D
David and/or Betty Anne Field
Guest
TORONTO STAR Saturday December 17,2005
GM'S HIGH-ETHANOL IMPALAS SEEK FUTURE.
Plan is to develop market via fleets
No E85 stations for GTA owners
BY PETER CALAMAI, SCIENCE REPORTER MONTREAL-
Green power was a big deal here during the recent mammoth United Nations
climate conference, which attracted 10,000 participants from around the
world. Yet despite the hoopla over hybrid cars, solar-powered cars and the
Smart car, the greenest vehicles that actually carried any delegates were
a dozen Canadian-built Chevy Impalas powered largely by straw. And GM says
similar straw-burning Impalas are now available to any buyer in Canada, at
no extra cost
The straw is actually first converted into ethanol, the alcohol fuel that
the Ontario government has legislated must make up 5 per cent of all
gasoline sold in the province by 2007.
Yet the tanks of the Impalas here were carrying fuel known as E85 -it's 85
per cent ethanol and 15 per cent gasoline. Running on this mixture meant
that the Impala's 3.5-litre, V6 engine produced lower net emissions of
carbon dioxide than any vehicle currently sold in North America.
Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas and rising levels of it in the
atmosphere are blamed for global warming and other manifestations of
climate change, including more extreme weather. Driving cars and other
vehicles accounts for roughly one-seventh of Canada?s total greenhouse gas
emissions and switching from gasoline to ethanol produces 40 to 80 percent
less carbon dioxide using some rather special accounting rules.
General Motors calls the Impalas Flex-Fuel because they can run on any
fuel mixture from 100 percent gasoline to E85, with the engine adjusting
automatically whenever the car is refuelled. "It?s seamless. It happens in
seconds;' says Bryan Swift, director of environmental activities for GM
Canada, who was showing off the cars here last week.
The adjustment to different fuels, undetectable by a driver, is carried
out by sophisticated software linked to the car's engine control unit,
which constantly gathers information from the whole combustion and exhaust
system. The unit adjusts the valve timing and the amount of fuel injected
into the cylinders to optimize combustion for any level of ethanol in the
fuel mixture.
This slick arrangement replaces a less reliable fuel line sensor used in
the SUVs and fuIl-sized pickups generally offered with an E85 option. This
technological breakthrough -combined with the sevenfold expansion of
ethanol production underway in Canada- emboldened GM to plan on
producing as many as 250,000 of the Flex-Fuel Impalas a year at its Oshawa
plant for the North American market. But whether any large numbers of the
Flex-Fuel Impalas are actually made rests largely on whether GM can
interest private companies to set up E85 fleets, as at least three federal
government departments have. "We have to work with interested fleets and
develop the infrastructure for centralized refuelling," says Swift.
Private fleets are considered the only way to get the ball rolling in
Canada because there are now so few retail outlets for E85 fuel that
owners of vehicles capable of using E85 must have their own source.
Right now there are exactly two commercial outlets across Canada where
ordinary drivers can buy E85 fuel, and they're both in Ottawa. .That's
convenient because the country's only plant that makes ethanol from straw
and other agricultural waste is also in Ottawa, a demonstration facility
that has turned out ly 250,000 litres since it began operating in the
spring of 2004. Iogen Corp. which operates the facility, supplied the
ethanol for the Impalas here and also for the cars used by the leaders of
the biggest industrialized nations at their summit in Scotland this
summer. Despite these publicity successes, Iogen has been waiting two
years for federal government help to start building a full-fledged
production plant
somewhere on the Prairies capable of churning out as much as 150 million
litres a year.
Meanwhile, Ottawa has handed out nearly $120 million since 2004 to
jump-start construction in Ontario and elsewhere of ethanol plants based
on corn, an approach popular with the farming community. By 2007, Canada's
total ethanol production is projected to hit 1.4 billion litres.
Those claims that ethanol lowers vehicle greenhouse gas emissions depend
entirely on what?s called a carbon life-cycle calculation. In effect, this
means counting up all the carbon diox -
ide produced from the time the farmer plants the crop -or the oil well is
drilled -to when the exhaust leaves the car's tailpipe. Ethanol made from
any plant source scores over gasoline because any carbon dioxide in the
exhaust is assumed to be immediately recycled into new plant growth
through the process of photosynthesis. But ethanol made from straw or
other agricultural wastes trumps any other corn variety by a wide margin.
That's because all such cellulose materials contain loads of a tarry
substance called lignin. !t can be burned to provide heat or power for the
production process, while corn-based operations must burn -you guessed it
-more fossil fuels, thus producing more carbon dioxide. This ethanol
production expansion should not only clear up the problem of E85
availability, says GM's manager of government relations, Phil Petsinis,
but should also address the cost issue. E85 currently sells at the
MacEwan Petroleum retail out-
let in Ottawa for roughly 12 cents more a litre than regular gasoline. And
since engines need 25 per cent more of the lower-energy ethanol than
gasoline to travel the same distance, that cost penalty could outweigh any
global wan11ing considerations.
But Petsinis points out that in the U.S., which has about 500 retail E85
outlets, the ethanol fuel is consistently cheaper than gasoline, sometimes
only by a few pennies but up to 60 cents a U.S. gallon in some locations.
"When the price does comes down in Canada depends on how quickly E85
stations become available:' he says. And that, of course, depends somewhat
on how many Flex-Fuel Impalas are on the road and looking for fuel.
wheels @thestar.ca
Download this as a file
GM'S HIGH-ETHANOL IMPALAS SEEK FUTURE.
Plan is to develop market via fleets
No E85 stations for GTA owners
BY PETER CALAMAI, SCIENCE REPORTER MONTREAL-
Green power was a big deal here during the recent mammoth United Nations
climate conference, which attracted 10,000 participants from around the
world. Yet despite the hoopla over hybrid cars, solar-powered cars and the
Smart car, the greenest vehicles that actually carried any delegates were
a dozen Canadian-built Chevy Impalas powered largely by straw. And GM says
similar straw-burning Impalas are now available to any buyer in Canada, at
no extra cost
The straw is actually first converted into ethanol, the alcohol fuel that
the Ontario government has legislated must make up 5 per cent of all
gasoline sold in the province by 2007.
Yet the tanks of the Impalas here were carrying fuel known as E85 -it's 85
per cent ethanol and 15 per cent gasoline. Running on this mixture meant
that the Impala's 3.5-litre, V6 engine produced lower net emissions of
carbon dioxide than any vehicle currently sold in North America.
Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas and rising levels of it in the
atmosphere are blamed for global warming and other manifestations of
climate change, including more extreme weather. Driving cars and other
vehicles accounts for roughly one-seventh of Canada?s total greenhouse gas
emissions and switching from gasoline to ethanol produces 40 to 80 percent
less carbon dioxide using some rather special accounting rules.
General Motors calls the Impalas Flex-Fuel because they can run on any
fuel mixture from 100 percent gasoline to E85, with the engine adjusting
automatically whenever the car is refuelled. "It?s seamless. It happens in
seconds;' says Bryan Swift, director of environmental activities for GM
Canada, who was showing off the cars here last week.
The adjustment to different fuels, undetectable by a driver, is carried
out by sophisticated software linked to the car's engine control unit,
which constantly gathers information from the whole combustion and exhaust
system. The unit adjusts the valve timing and the amount of fuel injected
into the cylinders to optimize combustion for any level of ethanol in the
fuel mixture.
This slick arrangement replaces a less reliable fuel line sensor used in
the SUVs and fuIl-sized pickups generally offered with an E85 option. This
technological breakthrough -combined with the sevenfold expansion of
ethanol production underway in Canada- emboldened GM to plan on
producing as many as 250,000 of the Flex-Fuel Impalas a year at its Oshawa
plant for the North American market. But whether any large numbers of the
Flex-Fuel Impalas are actually made rests largely on whether GM can
interest private companies to set up E85 fleets, as at least three federal
government departments have. "We have to work with interested fleets and
develop the infrastructure for centralized refuelling," says Swift.
Private fleets are considered the only way to get the ball rolling in
Canada because there are now so few retail outlets for E85 fuel that
owners of vehicles capable of using E85 must have their own source.
Right now there are exactly two commercial outlets across Canada where
ordinary drivers can buy E85 fuel, and they're both in Ottawa. .That's
convenient because the country's only plant that makes ethanol from straw
and other agricultural waste is also in Ottawa, a demonstration facility
that has turned out ly 250,000 litres since it began operating in the
spring of 2004. Iogen Corp. which operates the facility, supplied the
ethanol for the Impalas here and also for the cars used by the leaders of
the biggest industrialized nations at their summit in Scotland this
summer. Despite these publicity successes, Iogen has been waiting two
years for federal government help to start building a full-fledged
production plant
somewhere on the Prairies capable of churning out as much as 150 million
litres a year.
Meanwhile, Ottawa has handed out nearly $120 million since 2004 to
jump-start construction in Ontario and elsewhere of ethanol plants based
on corn, an approach popular with the farming community. By 2007, Canada's
total ethanol production is projected to hit 1.4 billion litres.
Those claims that ethanol lowers vehicle greenhouse gas emissions depend
entirely on what?s called a carbon life-cycle calculation. In effect, this
means counting up all the carbon diox -
ide produced from the time the farmer plants the crop -or the oil well is
drilled -to when the exhaust leaves the car's tailpipe. Ethanol made from
any plant source scores over gasoline because any carbon dioxide in the
exhaust is assumed to be immediately recycled into new plant growth
through the process of photosynthesis. But ethanol made from straw or
other agricultural wastes trumps any other corn variety by a wide margin.
That's because all such cellulose materials contain loads of a tarry
substance called lignin. !t can be burned to provide heat or power for the
production process, while corn-based operations must burn -you guessed it
-more fossil fuels, thus producing more carbon dioxide. This ethanol
production expansion should not only clear up the problem of E85
availability, says GM's manager of government relations, Phil Petsinis,
but should also address the cost issue. E85 currently sells at the
MacEwan Petroleum retail out-
let in Ottawa for roughly 12 cents more a litre than regular gasoline. And
since engines need 25 per cent more of the lower-energy ethanol than
gasoline to travel the same distance, that cost penalty could outweigh any
global wan11ing considerations.
But Petsinis points out that in the U.S., which has about 500 retail E85
outlets, the ethanol fuel is consistently cheaper than gasoline, sometimes
only by a few pennies but up to 60 cents a U.S. gallon in some locations.
"When the price does comes down in Canada depends on how quickly E85
stations become available:' he says. And that, of course, depends somewhat
on how many Flex-Fuel Impalas are on the road and looking for fuel.
wheels @thestar.ca
Download this as a file
