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Tokyo Electric Power Co. will build a solar power plant in the US state of California through its subsidiary Eurus Energy Holdings Corp., according to a report.

It plans to begin operations at the 1000 kilowatt plant by 2010 on a site yet to be selected, the Nikkei business daily reported.

Eurus, already engaged in wind power generation in the United States, wants to take advantage of incentives expected to be provided by the new US government to boost solar power generation nationwide, Nikkei said.

Tokyo Electric is one of four Japanese corporate giants moving into the US renewable energy market with solar and wind power technologies, the daily said.

Petroleum wholesaler Showa Shell Sekiyu KK will start selling solar cells in the United States in June at the earliest after establishing a sales network there, the report said.

The unit of Anglo-Dutch giant Royal Dutch Shell will ship cells from a plant now under construction in Miyazaki prefecture, southern Japan.

Sanyo Electric Co. is set to expand the solar cell production capacity of its Mexican plant, which assembles products for the North American market, by 150 percent to 50,000 kilowatts, the daily said.

In anticipation of growing US demand, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. will raise its domestic production capacity for wind turbines by about 30 percent to 1.6 million kilowatts possibly by March 2010, Nikkei said.

The 787-billion-dollar US economic stimulus package, which was passed on Tuesday, earmarks 38 billion dollars for investments in the environmental and energy sectors.

It also provides 20 billion dollars in tax incentives to spur private-sector investment in this area.

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A tree-living fungus that produces a substance similar to diesel fuel has been discovered in South America.

Experts believe Gliocladium roseum could potentially be a completely new source of green energy.

The fungus, which lives inside the Ulmo tree in the Patagonian rainforest, naturally produces hydrocarbon fuel similar to the diesel used to power cars and lorries.

Scientists were amazed to find that it was able to convert plant cellulose directly into the biofuel, dubbed “myco-diesel”.

Crops normally have to be converted to sugar and fermented before they can be turned into useful fuel.

Professor Gary Strobel, from Montana State University in the US, said: “G. roseum can make myco-diesel directly from cellulose, the main compound found in plants and paper. This means if the fungus was used to make fuel, a step in the production process could be skipped.”

Prof Strobel led an investigation into novel fungi in the rainforests of northern Patagonia, which cross the borders of Argentina and Chile.

He found that when the diesel fuel fungus was exposed to potentially toxic antibiotics, it reacted defensively by generating volatile gases.

“Then when we examined the gas composition of G. roseum, we were totally surprised to learn that it was making a plethora of hydrocarbons and hydrocarbon derivatives,” he said.

“The results were totally unexpected and very exciting and almost every hair on my arms stood on end.”

Cellulose provides the fibrous supporting structure of plants. During biofuel production, cellulose from plant waste is first treated with enzymes that turn it into sugar. Microbes then ferment the sugar into inflammable ethanol.

Nearly 430 million tonnes of plant waste is produced from farmland each year around the world.

Prof Strobel said: “We were very excited to discover that G. roseum can digest cellulose. Although the fungus makes less myco-diesel when it feeds on cellulose compared to sugars, new developments in fermentation technology and genetic manipulation could help improve the yield.

“In fact, the genes of the fungus are just as useful as the fungus itself in the development of new biofuels.”

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With the high cost of gasoline and diesel fuel impacting costs for automobiles, trucks, buses and the overall economy, a Temple University physics professor has developed a simple device which could dramatically improve fuel efficiency as much as 20 percent. According to Rongjia Tao, chair of Temple’s Physics Department, the small device consists of an electrically charged tube that can be attached to the fuel line of a car’s engine near the fuel injector. With the use of a power supply from the vehicle’s battery, the device creates an electric field that thins fuel, or reduces its viscosity, so that smaller droplets are injected into the engine. That leads to more efficient and cleaner combustion than a standard fuel injector, he says. Six months of road testing in a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz automobile showed that the device increased highway fuel from 32 miles per gallon to 38 mpg, a 20 percent boost, and a 12-15 percent gain in city driving. The results of the laboratory and road tests verifying that this simple device can boost gas mileage was published in Energy & Fuels, a bi-monthly journal published by the American Chemical Society.

Photo by Joseph V. Labolito/Temple University Rongjia Tao

“We expect the device will have wide applications on all types of internal combustion engines, present ones and future ones,” Tao wrote in the published study, “Electrorheology Leads to Efficient Combustion.” Further improvements in the device could lead to even better mileage, he suggests, and cited engines powered by gasoline, biodiesel and kerosene as having potential use of the device. Temple has applied for a patent on this technology, which has been licensed to California-based Save The World Air Inc., an environmentally conscientious enterprise focused on the design, development, and commercialization of revolutionary technologies targeted at reducing emissions from internal combustion engines. According to Joe Dell, vice president of marketing for STWA, the company is currently working with a trucking company near Reading, Pa., to test the device on diesel-powered trucks, where he estimates it could increase fuel efficiency as much as 6-12 percent. Dell predicts this type of increased fuel efficiency could save tens of billions of dollars in the trucking industry and have a major impact on the economy through the lowering of costs to deliver goods and services. “Temple University is very excited about the translation of this new important technology from the research laboratory to the marketplace,” said Larry F. Lemanski, senior vice president for research and strategic initiatives at Temple. “This discovery promises to significantly improve fuel efficiency in all types of internal combustion engine powered vehicles and at the same time will have far-reaching effects in reducing pollution of our environment.” NOTE: Copies of this study are available to working journalists and may be obtained by contacting Preston M. Moretz in Temple University’s Office of News Communications at 215-204-4380 or pmoretz@temple.edu. A prototype of the original device is available for photos in Tao’s lab at Temple, while the current device being tested on the diesel trucks can be viewed by contacting STWA.

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