New Regulations On The Bankrupt Auto Industry

"This moment of peril must be turned to one of progress," President Barack Obama said yesterday, as he signed his first two Presidential Memoranda, both aimed at getting the United States on the path to energy independence.

The president directed the Department of Transportation to establish higher fuel efficiency standards for carmakers' 2011 model year. The standard, known as Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standard, was established in 1975 in the wake of the Arab oil embargo.

In model year 1990, the passenger car standard was amended to 27.5 miles per gallon, and it has remained at this level. In 2007, new light truck standards of 22.2 mpg were issued. The new efficiency standards called for raising the average fuel economy to 35 miles a gallon for both cars and trucks by 2020.

The second memo paves the way for California and 18 other states to raise tailpipe emissions standards for the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide above and beyond the national standard.

It all really means more regulation and efficiency demands by politicians on the nearly bankrupt auto industry. Consider that there are already three voices on fuel economy and carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, the EPA and States like California each have different standards, different structures and different timelines.

The car makers now have less than three months to prove to Washington that they can survive after recieving government bailout money last month. Its clear that the Obama administration wants Detroit to make smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. However, if we keep seeing cheaper energy, people won’t buy these fuel-efficient vehicles. People will return to light trucks and vehicles with utility and size instead.

So, there may be an eventual conflict between what the government wants the carmakers to do (build smaller cars to adhere to aggressive environmental regulation) and what the automakers need to do in order to get the consumer to purchase cars and trucks. After all, political sound bites and new auto regulations do nothing to help the bankrupt auto industry turn a profit.

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The Inauguration Left A Not So Green Mall

Thousands of people were said to have volunteered to lend a hand in what was touted as the "greenest inauguration in history".

The green inauguration meant picking up trash, recyclables and even horse manure along the Mall in Washington after Barack Obama took the oath of office.

"Just as we are committed to making this the most open and accessible inauguration in history, we are also committed to making it the most environmentally sensitive," Inauguration Committee spokeswoman Linda Douglass told Fox News.

Well, the day after all those parties and Inaugural Balls, the Washington Mall was covered in trash and not a very green place after all.

In addition to the tons of trash left on the Washington Mall, The Institute for Liberty, estimated that the millions of people coming to the inauguration generated a half-billion pounds of carbon dioxide — 260 million pounds from the 600 private jets that came to Washington, and another 260 million pounds from personal vehicles.

The Institute says the pollution amounts to more than 575 million pounds of CO2, which would take the average U.S. household 57,598 years to produce.

Tons of trash left on the mall and one half billion pounds of carbon dioxide generated from planes and automobiles. The greenest inauguration of them all was not very green after all.

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The Power In The Trash

Europe, Asia, and Canada now have facilities or are planning facilities that will make a relic out of the ugly landfill of everyday waste.

Waste is being vaporized into methane gas and the more advanced waste recovery facilities have even begun to turn waste into electric power.

Converting trash to power became a reality in Australia last July. The $49 million dollar Macarthur Resource Recovery Park in a suburb of Sydney, Australia, began taking garbage from 300,000 people in the area.

Instead of 9000 truckloads of waste going into landfills, 8% of Sydneys annual garbage each year is now being sent to its new waste treatment plant. The plant was designed to produce methane gas from garbage-chewing microbes. The gas powers the plant and even sends enough electricity back into the grid to light up another 1700 households.

Meanwhile, another process in creating power from everyday trash, called plasma gasification will be coming to America. St. Lucie County, Florida will use this process on its waste in early 2011.

Indeed, creating power from American trash cannot start soon enough since every year 130 million tons of trash are dumped in ugly and odorous landfills. In fact, American waste dumps emit more of the greenhouse gas called methane than any other human-related source.

Plasma gasification is a process for blasting garbage with a stream of superheated gas, known as plasma. When trash is dropped into a chamber and heated to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, its organic components, food, fluids,and paper vaporize into a hot, pressurized gas.

The whole process needs power from the electrical grid to get started. However, once the cycle is under way, the new gas is fed into a cooling system, generating steam that drives turbines to produce electricity. About two thirds of the power is siphoned off to run the converter; the rest can be used on-site for heating or electricity, or sold back to help power the utility grid.

The system is capable of breaking down pretty much anything except nuclear waste, the isotopes of which are indestructible. The by-products are used as a raw material for numerous applications, including bathroom tiles and high-strength asphalt.

It has been estimated that in an average American city, an investment in a $250 million dollar plasma gasification trash converter would pay for itself in just ten years. So, an economic justification for the program is sound, the technology is viable and the process meets an important environmental need.

As a result, landfills are about to become a thing of the past as our waste is turned into gas. Who would have ever thought that there would be power in the trash.