National Center of Policy Analysis (Global Warming March 14, 2007)

The Toyota Prius, flagship for the environmentally concious, is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America, and takes more combined energy to produce than a Hummer, says the Recorder.

Consider:

The nickel contained in the Prius’ battery is mined and smelted at a plant in Ontario that has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers.

Dubbed the Superstack, the factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

Acid rain around the area was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside, according to Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin.

After leaving the plant, the nickel travels to Europe, China, Japan and United States, a hardly environmentally sound round the world trip for a single battery.

But that isn’t even the worst part, says the Record. According to a study by CNW Marketing, the total combined energy to produce a Prius (consisting of electrical, fuel, transportation, materials and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime), is greater than what it takes to produce a Hummer:

- The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles — the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.

- The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles.

- That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use almost 50 percent less combined energy doing it.

Source: Chris Demorro, “Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage,” The Recorder, March 7, 2007.

Alternately, the ZED engine is manufactured from 100% recyclable materials, at half the cost of a gasoline engine and 1/10 the cost of a Hybrid power-train. Maintenance of the ZED engine is also projected to be 1/50 the cost of a Hybrid. The ZED engine will exceed 500,000 miles as opposed to the Prius 100,000 mile Hybrid engine, while also achieving zero emissions. for more informationcontact corpcomm@zedpower.com.

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent — Reuters Sun Apr 20, 2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most people believe oil is running out and governments need to find another fuel, but Americans are alone in thinking their leaders are out of touch with reality on this issue, an international poll said on Sunday.

On average, 70 percent of respondents in 15 countries and the Palestinian territories said they thought oil supplies had peaked. Only 22 percent of the nearly 15,000 respondents in nations ranging from China to Mexico believed enough new oil would be found to keep it a primary fuel source.

“What’s most striking is there’s such a widespread consensus around the world that oil is running out and governments need to make a real effort to find new sources of energy,” said Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, a global research organization that conducted the poll.

In the United States, the world’s biggest oil consumer and among the biggest emitters of climate-warming pollution from fossil fuel use, 76 percent of respondents said oil is running out, but most believed the U.S. government mistakenly assumes there would be enough to keep oil a main source of fuel.

“Americans perceive that the government is not facing reality,” Kull said.

Last week, President George W. Bush said U.S. greenhouse emissions, especially carbon dioxide spewed by the burning of fossil fuels like oil, would stop growing by 2025 but gave no details on how this would come about.

The announcement drew sharp criticism from environmental groups. Others pointed out this means emissions will continue to grow for the next 17 years.

The poll was conducted in China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, Mexico, Britain, France, Iran, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Egypt, Turkey, South Korea and the Palestinian territories. The margin of error varied from country to country, ranging from plus or minus 3 percentage points to plus or minus 4.5 percentage points, Kull said.

The project is managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.

ROME (Reuters) - Biofuels WILL NOT solve the world’s energy problem, the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell said on Sunday, amid growing criticism of their environmental and social benefits.

The remarks follow protests in Brazil and Europe against fuels derived from food crops. Food shortages and rising costs have set off rioting and protests in countries including Haiti, Cameroon, Niger and Indonesia.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Biofuels are set to play a growing role. The European Union agreed last year to get 10 percent of all transport fuel from biofuels by 2020 to help fight climate change.

But concern over meeting the biofuels targets has fuelled fears that sky-high food prices may rise even further if fertile arable land in Europe is turned over to growing “energy crops”.

Biofuels usually come from food crops such as wheat, maize, sugar or vegetable oils. They need energy-intensive inputs like fertilizer, which make it harder to cut emissions contributing to climate change.

“Biofuels are all about how you develop them without unintended consequences. It is not only the competition with food, it is also the competition for sweet water in the world,” Shell’s Van der Veer said.

An official from the International Energy Agency also said the impact of biofuels should have been forseen.

“Maybe we should have anticipated them better,” the IEA’s deputy executive director, William Ramsay, said.

BRASILIA (Reuters) - A global increase in biofuel production threatens to make food for Latin America’s poor less accessible, a United Nations body said on Monday.“In the short term, it is very probable that the rapid expansion of agrofuels at a world level has important effects on Latin America’s agriculture,” the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said in a paper.

Growing biofuel output would compete with food crops for water, land and capital and thereby increase food prices and “put at risk access to food by the poorest sectors,” the FAO said in a report presented at its conference for Latin America and the Caribbean.

It is the latest in a wave of criticism that has questioned the environmental and social benefits of biofuels and put major producers like Brazil on the defensive.

Representatives from oil-rich Venezuela and its regional allies Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba harshly criticized biofuels at Monday’s conference.

“Without food safety (for the poor) we can’t even think about biofuels … it could create enormous food deficits and social unrest,” Gerardo Rojas, Venezuela’s vice-minister for rural development, told the FAO meeting.

It is unacceptable for poor countries, which account for only 15 percent of the world’s cars, to produce clean fuels for the rich, said Cuban representative Juan Arsenio Quintero.

As detailed in the Canadian Edition April 7, 2008 Time Magazine cover story, to quote, “Hyped as an eco-friendly fuel, ethanol increases global warming, destroys forests and inflates food prices.” Well documented, quoting numerous global experts, the production of ethanol is heralded on the cover of Time magazine as “The Clean Energy Myth”.

Quoted facts:

By diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The United Nations World Food Program has called the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person FOR A YEAR.

The basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.

University of Minnesota ecologist David Tilman concluded that it will take more than 400 years of biodiesel use to “pay back” the carbon emitted by directly clearing peat lands to grow palm oil; overall corn ethanol has a payback period of about 167 years.

Robert Watson, top scientist at the UK’s Department of the Environment, recently warned that mandating more biofuel usage - as the EU is proposing - would be “insane” if it increases greenhouse gases.

In conclusion of the article, “……. biofuels aren’t part of the solution at all. They’re part of the problem.”

NEWS RELEASE - 04.02.08. Think your hybrid gets good fuel economy? Then pick up the January 2008 edition of Popular Mechanics magazine and turn to page 75.

Toyota Prius - $20,950 with a 1.5 liter hybrid engine is rated at 54 miles per gallon.

VW Polo Bluemotion - $23,315 with a 1.4 liter diesel engine is rated at 74.3 miles per gallon.

Why buy a hybrid, which is one of the most environmentally damaging vehicles built when one uses the EVL (End of Vehicle Life) European environmental measurement standard? A comparable diesel delivers 40% better economy, lasts much longer and is far cheaper to maintain.

ZED engines are also designed to deliver high fuel economy, and offer 20% greater power with hydrogen fuel over gasoline per weight, zero emissions, plus a potential fuel pricing 1/10 that of gasoline. The future in engine technology is now. For more information contact corpcomm@zedpower.com

Mon Mar 31, 2008 8:24pm EDT YAOUNDE (Reuters) - Anger over high food and fuel costs has spawned a rash of violent unrest across the globe in the past six months. From the deserts of Mauritania to steamy Mozambique on Africa’s Indian Ocean coast, people have taken to the streets. There have been “tortilla riots” in Mexico, villagers have clashed with police in eastern India and hundreds of Muslims have marched for lower food prices in Indonesia.

Anger over rising prices also fueled violence in Mauritania late last year. And at least six people were killed when taxi drivers in Mozambique rioted over fuel prices in February. In Senegal, police raided a private television station last Sunday after it repeatedly transmitted images of police beating demonstrators with electrified batons and firing tear gas during an illegal protest over high food prices in the capital Dakar.

The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) says staple food prices in some parts of Africa have risen by 40 percent or more in six months. There are several reasons for the spiraling cost of living.

Rising consumption of livestock fodder and other foods by fast-expanding China and India, and the use of land and crops for biofuels have boosted demand. Across the world, governments are facing the consequences.

The WFP fears Mauritanian families will not only have to ration what they eat, but also cut back on education spending, sell livestock, or even send children to work or beg to survive.

While ZED engines are fueled by the external combustion of Hydrogen, which combines with air to form a pollution free water vapor, gasoline is a complex carbon based product.

Gasoline is a liquid made up of carbon chains of different lengths ranging from C7H16 through C11H24. These carbon chains create exhaust pollutants including: i) Carbon monoxide, which is formed because not enough oxygen is available fast enough to react completely with all of the carbon available at the time of ignition. ii) Nitrogen oxides, because the pressure and temperature inside a cylinder combine nitrogen and oxygen in the air in various ways. iii) Unburned hydrocarbons, as not all hydrocarbons participate in the reaction due to widely varying gasoline droplet size and the spontaneity of ignition.

There can also be some impurities like sulfur in the gas that form sulfur oxides.

A catalytic converter reduces carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides and hydrocarbons by reacting them with oxygen on a platinum catalyst. However, catalytic converters are not 100% efficient, so pollutants still escape in the exhaust.

Nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons mix with air and get bombarded by ultraviolet rays in sunlight. On hot summer days these pollutants form a yellow colored smog and ozone.  Nitrogen dioxide releases an oxygen atom, which combines with oxygen gas to form O3 (ozone) at ground level.

ZED engines produce no pollution, and water vapor is the only exhaust. For more information regarding the zero emissions ZED engine contact corpcomm@zedpower.com.