Green Energy News | November 30, 1997

November 30, 1997 – Vol.2 No.35

ENERGIES... week of November 30, 1997

SCOUTING FOR FUEL CELLS. The City of Chula Vista, California has issued a request for information (RFI) regarding the purchase of a hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle or a stand-alone fuel cell generator set for use in their community of 168,000. The vehicle or generator must be at the near-to-market, pre-commercialization stage. The City has anteed up $500,000 towards the fuel cell purchase. The qualified manufacturer must supply 30-50% of funding.

Chula Vista, midway between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, is one of 14 cities worldwide to develop a local plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The City, too, hopes to build a fuel cell industry within the community. The purchase of the fuel cell powered vehicle or generator set, as a demonstration project, will further their commitment to energy efficiency. Chula Vista has already developed an electric vehicle program, added energy efficient HVAC systems and switched over to low-energy light emitting diode (LED) traffic lights.

For a copy of the RFI, contact Barbara Bamberger at bbamberger@ci.chula-vista.ca.us or call 619-691-5296. (Hurry, responses from qualified applicants are due 1/9/1998.)

FUEL CELLS ON ORDER. Ballard Power Systems has received $500,000 from Matsushita Electric Works of Osaka, Japan for the delivery of low pressure “ambient” fuel cells to be integrated into prototype portable power systems. The ambient pressure cells are air cooled, simple, reliable, quiet and clean, according to the manufacturer, and are well suited for low power generation systems in the under 1kW leisure and emergency market.

Ballard has been developing proton exchange membrane fuel cell power systems for Daimler-Benz, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Hitachi, Honda, Nissan, Volkswagen, Volvo and GPU International. Ballard is based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

COMMITTED TO REDUCE GREENHOUSE GASES. Suncor Energy, also of Vancouver, has set initiatives to reduce CO2 emissions within their own operations and beyond. Initiatives include expanding into the renewable energy field, participation in a pilot project with the Nature Conservancy to purchase 19,000 acres of endangered forests in Belize (to prevent the release of 400,000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere), and commit to purchase anticipated world-wide carbon credits which may arise from the climate treaty now being negotiated in Kyoto, Japan.

According to Suncor, they have already reduced CO2 emissions in their own operations through efficiency and process optimization, conserving waste natural gas (instead of burning it), leak detection and the introduction of ethanol-enhanced gasoline at its Sunoco gas stations in Ontario. Check out the Suncor website at http://www.suncor.com.