In news this week, Chevy “Sparked” interest with an all-electric model, Nissan and Mitsubishi (News - Alert) powered up in ten minutes flat, Virgin Atlantic caused high excitement with a low-carbon fuel, and 32 schools coughed up “green stuff” for the Billion Dollar Challenge.
General Motors (GM) announced that its Chevy Spark model would go totally electric on its next release in 2013. The Spark will join the Chevy Volt, which is a hybrid electric - and gas-powered car in the company’s green initiative section. The gasoline-powered mini-car Spark is currently only available in China, South Korea, and India; but is expected to be rolled out to other markets, such as North America, in 2012.
In related news, by summer 2012, GM will start making 102 plug-in Chevrolet Volts available to people living in the Pecan Street Inc. smart grid demonstration project, launched in 2009 by the University of Texas at Austin . Residents are receiving a special offer of double the existing $7,500 federal rebate to spur purchases. Thus, this project also may come to represent the largest residential concentration of plug-in vehicles, as opposed to use by a corporate fleet (such as Google’s (News 
- Alert) 250 and counting plug-ins). To date, more than 130 residents within a square-mile area have signed up to buy or lease a Volt.
Nissan is working in conjunction with Kansai University in Japan to develop a new charger to help resolve one of the electric Leaf’s biggest drawbacks: long charging times. The two resources are saying that they’ve found a way to charge the battery cells in the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi iMiEV in just ten minutes. To date, a full charge can take up to eight hours in most electric vehicles.
Virgin Atlantic announced the development of a world-first low-carbon aviation fuel with just half the carbon footprint of the standard fossil fuel alternative. The fuel — which is expected to power Virgin Atlantic flights on its routes from Shanghai and Delhi to London Heathrow, beginning in two to three years — is the result of a ground-breaking partnership with New Zealand-based clean-technology firm LanzaTech.
The revolutionary production process recycles waste gases from industrial steel production — capturing, fermenting, and chemically converting them using Stockholm-based Swedish BioFuels’ technology. From there, the ethanol is transformed into a synthetic, aircraft-ready “drop-in fuel” that would be blended with conventional jet fuel in a 50:50 mix. Without this development, the waste gases would be burnt into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
Facing burdensome budget cuts and unstable energy costs, many colleges are grappling with how to finance urgently needed, but capital-intensive, energy efficiency retrofits. This week, at its annual meeting in Pittsburgh, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education launched The Billion Dollar Green Challenge—which encourages colleges, universities, and other nonprofit institutions to invest a combined total of $1 billion, within two years, in self-managed green revolving funds that finance energy efficiency improvements. The challenge already has a Founding Circle of 32 institutions in 18 U.S. states and British Columbia—among them, Harvard, Stanford, Arizona State, Caltech, Dartmouth, George Washington, Middlebury, the University of British Columbia, and Weber State University. Together, they committed $65 million to the initiative before the launch.
Photovoltaic solar inverters are one of the “points of light” in an otherwise dreary economy —a fact that has not escaped the eggheads at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).
U.S. consumers purchase on the order of 500 million new electronic devices annually. That adds up to one big heap of trash. To help lessen the load and enable consumers to recoup some of their electronic investments, ecoATM now offers eCycling Stations. These are kiosks to which people feed their old cell phones and get, on average, $25 in the process. The company’s kiosks feature a friendly robot character (which reminds me of Eve in the Disney movie WALL-E) to guide users through the process of scanning their phones to understand their make, model and condition. Customers are then provided with the value of the devices, and given the option of donating some or all of that amount to a charity, or receiving the cash payout
At a recent event in San Jose, TMC’s Group Editorial Director Erik Linask (News - Alert) had the opportunity to interview Karen Alonardo, CSRware’s (News - Alert) founder and CEO. Describing their product as a “sustainability ERP” offering, Alonardo said it’s a cloud-based offering to help companies optimize their financials as regards to such green concerns as energy efficiency, water, waste, and greenhouse gas emissions.
About a year ago, TMC had the news that CSRware announced a strategic global partnership with Emergent Ventures International to allow EVI and CSRware to provide organizations with a complete service—from initial assessments through a complete sustainability cycle, incorporating repeatable data analytics software.
CSRware works with clients such as Bloomberg Financial, Juniper Networks, and Avaya, who have worldwide operations and require sustainability solutions that fully embrace local currency, measurements, policies, and regulations. Alonardo said they can simplify the process of assessing energy usage, bringing together a lot of complex data into one central repository to find the financial benefits of “doing sustainability.”
And finally, the City of Pflugerville, Texas — a bedroom community outside Austin, perhaps best known to date as a filming location for the TV show, Friday Night Lights — is restyling itself as the Research Triangle Park of the Southwest.
A 167-acre triangular-shaped piece of land off the Texas 130 toll road is set to become the city’s economic hub, thanks to the vision of the Pflugerville Community Development Corporation, which purchased the property in 2008. Officials are envisioning a mixed-use industrial park, complete with proper incentives to lure green technology companies to Pflugerville. The development corporation, a taxpayer-funded organization created by voters in 2003, is mandated to bring business to the city.
Cheryl Kaften is an accomplished communicator who has written for consumer and corporate audiences. She has worked extensively for MasterCard (News - Alert) Worldwide, Philip Morris USA (Altria), and KPMG, and has consulted for Estee Lauder and the Philadelphia Inquirer Newspapers. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.
