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Investor Consortium Forms New Fuel Cell Venture

Celanese AG (NYSE:CZ; FWB:CZZ) announced it has formed the venture PEMEAS Fuel Cell Technologies with a consortium of investors led by Conduit Ventures designed to advance the commercialization of Celanese's fuel cell technology. The venture is effective April 1, 2004. The venture, under which Celanese holds a minority stake, has raised total financing of approximately EUR 18 million. Conduit Ventures Limited, a London-based venture capital company focused on fuel cells and related hydrogen technologies, backed by Danfoss A/S, Johnson Matthey plc, Mitsubishi Corp. and Shell Hydrogen, leads the consortium, consisting of Sustainable Asset Management of Zurich, CDP Capital of Quebec, Canada and InfraServ GmbH & Co. Hochst KG of Frankfurt, affiliate of Celanese AG that manages the industrial park Frankfurt-Hochst. "By teaming up with a network of partners in the fuel cell industry, Celanese has significantly strengthened efforts to successfully commercialize our fuel cell technology while minimizing our developmental expenditures," explains Andreas Pohlmann, Celanese AG chief administrative officer and member of the board of management. John Butt, Managing Partner of Conduit Ventures said "Celanese fuel cell activities represent many years of R&D efforts of the former Hoechst Group and is an enabling technology platform with the potential to address a […]

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Polls: Bush Environmental Record of Little Concern

This year's Gallup Environmental Earth Day poll finds Americans worry less about environmental issues than they did before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. "The same can be said for crime, drugs, energy, race relations, and poverty," wrote Gallup Scholar for the Environment Riley Dunlap, in an analysis of the poll released Monday. The poll was conducted March 8 through 11 using a randomly selected national sample of 1,008 adults, aged 18 and older. Sixty-two percent of those surveyed say they worry "a great deal" or a "fair amount" about the quality of the environment; down from 77 percent in March 2001. Most of this drop – 11 out of 15 points – happened between March 2001 and March 2002, in the months before and after the terrorist strikes. After a small increase in 2003, the measure of worry dropped another six points over the past year. Still, Dunlap writes, "the 2004 poll suggests that Bush's environmental image has suffered somewhat, particularly over the past two years." The data show a continued decline in the percentage of Americans saying that President Bush is doing a good job of "protecting the nation's environment." As a result, for the first time, […]

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Kyocera to Install 251 kW Solar System at N.American Headquarters

Kyocera announced plans to install a 251 kilowatt solar electric generating facility at its North American headquarters and Kearny Mesa plant, in San Diego, CA., using 1,680 Kyocera KC-167G solar photovoltaic (PV) modules and 210 custom-manufactured light-filtering PV modules arrayed to form a carport in an employee parking lot. The Kyocera carport PV system is planned to be completed in September 2004. Said Rodney N. Lanthorne, President of Kyocera International, Inc., and director of the global parent, Kyocera Corporation, "We will focus our rapidly growing grid-connected solar energy business in the San Diego region. The planned carport is intended to showcase Kyocera's solar technology and its practical applications." A stable supply of electricity is critical to Kyocera's Kearny Mesa plant, where the manufacturing process depends on electric kilns. Because products "in-process" can be ruined if a kiln cools unexpectedly, a prolonged power outage could result in a substantial loss. To guard against this, the company adopted a strategy of energy independence for the factory in the late 1980s, building a 3.2-megawatt natural-gas driven cogeneration facility, and a 50kW rooftop PV system that the planned carport system will replace. Without the power provided through cogeneration and PV resources, Kyocera's Kearny Mesa […]

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EPA Has Been Overestimating Fuel Economy of Cars Sold in the U.S.

A whole lot of exaggerating going on. If you think the fuel economy of U.S. vehicles is dismal, well, you're right. Perhaps more right than you know. Official U.S. EPA statistics ascribe a pathetic average of 20.8 miles per gallon to the 2003 car fleet, about 6 percent lower than 15 years ago. The fleet averaged 22.1 mpg in 1987, before Americans got hooked on gas-guzzling SUVs. But according to the enviro group Bluewater Network, the actual fuel economy of America's cars and light trucks is as much as 20 percent lower than the EPA claims. The Bush administration last week agreed to look into the issue, as a belated response to a petition filed in June 2002 by the group — but cynics can be forgiven for questioning just how hard they'll look. Here's the problem: The EPA's gas-mileage tests of new vehicle models — conducted in labs rather than on roads — are based on methods and criteria developed 20 years ago and long since obsolete, according to Bluewater Executive Director Russell Long. The result, he says, is that the EPA's estimates of fuel economy are significantly more optimistic than what most drivers actually experience in the real […]

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