Growing Algae

Solazyme, a company that makes cosmetics, and maybe biofuels, from algae has done well in its initial public offering, raising nearly $200 million. A series of IPOs from advanced biofuels companies that haven't made commercial quantities of fuel has some concerned about a bubble.

DOE Supports Molten Salt

The DOE has recently announced a number of loan guarantees for solar power plants. One of the latest is a $737 million loan guarantee that could help scale up a technology that will make it possible to use solar power after the sun sets. Concentrated sunlight heats up salts, which store enough heat to generate electricity for hours.

Better Graphene Ultracapacitors

A research team at the University of Texas has made interesting new structures from graphene—it looks like the one atom thick material has formed a network of tunnels, leading to high surface areas and potentially high energy storage.

New Stickers for Plug-ins

The EPA has released its new fuel economy label, and it has some useful features. For example, it estimates how much drivers will save in gas over five years compared to the average new vehicle (or how much more they'll spend). That seems like the single most useful bit of information a driver could have when comparing fuel consumption in vehicles, especially since mileage numbers can be misleading.

The label also attempts to fix a problem with the test versions they released last year. Those made electric vehicles look better than they are by not counting greenhouse gas emissions from generating the electricity they use. The new label at least has some fine print disclosing that emissions from coal plants aren't included. But they included something I suggested (and many others) some time ago: a link to a greenhouse gas calculator that drivers can use to estimate the emissions in their zipcode, based on the source of their electricity. In future versions, the calculator will allow you to customize your estimates based on how you drive—which can make a big difference in plug-in hybrids such as the Volt.

From the NY Times:

The new labels, which replace a five-year-old design that provided only basic information about estimated fuel economy, represent the broadest overhaul in the sticker program's 35-year history. There will be different labels for conventional vehicles, plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles, with cars running solely on battery power estimated to get 99 miles per gallon.

Yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency released a pair of proposed fuel economy labels, which could replace the miles-per-gallon stickers now required on new cars. The stickers are needed because miles per gallon isn't a useful measurement for vehicles that run on electricity part of the time or all of the time, and several such vehicles--electric cars and plug-in hybrids--are due to hit showrooms starting at the end of this year.

There are a lot of great things about the new labels, but they can still be improved. You can comment on the proposed labels here.

The interactive website could also allow consumers to determine the carbon dioxide emissions produced by charging their vehicles, based on the power plants in their area. In some cases, where coal is the predominant source of electricity for instance, consumers might see lower carbon dioxide emissions for hybrid vehicles than for plug-in hybrid vehicles or electric vehicles. Perhaps the EPA should consider requiring car dealers to provide Internet-enabled kiosks for consumers who don't have smart phones, so they can easily get the same information.

There is already some controversy about one of the proposed labels--the one that would assign grades (from A+ to D) to vehicles. Some have argued against this approach, arguing that it amounts to the government making value judgments about vehicles. I don't like it because it's ambiguous. It's not clear at first glance what all goes into the grade. I'd rather just use numbers to compare vehicles, particularly the number of gallons needed per hundred miles or estimated annual fuel costs, both of which are included with the new labels.

Another potential problem is that the labels can make electric vehicles look better than they really are. The labels say that the greenhouse gas emissions for electric vehicles are zero, because the EPA has decided not to count emissions at power plants. As I mentioned above, in some areas of the country, users concerned about greenhouse gas emissions could be better off choosing a hybrid--but the stickers won't make this clear. Maybe the stickers could be changed depending on the region the car is being sold in.

President Obama today announced 48 new advanced battery and electric-drive projects that will receive $2.4 billion in funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The money could help start a battery industry in the United States, which could be essential for US automakers to start manufacturing plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles at a large scale.

For more on the significance of this funding for the battery industry, click here.

The announcement, with a list of the groups receiving funding, can be found here.

On its own, the money won't be enough to build the large-scale factories that some companies are planning. One, A123 Systems of Watertown, MA, received $249 million in grant money. But it has also applied for $1.84 billion in federal loans to finance its proposed factories in Michigan.