California regulators, under pressure to arm the state's ambitious battle against global warming, are eager to tackle one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions: exhaust from millions of cars on the state's roadways. The industry argues that the better course would be to ask the federal government to come up with a nationwide standard. But California officials say some low-emission technologies already exist, they just need to be implemented. This week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to file a lawsuit to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to grant that waiver. SF Chronicle 11/5/07
A travel piece in the NY Times documents how San Francisco’s military past has been transformed into attractive tourist destinations. The Presidio and Fort Mason are featured. Visitors are attracted to the sense of history in old military bases, but the converted spaces also offer accommodations, entertainment, and community, according to the article. 11/2/07
Cheap and abundant, coal has become the fuel of choice in much of the world, powering economic booms in China and India that have lifted millions of people out of poverty. But the growth of coal-burning is also contributing to global warming, and is linked to environmental and health issues including acid rain and asthma. In China a coal boom is bringing sudden wealth to otherwise rural cities, while crops in the area are choked by soot. AP 11/4/07
Tuesday Caltrans will speed up metering lights exclusively for FasTrak-only lanes, increasing the flow of traffic in the area. The problem: metering lights that parcel out traffic onto the bridge during heavy traffic slowed FasTrak users, negating much of the advantage gained from hands-free toll paying. Caltrans devised a way of calibrating its metering lights to allow FasTrak vehicles through at a greater rate than cash payers. Contra Costa Times 11/3/07
Devoted to saving hard-earned money, gasbuddy.com has about 1.3 million members who volunteer to ferret out the lowest gas prices across the country. The site gets as many as 2 million visitors a day, with most on weekdays. Contra Costa Times 11/4/07
A Silicon Valley startup claims to have developed a new technique to make industrial-scale "designer biofuels" in the lab from the same ingredients as ethanol, such as corn or sugar cane. The major difference is that the fuels will act as a direct replacement for gasoline or diesel, making them more valuable than a gasoline supplement like ethanol. The products, potentially available in 3-5 years, would start at around $50 a barrel in a market currently trading at record highs of more than $90 a barrel. Oakland Tribune 11/5/07
A decline in pump prices was partly to blame for Chevron’s 26% drop in third-quarter profit, which was bigger than Wall Street had expected. As a group, companies with U.S. refineries suffered a nationwide pullback in gasoline prices at a time when the cost of crude oil was heading higher. The gap between retail fuel prices and the cost of oil was largest on the West Coast, a reversal of fortune for refiners operating in the normally lucrative California market. The company blamed the U.S. loss on sharply lower profit margins on the West Coast, a situation exacerbated by expensive oil imports and a lengthy upgrade project at its plant in El Segundo. LA Times 11/3/07
Greenpeace USA and two other groups urged the University of California on Friday to delay signing a $500 million research contract with oil giant BP until the details of the pact can be publicly reviewed. In an agreement announced in February and extensively debated since then, BP will provide $500 million over 10 years to a partnership with UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to form the Energy Biosciences Institute for research on biofuels and other energy initiatives. SF Chronicle 11/3/07
No comments:
Post a Comment