Transportation

The next 20 years could generate as much as $1 trillion in new renewable energy investment in rural America. This new Ford Foundation-sponsored study by John Farrell and David Morris provides a policy roadmap for states and the federal government that would encourage modest-sized renewable energy facilities and local ownership. More

ILSR vice president, David Morris, responds to Al Gore's recent speech proposing a 10 year effort to move the United States to a 100% renewable energy electric system to address three major crises: the weak economy, catastrophic climate change and the dire national security problems inherent in our dependence on imported oil. Morris says that Gore got got two out of three right. More

Updating a pathbreaking 2003 report, ILSR's March 2008 report, Driving Our Way to Energy Independence, describes how commercially available technologies today could transform our petroleum powered transportation system into one powered by electricity and biofuels. Provisions in the recently passed Energy Act could accelerate that transformation. More

A new policy brief from Institute for Local Self Reliance criticizes the authors of two recent studies published in Science for advancing a conclusion not supported by their own studies. ILSR's paper notes that the vast majority of today's ethanol production comes from corn cultivated on land that has been in corn production for generations. More

A new policy brief from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance concludes that universal dividends are a critically important tool to create the political will and public acceptance for a carbon cap. Universal dividends have the potential to hold harmless a large segment of consumers while we move to a low-carbon economy. Moreover, the universal dividend honors the principle that the sky belongs to all of us equally. More

A new kind of hybrid uses less gas and more electricity. All-electric cars are already here. What will this mean for the road trip of the future? ILSR's David Morris plugs in and gives us a little history lesson of the Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV).

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Congress and most state legislatures have or are developing renewable energy policies with a single objective: get more renewables. Our new study, Wind and Ethanol: Economies and Diseconomies of Scale, finds that this single minded focus ignores the potential economic benefits from locally owned and more modestly scaled facilities. The focus should on better renewable energy projects not simply more. More

In Nebraska, cows are helping to produce ethanol. A 28,000-cow feedlot in Mead, Nebraska, is powering the neighboring Genesis Ethanol Plant, owned by E3 Biofuels LLC. The cows are providing 300,000 tons of manure per year, which is turned into methane via anaerobic digestion and accounts for 100% of the thermal energy needed to distill 25 million gallons of ethanol each year. More

This column by David Morris and Peter Barnes argues for a three pronged strategy on climate protection. First, a comprehensive emission cap. Second, a carbon auction for suppliers of carbon fuels. And lastly, a universal and equal distribution of revenues from that sale. Three keys to an effective and equitable strategy to reduce global warming.

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