Post #2

THE TIMES OF DREAMLAND

Fueling a green revolution

Pune, India

April 19th, 2010

With spiralling fuel prices, and inevitable exhaustion of natural gas, this was only waiting to happen. With the arrival of HUMMER in India, the company's corporate headquarters have implemented a massive cultivation drive just beyond the assembly facility in Chakan, on the outskirts of Pune.

The cultivation project, called "E100" by the company, aims to reduce dependence on fossil fuels altogether. The entire process has commenced on newly acquired agricultural land spread over 500 acres. The produce type is simple - sugarcane and jatropha - the key blends for petrol and diesel powered vehicles. The aim of this project is simply to produce as large reserves of ethanol and biodiesel as physically possible.

Bio-ethanol, or E85, currently supported by HUMMER's gasoline engines is basically a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% petrol. The aim is to develop a successful blend - successful in the sense that it can be used without any petrol blend in the very near future, eliminating the need for petrol all together. Emission control devices can more successfully deal with these blends rather than regular petroleum products. Similarly, with bio-diesel, or simply put, blended vegetable oil, a diesel engine can run to it's full performance level while adequately processing the changed fuel qualities.

The cost factor involved is startling, to say the least. The initial phase will seem heavy for the promoters, but as the volumes pick up, things will all just settle themselves out.

You may ask how this makes sense. But then consider the carbon footprint. It is less than half, or probably more, of the carbon footprint of battery-powered cars. This may seem a small-scale project overall, but with all major automakers adopting these techniques globally, we aren't too far from a cleaner, and greener tomorrow.