Some new developments we may have missed this week

Remember the hacking of the computers at the University of East Anglia's climate research unit? Now the UK's top 'domestic extremism team" is working with the local constabulary in trying to track down the hackers.

WHERE'S OUR ENERGY FUTURE IN THE U.S.? A study released this week outlined what the U.SA. energy picture will likely took like in 2034. The greentech headline: alternative energy use will be more than twice as important. Going from 5% to 13% of the national energy supply. Meanwhile fossil fuels will still provide two-thirds of the energy America uses. And they foresee a continuing use of nuclear, but would increase just 2%. It would be just over one-fifth of all our energy in 2034, they predict. In short, business pretty-much as usual. Exxon can relax, and all those terrified of the carbon tax, can rest easy. Not much will change, folks.

HYBRID DELIVERY VANS--WHAT'S THE SAVINGS?

The National Renewable Energy Lab has just released its findings on the use of hybrid vans in real-time real-world business. 15% overall savings for the operators. If you're UPS, FedEx or the Post Office, with thousands of trucks and vans, that's real money.

This is a ZapCar owned by a local business where I live. This is how they recharge it. An outside outlet and an extension cord. I've been looking around: most parking lots and parking garages do not have accessible outlets. If you pull into a standard roadside motel for the night, do you recharge with a cord out your window? What if you're in downtown San Francisco or Chicago?

We all know areas of America where extension cord theft would be almost automatic. So secure locations for re-charging would be needed. Businesses are not going to give away electricity so that requires metering, etc. Folks are thinking about this and some slow progress is being made...but the electric vehicle for general use needs serious recharging assistance.

Here's some info from Plug-In America on recharging electrics. Here's a site that lists some of the known re-charging stations for electric vehicles. It is noteworthy that the states given their own heading are Arizona, California, and Georgia. That's it, folks. According to this website there's one station in my whole state of Oregon and the next one as you travel east: Nashville. Ooops. I know this is information is far from complete or up-to-date. This website doesn't even have all the data I found on the Coulomb company site. The American Automobile Association, a huge drivers' service company, has no online help in locating a charging station. Still wedded to gasoline.

Things are changing gradually: Elements Hotels are putting in charging stations. Iowa will have four charging stations, the first apparently between Denver and Chicago.

One firm working strictly on placing charging stations is Coulomb. Here's Coulomb's map of where they have charging stations in operation.