Taxpayer money which was meant to be used to improve the nation's gas mileage, was spent on SUV's and pickup trucks like the Hummer H3T

The poster child of gas guzzlers, the Hummer, was among the vehicles purchased under the taxpayer funded Cash for Clunkers program.

Of the nearly 700,000 vehicles sold under the program, more than 32,000 of those were Chevy Silverado and Ford F-150 pickup trucks. 15 Hummer H3T four-wheel-drive vehicles were also purchased as part of the Cash for Clunkers program.

For consumers to receive the federal rebates of up to $4,500, the new vehicle they were purchasing had to have a better average miles per gallon than the old car they were trading in. In order to purchase a new SUV, minivan or pickup truck, the difference required was 2 miles per gallon. For passenger cars it needed to be at least 4 miles per gallon better.

The fifth most purchased vehicle was the Ford Escape, with 21,894 being sold. Honda’s SUV’s also did remarkably well, with upwards of 20,000 of their CR-V crossover models being purchased.

While the number of SUV’s, and other vehicles generally considered to be gas guzzlers, only made up a fraction of the total amount sold as part of the Clunkers program , it puts a stain on a program that was touted by the Transportation Department as having brought about vast improvements in fuel efficiency.

The Hummer, the poster child of heavy gas guzzling vehicles, is the most ironic of the lot, even considering the very few that were sold.

The Ford Escape was the fifth most purchased vehicle in the Cash for Clunkers program.

According to some consumer experts, the Cash for Clunkers plan was faulty to begin with in terms of helping the environment and conserving fuel. They contend that the nearly $3 billion of taxpayer money could have been much better spent elsewhere.

The cost to U.S. taxpayers came to more than $4,000 per car for each of the 700,000 vehicles sold in the program.

“For that much money, we could have gotten a lot more,” says Lisa Margonelli, who directs the New America Foundation’s Energy Productivity Initiative. “Consider this: Cash for Clunkers only required a fuel economy increase of 2 mpg over the original car, so the total mandated gas savings was about 38 million gallons of gas. The auto companies can raise the fuel economy of cars on the assembly line by that much at a cost of $500 per vehicle. So, we could have given our $2.87 billion to the auto companies to upgrade 5.5 million cars by 2 mpg or more, and bought ourselves a yearly fuel savings of 303 million gallons of gas.”

“If we’d made only cars getting 32 mpg or more eligible for the loans we could have saved 855 million gallons of gasoline a year. Much much more than 38 million,” she said.

A recent survey conducted by CNW Research, a firm specializing in automotive marketing research, revealed that more than 17 percent of new-vehicle customers who participated in the Cash for Clunkers program now harbor “some” doubt or “serious” doubt about letting a government subsidy convince them to go further into debt.

Solar Houses in the decathlon. They will be judged based on the amount of energy they generate in comparison to the amount they use.

Schneider Electric, a specialist in energy management, announced today its sponsorship of the 2009 US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon in an effort to help people make the most of their energy. The Decathlon is designed to challenge students from twenty different colleges in the United States, Germany, Canada, and Spain to develop solar-powered houses at the National Mall in Washington D.C. These students will have to design the house, build it, and then operate it.

The public will be able to see these houses from Oct. 9-13 and then Oct. 15-18, 2009. What the houses will demonstrate are innovative technologies in clean energy, the economic benefits of solar power to consumers, and to develop a well-trained workforce that will be prepared for unique green job.

To win the contest, the contestants must generate more electricity than they utilize in their house. In other words, if the house were to only need 100 watts of energy, but it created 150 watts of energy, the remaining 50 watts would be sold back to a utility company to help power Washington D.C. The house that can use the least amount of energy while generating great amounts will be the winner.

The contestants will have to connect their house to the local Washington D.C. utility thanks to a “micro-grid” provided by Schneider Electric. This will make it possible to judge the net-metering.

“Schneider Electric is proud to sponsor the Solar Decathlon and encourage students and the community to think about active energy solutions that can be implemented today,” said Amelia Huntington, President, Schneider Electric U.S. “By contributing our expertise, as well as our energy management and technology solutions, we can raise awareness of the opportunities to make energy safe, reliable, efficient, productive and green.”

The hope for tehse decathlons is to demonstrate to consumers that solar panels are a beneficial way in reducing the cost of energy and even to create a profit for the household.

The Latin American gas and oil explorer, Geopark Holdings Ltd, announced today that they had concluded drilling a new well in Chile. Located on the Fell block, Alakuf 4 (the name of the well) is up to producing 380 barrels of oil per day with no water in the mix. Geopark has a 100% interest in the Fell block.

“These results are provisional and it will require a complete accounting to determine the volume of flow and the extent of the reservoir,” Geopark said in a report to Chile’s market regulator.

Last month, Geopark announced that they had completed Alakuf 2 and Alakuf 3, two oil and gas wells. Both are found in the Fell block and are part of a government program meant to promote exploration and development in the area.

According to Geopark, they have a plan to drill nine wells this year. Furthermore, they have expanded into two areas in southern Chile called “Tranquillo” and “Otway.” Together, these two areas contain up to 12,000 kilometers of surface area that make for a lot of growth for Geopark.

The President of Geopark, Gerald O’Shaughnessy, told Reuters that, “We hope to drill new wells for development in the fourth quarter of 2009.”

Since its creation, Geopark has grown quickly. They have three blocks in Brazil and three in Chile. They were the first private company to produce oil and gas and operate in Chile. Its base of headquarters is in Buenos Aires, Brazil.

This coal ash spill had people up in arms which is leading to the EPA's proposed plan.

It was announced today that the EPA intends on broadening the rules applied to coal-fired power plants to include toxic metal discharge limits. This move would, for the first time, regulate the millions of pounds of arsenic, selenium, mercury, lead, and other pollutants that are released each year – typically, into the waste water ways that are there for this specific purpose. The issue appears because of findings that suggest these metals are seeping into drinking water.

“Current regulations, which were issued in 1982, have not kept pace with changes that have occurred in the electric power industry over the last three decades,” the agency wrote in an announcement.

Traditionally, the EPA only policed the amount of emissions released by the smoke stacks of these coal-fired power plants, but since it’s very easy for the plants to transfer the wastes from the smokestacks to the water, little is being done to aid the environment.

“Treatment technologies are available to remove these pollutants before they are discharged to waterways, but these systems have been installed at only a fraction of the power plants,” the agency went on to say.

According to Federal Law, the EPA can change their rules every year, but has not since 1982 saying that “they are reviewing it.” Now that the reviewing process is complete, they will impose the rule change by 2012 forcing companies to use the technologies readily available to them to clean the water before releasing it.

To speed up the rule-changing process, the Environmental Integrity Project are suing the EPA because of the lack of rules. The EIP stated that if rules were not released within sixty days, they would act on the lawsuit. Although these results are pleasing for the EIP, the want to ensure that the rules get enacted as soon as possible.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, set to veto renewable energy bill.

Earlier in the week, it was reported that there was a serious battle going on in Sacramento over the 33% mandate for energy creation. In this mandate, it states that Californian energy companies must create 33% of energy used by 2020. However, after looking at the bill in more detail, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said that he would veto the bill passed by the Californian legislature.

Governor Schwarzenegger believes that the bill is unfair to utility companies because it limits their ability to import wind, solar, and geothermal energy from out-of-state sources. This was written into the bill to ensure more Californians got hired, but it posed issues related to the inability of utility companies to meet the 2010 quota of 20%.

“The poorly drafted, overly complex bills passed by the legislature are protectionist schemes that will kill the solar industry in California and drive prices up like the failed energy deregulation of the late 1990s,” Governor Schwarzenegger’s spokesman Matt David said in a statement.

Instead of pursuing an option with the legislative branch, Governor Schwarzenegger will issue an executive order to mandate that 33% of energy be from renewable sources by 2020. Unlike the legislation’s version, the executive order would allow utility companies the opportunity to import some of their energy from solar and wind fields in other states.

This veto has Democrats and environmentalists up in arms. They want to have more of the power generated in-state because it would ensure more renewable projects were built rather than just imported and prevent more expensive power-lines from being constructed. In their book, this provided for a long term success for California.

One company, San Diego Gas and Electric Co., has stated that it won’t be able to reach the 2010 quota of 20% energy by renewable sources. Currently, they are at 6%. According to SDG&E, if they were allowed to import more energy and build more power-lines, they would be able to meet the quota.

There are so many ways to achieve renewable energy.

According to a study conducted by the environmental group Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council (EREG), clean energy will create more jobs than coal. By 2030, there will have been 2.7 million more jobs created than if countries were to stay on their current paths of burning coal and other fossil fuels for energy. These findings are the ammunition needed to urge countries around the world to agree to a new United Nations pact in which the nations combat global environmental issues. They are using employment as a way of steering people towards the pact.

“A switch from coal to renewable electricity generation will not just avoid 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions, but will create 2.7 million more jobs by 2030 than if we continue business as usual,” the report said.

If strong policies for renewables pan out, it is projected that the number of jobs in power would rise by 2 million to 11.3 million by 2030 which would be helped by a large increase in renewable energy jobs: 6.9 million from 1.9 million. That same study found that if governments were to stay on coal as their predominant energy provider, there would be a loss of half a million jobs resulting in about 8.6 million jobs in energy.

Although the cost of labor would rise for companies that use these renewable energies, their cost of production would be reduced, so there would actually be more money made. In the wind industry alone, the report suggested, there could be as many as 2.03 million people employed by 2030, up from half a million in 2010.

The report also suggested that for the first time in 2008, the European Union and the United States produced more energy from renewable sources than from conventional sources such as nuclear, gas, coal, and oil. This has environmental proponents happy. With this study, more attention will be paid to renewable energies from an environmental perspective, but also, more importantly to governments, from an economical perspective.

The earth could provide a tremendous amount of energy.

Landau in der Pfalz, a small city in Germany, is currently undergoing government inspections about earthquakes potentially caused by a geothermal plant built by Geox, a German energy company. German scientists suggest that the earthquake that happened in mid-August was a direct result of the geothermal plant.

Geox extracts heat from deep within the Earth by digging nearly two miles with a drill. This results in a high amount of energy that can greatly reduce the amount of fossil fuels used. This reduction, according to advocates of geothermal energy, could have a significant impact on the world’s demand for fossil fuels.

The plant in Laundau is not the first case of earthquakes being brought on by the deep digging. In California, a state desperate to find new renewable energies, a geothermal plant is under great scrutiny for safety. California is known for its earthquakes and further addition to that could cause more damage than reward from the geothermal plant. In Basel, Switzerland, a geothermal plant was closed down after it was determined to be the cause of two earthquakes in 2006 and 2007. The government there is still trying to determine whether or not it is safe to open the plant.

“My concern is that the project leaders for different geothermal projects are about to waste public confidence as long as they don’t talk openly about the seismic risks involved in their projects,” said Rudolf Braun, the head of the Basel inquiry, to the New York Times.

Scientists from the government as well as the geological survey have concluded that the earthquake was brought on by the plant. More importantly, they note that there were four other minor earthquakes caused by the project that were not felt by the people in the area. Despite this information, Geox is neither denying or confirming that their plant was responsible for the earthquakes.

Some people could care less, though. “It’s really not such a big deal. Gas has its own set of risks,” Volker Weisenburger told the New York Times. They are proponents of the plant. Since its creation in 2007, the plant has raised production to the ability of providing electricity to 6,000 homes. That same amount of energy provided by a coal plant would have released 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year.

The government is still trying to determine if the plant is safe enough for the area. By digging two miles deep to pull up the heat, it provides for tremendous energy results, but scientists suggest it also causes seismic problems.

House of Representatives passed two bills.

Today, the House of Representatives passed two bills that would provide a considerable amount of money to both wind power and hybrid heavy-duty trucks. H.R. 3165, Wind Energy Research and Development Act of 2009 passed by a voice vote and was authored by Paul Tonko, a Democrat from New York.

H.R. 3165 directs the DOE to create a program of research and development that would improve the energy efficiency, reliability, and capability of wind turbines. Furthermore, this R&D would reduce the cost of building and maintaining the wind turbines and finally, it would optimize the design of them thus making them more efficient.

According to Tonko, “The United States has enough wind energy resources to meet all of our electricity needs several times over…”

H.R. 3165 authorizes that $200 million be sent each fiscal year from 2010-2014 on wind power. If this bill is enacted, it would be the first time that a set amount of money was authorized to be spent on R&D for wind power.

On top of passing the Wind Energy Research and Development Act of 2009, the House of Representatives also voted on H.R. 445, Heavy Duty Hybrid Vehicle Research, Development, and Demonstration Act of 2009. The bill provides for the Secretary of Energy to grant between 3-7 grants of up to $3 million on research and development for technology, such as a plug-in hybrid, for heavy duty trucks.

Because one fourth of the nation’s fuel is used by heavy-duty trucks, any sort of technology on making them more cost effective would have a great impact on the amounts of gasoline used on a daily basis. If the bill is enacted, manufacturers of heavy-duty trucks will be able to research, develop, and build hybrid heavy-duty trucks.

Boulder, Colorado, the world's first Smart Grid city.

Xcel Energy announced that they have successfully implemented the Ventyx Smart Grid Operations Solution in Boulder, Colorado.

This implementation is the first fully integrated Smart Grid city in the world. The Ventyx Solution will make it possible to convert the data from the Smart Grid into actual information that will assist both utility providers, and consumers alike, in  making energy-related decisions.

Ventyx is the largest private software, data and advisory services provider for the energy industry and Xcel Energy is a major U.S. electricity and natural gas company.

An in-home energy management website is expected to be launched in the near future, which will give all Boulder customers with one of the more than 15,000 new, “smart” meters the ability to review their home energy use.

“The Ventyx Smart Grid Operations solution plays a fundamental role in turning the vision of SmartGridCity into reality by helping us aggregate diverse data from the Smart Grid and make it actionable in our commercial operations,” said Randy Huston, Xcel Energy’s project delivery executive for SmartGridCity.

The Ventyx Smart Grid Solution is a software suite that provides for its users the ability to deliver demand response (DR) programs, distributed energy (DG) management, renewable generation and resource optimization. The software suite is designed to suit both commercial and retail utility operations.

“We can now read customer meters remotely, identify and reduce outages and false power outage calls more quickly,” said Jay Herrmann, Xcel Energy regional vice president. “By cutting the number of times we send crews out to those calls, we can make our crews more productive. Combining those efficiencies while reducing outages will allow us to capture cost-savings more appropriately and benefit our customers.”

Over the last year, the SmartGridCity has seen remarkable growth. SmartGridCity has installed 15,800 smart meters, enabled 45,200 premises with broadband over powerline (BPL), laid 200 miles of fiber, built 95 new interfaces, deployed/integrated more than 20 disparate applications, and performed more than 300 test cases for go-live preparation.

“The Ventyx Smart Grid Operations solution meets a growing need among utilities deploying Smart Grids because it enables them to process and act on complex information from across the entire energy value chain from generation to consumption,” said Ventyx President and Chief Operating Officer Steve Carpenter.

At the close of the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude oil rose 0.9% or 63 cents higher, to rest at $71.94. Bent crude on the ICE rose three cents to settle at $69.86 per barrel. Oil rose as much as it did because of the weakening of the dollar; however, due to a much larger increase in US gasoline inventories, the price per barrel was unable to go higher.

Oil prices rise as the dollar falls.

Although crude oil prices and dollar strength typically go hand in hand, the relationship between the two has grown much closer due to the weak dollar, but also the desire for an investment that is strong for a recovering economy.

As the dollar weakens and the economy recovers, people move away from investing in the dollar and instead, focus their money on oil. In recent days, the dollar has dropped considerably against the Euro.

“There’s been so much talk about the dollar really going down the tubes, and we’ve seen in the last week the dollar really tanking,” Matt Zeman, president of trading at LaSalle Futures Group in Chicago told The Wall Street Journal. According to him, if the dollar continues to drop, commodities could continue to rise.

Although the dollar is “tanking,” due to the high gasoline inventories, investors have been worried about putting too much money into crude oil. If oil were to cease to come into the United States, the country could last for sixty one days at its current demands. This is ten days longer than the previous five-year average showed.

Another silver lining rested in the fact that gasoline inventories rose by 2.1 million barrels and the distillate stocks, which include diesel and heating oil, increased by two million barrels. Analysts had expected a 1.3 million-barrel drop for gasoline inventories and a 600,000-barrel increase for distillates.