Fuelishness! Feed: Saving Money Motiviate Drivers; Oil & Gas Not Prepared for Risk; New Drilling Tech vs. Peak Oil; Doubts about 2016 Efficiency Goals
- Money proves biggest motivator for a motorist’s eco-driving choices — When it comes to fuel efficiency, saving money trumps saving the environment for most people who have recently bought – or are thinking of buying – a new vehicle.
. - Oil and Gas at Risk From Climate Change but The Industry is Not Prepared — A new Acclimatise report backed by IBM, entitled Global Oil & Gas – The Adaptation Challenge has identified top five impacts of climate change to the oil and gas industry. While three quarters of the world’s oil and gas companies surveyed believe climate change could impact their business, only 19 percent are taking action as noted in this Acclimatise report.
. - New Techniques Oil Companies are Using in Drilling for Oil — As the politics and philosophical arguments about “Peak Oil” continue to rage, science continues to move steadily onward, progressively creating new and better ways to both find and extract oil that we never could have previously discovered, as well as get a lot more bang for our buck by more effectively utilizing the oil that we currently have readily available to us in our current reserves.
. - Fuel efficiency up, but many miles to go — EPA report shows small gains in ‘08, casts doubts on meeting 2016 goals — Americans bought slightly more efficient cars and trucks in 2008 compared with a year earlier, and are expected to do so again this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday.
Believe Sustainability is the first member in South America of the Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport (SLoCaT) Partnership
Source: Believe Sustainability
The current discussion on fighting climate change brings a clear need for reductions on greenhouse gases emissions caused by transportation. Transport related CO2 emissions are expected to increase 57% worldwide in the period 2005 – 2030, being 80 percent caused by transportation in developing countries. This is directly linked to an overall lack of sustainability represented by poor urban planning, increased motorization, increased air pollution and noise, growing congestion and decreasing road safety.
It is in this context that Believe Sustainability has become the newest member of Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport (SLoCaT) Partnership, aiming to expand its projects on sustainable mobility worldwide.
SLoCaT Partnership is an international organization hosted by the UN Department of Economy and Social Affairs together with development banks and international agencies. It intends to provide opportunities for coordination and cooperation among organizations working on sustainable, low carbon transport.
Believe Sustainability SLoCaT Partnership has a multi-stakeholder membership of more than 40 organizations, among universities, governmental agencies, institutes and NGOs. To promote the partnership, members must demonstrate commitment towards sustainable mobility and low-carbon transportation, and promote the discussion at the regional, national and global level. Thus, Believe Sustainability, an organization located in Brazil that develops consulting on sustainable mobility and creator of the BetterAir Project http://www.projetomelhorar.com.br, comes in great time to join the Partnership, emphasizing the importance of the subject on developing countries in South America.
Center for Science and Environment (CSE)
Center for Transportation and Logistics Studies (PUSTRAL), Gadjah Mada University
Civic Exchange (CE)
EMBARQ, The WRI Center for Sustainable Transport
Global Environmental Facility (GEF)
Global Transport Knowledge Partnership (gTKP)
Interface for Cycling Expertise (I-CE)
International Union of Railways (UIC)
International Transport Forum (ITF)
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)
Institute for Transport Policy Studies (ITPS)
Institute of Transport Studies (ITS), University of California, Davis
Korean Transport Institute (KOTI)
Ministry of Land Infrastructure Transport and Tourism, Japan
National Center for Transportation Studies (NCTS), Philippines
Rockefeller Foundation
Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)
United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)
University College of London, Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomtaic Engineering
University of Transport and Communication (UTCC) Hanoi
VEOLIA Transport
WWF International
A Personal Thanksgiving Announcement
I have a very special Thanksgiving announcement this year – the birth of our son Patrick, a healthy 19″ long 7lb. boy who has been keeping us very busy for the last few days.
So things here at the website and blog will likely be slower than normal for a few days as we adjust to our new “work schedule” :)
FuelClinic Customer Support via “Get Satisfaction”
FuelClinic has been growing quite quickly, and so have the customer support needs that come in each day to our “feedback” customer support address. The level of communications are outpacing my ability to reply to each one individually.
To help alleviate this bottleneck (me), I created an account at Get Satisfaction for FuelClinic, and will update the FuelClinic site to encourage users with problems or questions to look for an answer at our Get Satisfaction page first. Sometimes your question may have already been answered there, but if your question is not yet posted, it’s easy to add your question or problem to the proper area there.
I’m hoping that this move to this customer support system will allow me to help you (our users w/ questions) more quickly, in an organized manner, and in a way that other product-experts help support the new users or users with common problems. It’s certainly a substantial improvement to the current feedback e-mail system.
As always, please let me know in the comments what you think of this idea.
Building an “Eco-driving Community” on Facebook
We are working to create a greater community of eco-driving motorists and small business owners who want to connect and share their experiences using eco-driving techniques that make a real difference in their own lives.
FuelClinic has a membership of over 3,300 people who use the service to keep track of their fuel mileage by simply keeping their receipts from the gas pump, writing in their odometer reading, and later taking a few minutes to add that to their records in their FuelClinic account.
Our membership is active and engaged, but disconnected from each other because of the way the prototype site was built to ensure privacy. We’re now creating an option, and allowing users to choose to share their information with each other using the worlds largest social network – Facebook.
We’ve recently created a Facebook Page for FuelClinic (you’ll need a Facebook account to interact with the page), and will begin building our “Ecodriving Community” using the popular social network as the engine for this growing community. If you “become a fan” of this page, you’ll
At the same time we have quietly been developing a Facebook application connecting into FuelClinic accounts, so you will soon be able to post your mileage stats as a box on your Facebook profile, and you’ll be able to login to your FuelClinic account using Facebook – making updating your receipts much easier.
This is just the start of our community-oriented goals. We realize not everyone who wants to be an eco-driver is a Facebook user, so I’m designing some simple social options into FuelClinic2010.
Of course, you can always opt to keep all of your account information private if you are not interested in interacting with the larger community of FuelClinic eco-drivers.
Let me know what you think — add your suggestions for building an effective and interesting community of eco-drivers in the comments section of this post – or post your ideas on our Get Satisfaction site.
MJK Racing #55 FuelClinic Camaro Wins 1st Place in 2009 Central Florida Region SCCA GT-1 Points Championship
Congratulations to Mike Kern and the MJK Racing Team with the #55 FuelClinic.com Camaro for winning first place in the 2009 Central Florida Region (CFR) SCCA GT-1 Points Championship. Results were released last week.
“Without the hard work and help of my crew, FuelClinic.com, JR Motorsports engines, Outerwears, and our other marketing partners it would have been impossible to achieve what we did this season”, said Kern.
The Central Florida Region (CFR) SCCA is one of 18 regions in the Southeast division, with 9 divisions total in the US. Seven regional and divisional events made up the 2009 schedule, consisting of 14 actual races over the event weekends we were able to win the Championship due to great finishes in 5 races in which the team competed.
- 2 first place finishes
- 1 second place finish
- 1 third place finish
- 1 forth place finish
Points accumulate at each race, with a total of 46 Championship points putting MJK Racing in first place overall. Second place long time GT-1 racer Bob Borders finished second with 30 points
Eight GT-1 racers competed in the points championship, not including guest racers from other regions that competed at the famous Central Florida SCCA Region tracks – Daytona International Speedway and Sebring International raceway.
Updated: Michael Bragg along with MJK Racing Owner Michael Kern and MJK Racing Crew Chief Kurt Whitney accepting the award for first place in the 2009 Central Florida Region (CFR) SCCA GT-1 Points Championship at the 2009 CFR Awards Banquet in Indian Rock, FL – December 12, 2009
Firms Can Save By Going Green
Source: Chicago Sun Times
“There’s no question that if you improve driver behavior, specifically improve driver efficiency, you’ll create less emissions because you burn less gas,” said Samsel, program director.
…
Some corporations adopt green fleet programs to be more environmentally friendly, while others just want to save money. Whatever the motive, the result is the same — a gallon of gas not burned means 19.5 pounds of carbon dioxide that doesn’t go into the air.
“Ultimately, what we seek to do is reduce greenhouse emissions,” said Jason Mathers, project manager with the Environmental Defense Fund. He said EDF wants corporate fleet managers to focus on emissions, and aim at the “low-hanging” fruit that can easily lower fuel consumption, like driving habits and vehicle size and type.
Spy-in-the-cab Could Improve Teenage Driving
Source: New Scientist
ACCIDENT rates among teenage drivers could be slashed using in-car technology that warns them when they are driving recklessly.
So says safety engineer Oren Musicant at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, who wanted to know if in-car technology could help reduce the appalling number of teenage deaths on the roads. In the US, for instance, car crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers, accounting for over one-third of all deaths of those aged between 16 and 19 years old.
In March 2008, Staffordshire County Council in the UK trialled in-vehicle data recorders with 50 local teenage drivers over six months. The IVDRs, made by GreenRoad of San Francisco, California, are more commonly used to help truckers drive more safely and with greater fuel efficiency. The IVDR monitors unsafe driving events, such as overly sharp turns, heavy acceleration, hard braking and fast lane-changes. The warning system was switched on halfway through the trial. From that point, red, yellow and green LEDs on the facia of a dashboard-mounted box told the drivers how they were faring.
…
The unsafe driving events undertaken by each driver halved after the warning system was turned on. Musicant reckons the system could become part of the measures insurance companies mandate for teenage drivers: “Some insurance companies already adjust premiums depending on how far you drive – in pay-as-you-drive programmes. This could be part of such measures, lowering premiums if a teenager uses a risk detector.”
Changing Human Behavior by Adding Some Fun
Easily understandable feedback can help motivate people to change their behavior. When they can “see” the results of their behavior, and “evaluate” the results of slight changes in their choices, there is the potential to motivate people to make changes in their behavior – based on what they decide to do with that feedback.
Here’s a video of an experiment to motivate people to choose to use the stairs instead of an escalator – by making the stairs interact with each person in an interesting way – providing feedback and letting the people have a little bit of fun.
What’s also interesting to note in this short video is that some people apparently choose to take the stairs only because it is what other people are choosing to do. Some walkers obviously enjoy interaticting with the steps, others just trudge along behind. So you don’t have to change the behavior of everyone in the group that approaches the stairs/escalator at the same time, just a few individuals who will “lead” others to scurry up the stairs vs. take the perfectly functional escalator
Here at FuelClinic we help motorists and fleet owners monitor the fuel efficiency of their driving behavior, and offer simple advice on how to improve their fuel efficiency. In the next generation of FuelClinic we are developing the ability to collect much more detailed information from the vehicle that will allow the user greater insight into their driving behaviors – allowing them to set goal for themselves, and have a little real-time help along the way.
The Great Geopolitical Battle Over Energy Transit Routes
The Great Geopolitical Battle Over Energy Transit Routes
by Philip H. de Leon
As we all live in the present, it is very hard to fully assess the future implications of decisions supported or made by political and business leaders. An extraordinary game of geo-strategy is under way to lock in long-term agreements, notably in the energy sector. At a global level, the transit routes of future oil & gas pipelines become the object of a power struggle involving not only the suppliers and end-users but also the transit countries. Intensive courtships are under way where a ménage à trois, or more, may be the best option to prevent any country from being in a dominating position to rule a region and exercise political or economic pressure.
Let’s take a practical example and look at some of the dynamics behind the Nabucco pipeline and at the different interests involved.
Fuelishness! Feed: Ford Fusion Car of the Year; Eco-Driving Savings; Feds Buy Green; Hybrid Special Ops Buggy; Hyundai-KIA Develop CVT for hybrids
- Ford Fusion Named Motor Trend Car of the Year — Derrick Kuzak, Ford’s group vice president of global product development, said the 2010 Fusion has a sportier look and better fuel economy than previous versions. It gets 34 miles per gallon on the highway when equipped with a four-cylinder engine and six-speed automatic transmission. The gas-electric hybrid version gets 41 miles per gallon in the city.
- How much money can eco-driving save you? Matt Joy took part in BP’s Fuel Efficiency Challenge to find out — Go from a not-uncommon 30mpg to an achievable 40mpg and you could save £150 a year on fuel, if not more – and all that without spending thousands on a new car. That will please everyone except the taxman.
- SPIN METER: Feds buy green cars, auction rejects — If you missed out on Washington’s cash incentive program to trade in your old clunker, Uncle Sam still has a deal for you: The government will sell you rejects from its own fleet, even as it makes dealers scrap all those old cars that were collected from the public.
- Army tests new special ops hybrid vehicle — The CERV pairs the Quantum’s new “Q-Force” advanced all-wheel-drive diesel hybrid electric power train with a light-weight chassis to produce a torque rating that exceeds 5,000 foot-pounds. The unit can maintain speeds of 80 miles per hour and climb 60 percent grades–all while reducing fuel consumption by up to 25 percent compared to a conventional alternative, according to the company.
- Hyundai-Kia Developed Its First CVT for the LPI Hybrids — The Elantra LPI Hybrid has a fuel economy rating of 17.7 km/l (5.7 L/100km or 42 mpg US); gasoline-equivalent fuel economy is 22.7 km/l (4.4 L/100km, 53 mpg US). This represents a 47% improvement over a conventional 1.6L Elantra.
The Untapped Energy Riches of Uzbekistan
The Untapped Energy Riches of Uzbekistan
by John C.K. Daly
While many Western investors remain fixated on somehow acquiring a slice of Turkmenistan’s natural gas riches, despite a recent scandal over the country’s actual reserves, there is another country further east whose energy and mineralogical reserves have been overlooked – Uzbekistan.
While a number of factors are responsible for this oversight, including relative geographical isolation (Uzbekistan, along with Liechtenstein, is one of the world’s doubly landlocked nations, requiring crossing two other nations to gain access to the oceans), which currently limits energy exports available for the global market, there are a number of pluses that the country has for investors willing to “think outside the box.”
With a population of 27 million, Uzbekistan is Central Asia’s most populous and dominant power. A conservative fiscal policy since 1991, including inconvertibility of the national currency, the som, has shielded its citizens from the hyperinflation that ravaged other former Soviet republics, but the policy previously diminished potential foreign investment.
Since the global recession that began a year ago, however, Uzbekistan’s fiscal conservatism, previously dismissed by the foreign investment community, has looked more and more like a pragmatic policy that isolated the country from the worst aspects of the recession in stark contrast to other post-Soviet states that fervently embraced free market capitalism like Lithuania, whose economy contracted 18.1% this year and is expected to shrink further by 3.9% in 2010. In a move certain to be welcomed by foreign investor Uzbekistan is slowly moving towards making its currency convertible but whenever it happens, for the present the country offers a fiscal stability unmatched by many of its more free-market neighbors.
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