Advanced Energy Perspectives

This week Hyundai announced that it plans to produce a hydrogen-fueled SUV in 2014—the first mass-market vehicle to be powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The 2014 Hyundai Tucson was unveiled Wednesday at the Los Angeles auto show, which also featured a fuel-cell concept car from Honda. Toyota also unveiled its concept fuel-cell vehicle at the Tokyo Motor Show. Both Honda and Toyota expect to bring their fuel-cell vehicles to market in 2015.

Representatives of the biofuels industry expressed disappointment after the EPA proposed to lower renewable fuel requirements in 2014. EPA also wrapped up 11 listening sessions on its plan to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants, which could provide a massive opportunity for advanced energy businesses. Meanwhile, Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus began rolling out proposals to move the tax reform discussion forward.

This is the first of five blog posts adapted from the upcoming book “Zero Hour: Time to Build the Clean Power Platform,” by Reed E. Hundt, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and Board Member of the Advanced Energy Economy Institute. 

Modern life rests on two electromagnetic wave platforms: knowledge and power. The former comprises the mobile and Internet networks that have circumnavigated the globe and changed social and economic life, mostly for the better and absolutely forever, in just two decades. The latter consists of the electricity and transportation systems that produce the air pollutants which in the next two decades will destroy the global environment – unless the power platform changes as quickly and totally as the knowledge platform has done.

Facebook announced this week that its new Altoona, IA, data center would be operating entirely on wind energy. The data center, which will be operational in 2015, will get its energy from a wind project in Wellsburg, IA. The Des Moines Register reports that the new data center will bring close to $1 billion to the region over six years.

This post was originally published at WBUR.org's Cognoscenti. Read it in its entirety here. 

With a price tag that starts at nearly $70,000, I’m not going to buy a Tesla Model S any time soon, and chances are, neither are you. But if all-electric cars, and variants such as plug-in hybrids, become as common on the road as traffic lights, it will be because of Tesla. The Model S is an electric car that’s turning heads, and changing minds.