas engine relies on a spark for ignition and a diesel engine relies on increased pressure to create the heat to ignite the fuel. Diesel engine do not have spark plug for this reason, they have glow plugs instead. Also the fuel delivery system is completely different. A diesel engine’s fuel injection system runs above 4000 psi, while a gas engine uses 40 or so, two orders of magnitude lower. I can understand a car running on gasoline or ethanol, or a car running on petroleum based diesel or biodiesel, but diesel type engines cant run on gas and vise versa.
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Flex Fuel vehicles, such as the ones put out by GM, utilize an engine that can use the standard blend (around 90% gas, 10% ethanol) or E85 blends (about 15% gas, 85% ethanol).
Most (if not all) diesel engines can be converted to biodiesel by changing the fuel filter and maybe the fuel lines, im not certain about the lines.