Producers and crew from PBS's Nova series are visiting the Energy Institute's Battery Lab this week while filming a special on the future of energy storage and vehicle electrification. Battery Lab Manager Greg Less, along with Battery Fabrication Specialist Bill Hicks, are building batteries with host David Pogue, while Professors Levi Thompson, Jeff Sakamoto and Christian Lastoskie will guide the production team through their lab spaces and give interviews about their work. UMEI Director Mark Barteau will appear to discuss the future of energy storage and transportation.
Revised energy bill would still harm Michigan ratepayers, advocates say
Midwest Energy News
Michigan Senate Republicans spent the past six months revising a comprehensive energy policy proposal that brought fierce opposition from interest groups over electric choice, renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Last week at Shell’s Eco-marathon Americas, the winning team from Quebec’s Université Laval achieved the equivalent of 2,584 miles per gallon with a car students designed and built themselves. This year, the company added a side event to the regular competition — a symposium entitled Powering Progress Together, which featured a number of prominent thinkers in fields related to motor transportation who came to share their views on the future of this critical sector.
Climate change is a potential threat to the welfare of mankind and its mitigation is becoming urgent. Nuclear energy, which provides one-fifth of U.S. electricity generation, is currently the leading utility-scale, carbon-free baseload power source in America. But it is expensive, controversial, and regulated in a way that poses challenges to technological innovation. So how does nuclear power fit into U.S. climate change mitigation goals going forward?
Minnesota study challenges coal car claims about electric vehicles
Midwest Energy News
Do electric cars help reduce carbon emissions in Minnesota?
A new life-cycle analysis by the Great Plains Institute says yes, finding that electric vehicles emit 61 percent fewer greenhouse gases (GHGs) than gasoline-powered automobiles.
Held on April 21, the Shell Powering Progress Together forum brought together leaders from business, academia, NGOs and government from Detroit, the Great Lakes Region and the Americas for an interactive forum to discuss and debate opportunities and challenges of energy transitions and the climate challenge. This focused on the need for technology, policy and innovations in mobility and other key sectors to boost efficiency and supply more energy in an increasingly carbon constrained world.
What happens when a nuclear power plant is shut down Detroit News, feat. Catherine Hausman
Most climate debates have focused on cutting the use of coal in electricity production. But besides a few high profile scuffles over the transition to cleaner energy, political leaders have ignored nuclear power as a necessary component of an effective climate strategy.
New Toyota autonomous vehicle hub boosts region’s leadership in transforming mobility
U-M News Service
In a step that bolsters the region's strong driverless technology development ecosystem, the University of Michigan will be collaborating with Toyota in the automaker's plan to establish a major autonomous vehicle research base in Ann Arbor.
As part of the U-M Energy Survey’s ongoing reports regarding the affordability of energy, this brief focuses on the newest wave of data through January 2016. We measure American consumers' views of their energy costs with two affordability indices, one for home energy and the other for gasoline. Each index is based on the costs that consumers say they would find unaffordable compared to their actual energy costs—that is, their own home energy bills and the national average price of gasoline—during the month they were surveyed
More than 700 miles of Great Lakes shoreline potentially vulnerable to Straits of Mackinac oil spills
University of Michigan News Service, feat. U-M Water Center
More than 700 miles of shoreline in lakes Huron and Michigan are potentially vulnerable to oil spills if the pipeline beneath the Straits of Mackinac ruptures, according to a new University of Michigan computer-modeling study.
It’s Friday, so it’s okay to goof off and watch a video, right? Here’s a short animation by Faculty Affiliate Ming Xu, showing 1500 vehicles moving through Ann Arbor during the day: https://vimeo.com/160034086
Low gas prices create a detour on the road to greater fuel economy
New York Times, feat Michael Sivak and UMEI board member Christopher Grundler
As business between the United States and Cuba grows following President Obama’s historic Havana trip this week, forging ties in the energy sector would benefit both countries.
Cuba’s energy infrastructure is an odd mix of old and new. On the one hand, Cuba still burns crude oil for most of its electricity (one of very few countries to do that). Its antiquated electric grid includes decaying, half century-old equipment. Its vehicle stock is famous for Buicks and Pontiacs dating to the 1950s.
