Mike Magda - Autoblog

The Lycoming County landfill in Pennsylvania may one day refuel some of the trucks that deliver waste, using methane gas made from that waste. The ambitious project will run parallel to the production of methane gas for an electric plant on site. About 33 percent of the methane produced is dedicated to electricity. Building an adjacent liquid-methane truck-fuel production facility would cost between $8 million and $30 million. Up to 5,000 gallons of liquid methane could be produced a day, or eno

This time it's a wounded engine that has sidelined the round-the-world record attempt of the Earthrace boat. The starboard engine started failing in the Marshall Islands when a fuel injector broke and damaged the No. 1 cylinder of the Cummins engine. An engineering team is flying out of Hawaii with repair parts, but the boat is in an isolated location in the Caroline Islands.

Car-share programs, those unique memberships with around-the-clock access to cars parked throughout urban neighborhoods, is starting to look good as a profit enterprise. I-GO was started five years ago by a Chicago non-profit as an experiment. Now it has 80 vehicles and adds more than 200 new members a month.

First, tortillas in Mexico, now beer in Germany will cost more as crop yields shift toward biofuel production. Brewers say they have no choice but to pass along the higher costs of barley, which has nearly doubled in price in a year. There was a poor harvest last year but many fields have been dedicated to biofuel production this year. Experts say the amount of land for barley is decreasi

We had the story yesterday about ConocoPhillips and Tyson teaming up to produce biodiesel in Europe from leftover pig fat. Undoubtedly animal rights activists would be upset, and we raised the possibility of religious implications. From a purely academic angle, however, is using animal waste unethical for producing fuel?

Pretty soon there won't be a single living organism on earth from which someone won't be trying to extract a biofuel. We've talked about algae, corn, switchgrass, soybeans, wood chips, seaweed, chickens and even liposuction waste. (I wish ants were a biomass source.) So it wasn't much of a surprise when I found this story out of England that says an oil firm and food processing company will produce biodiesel from pig fat. ConocoPhilli

Chris Dodd is the first presidential candidate to support a carbon tax. David Roberts at Grist read through Dodd's energy speech from yesterday and found a firm stand on not only expanding a cap and trade bill but enacting a corporate carbon tax.

The Union of Concerned Scientists say the technology to build a highly fuel efficient family vehicle is already available and on the shelf. So Bob Lutz challenged the scientists to show him.

We've already heard talk that Formula 1 officials have considered moving toward a diesel engine, now hybrids are the talk of the track. The Federation Internationale de L'Automobile, which hosts F1 racing, is considering using hybrid technology in the race cars. Toyota, which hasn't done very well since it entered F1 a few years ago, would play a strong role in such a move. A Toyota motorsports engineer said such a system would be different than the cars. Honda is also said to be developing a hy

Bengt Halvorson at The Car Connection has posted a critical look at the controversy over the total and complete environmental cost of hybrid vehicles. Yes, they do offer better fuel economy and lower overall emissions, but some critics and analysts say recycling and production costs--including the mining of materials needed for batteries--create an overall larger environmental footprint than a gas-guzzling Hummer.

In selecting the 12 greenest vehicles, ForbesAutos editors split the roster between hybrids and traditional gas engines that are small and well-tuned. The editors also used EPA data to factor in air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. The Prius and Civic Hybrid are the only two vehicles to score the highest rating of 10 in greenhouse gases. Who's on the list? You can check out the Mike Magda