Will Truckers Ditch Diesel? Surplus of Natural Gas Prompts Some Fleets to Switch; Lack of Fueling Stations

By REBECCA SMITH

Wall Street Journal

May 23, 2012

Rising diesel costs last year forced Waste Management Inc. to charge customers an extra $169 million, just to keep its garbage trucks fueled. This year, the nation's biggest trash hauler has a new defensive strategy: it is buying trucks that will run on cheaper natural gas.

In fact, the company says 80% of the trucks it purchases during the next five years will be fueled by natural gas. Though the vehicles cost about $30,000 more than conventional diesel models, each will save $27,000-a-year or more in fuel, says Eric Woods, head of fleet logistics for Waste Management. By 2017, the company expects to burn more natural gas than diesel.

"The economics favoring natural gas are overwhelming," says Scott Perry, a vice president at Ryder Systems Inc., one of the nation's largest truck-leasing companies and a transporter for the grocery, automotive, electronics and retail industries.

The shale gas revolution, which cut the price of natural gas by about 45% over the past year, already has triggered a shift by the utility industry to natural gas from coal. Vast amounts of natural gas in shale rock formations have been unlocked by improved drilling techniques, making the fuel cheap and plentiful across the U.S.

Now the shale-gas boom is rippling through transportation. Never before has the price gap between natural gas and diesel been so large, suddenly making natural-gas-powered trucks an alluring option for company fleets, rather than an impractical idea pushed mainly by natural-gas boosters like T. Boone Pickens, the Texas oilman. Railroad operators also are being affected as coal shipments declining.

Many fleet operators, particularly long-haul truckers, remain concerned about a scarcity of refueling stations. Other challenges include the bulky tanks for compressed gas and the hazards of handling liquefied gas. In the past, the volatility of natural-gas prices also hampered wider use.

But today, truck manufacturers are embracing natural gas for everything from bi-fuel pickup trucks like the Chevy Silverado HD to eighteen-wheelers that can burn natural gas either compressed, called CNG, or super-chilled, called LNG. Navistar International Corp., Cummins Inc. and General Motors Co. all are courting the market with new natural-gas powered trucks or engines.

Navistar's goal is to "expand to a full range of products using natural gas in the next 18 months," says Eric Tech, president of Navistar's engine business. This year, the Illinois company is introducing delivery trucks burning natural gas. Next year, it is adding long-haul trucks with its biggest engines. 

Mr. Tech says in a couple of years, one in three Navistar trucks sold will burn natural gas. "This is not a subsidy-driven market," Mr. Tech says. "It's developing on its own because the economics are compelling."

Companies like United Parcel Service Inc. and AT&T Inc. are buying the vehicles. AT&T recently ordered 1,200 Chevrolet Express cargo vans equipped to run on compressed natural gas, which GM said was its largest CNG vehicle order ever.

Ryder Systems began renting out natural gas trucks in California last yea. The response has been so strong Ryder is expanding the program to Michigan and Arizona. And it is introducing them in truck clusters it operates for big box retailers like Staples Inc. and manufacturers including carpet-maker Mohawk Industries Inc.

For years, a barrel of oil cost about as much as six units of natural gas and their prices moved in tandem, notes Don Mason, a gas-industry consultant in Ohio. Today, a barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude costs more than 33 times as much as a unit of natural gas in the U.S. At the pump, a gallon of diesel often costs more than twice as much as CNG, on a diesel-gallon-equivalent basis.

"I think we're at a turning point, even if it's a slow, wide turn," Mr. Mason says.

Although the U.S. has loads of natural gas, adoption of natural gas vehicles has been spotty. Less than 0.1% of vehicles on American roads burn the fuel today and the percentage sagged slightly from 2005 to 2010, when federal policies encouraging their use waned. The number began edging up last year, lifted by market forces.

Meanwhile, in the Asia-Pacific region, natural gas vehicle sales have grown at an average annual clip of 42% during the past decade, according to NGV Global, a trade group formed in 1986 to promote gas-friendly policies. Pakistan led the list in 2010 with 2.7 million natural gas vehicles, though many are tiny tuk-tuks, out of a total of 13 million natural gas vehicles worldwide. The U.S. came in 14th with 112,000 natural gas vehicles.

Many people are trying to figure out whether natural gas really has legs as a transportation fuel. Greg Burns, chairman and chief executive of PLS Logistics Services Inc. in Pittsburgh decided this year to ask 100 trucking company executives. The result: eight in 10 respondents said natural gas in its densest form, as LNG, has potential for highway use. Nearly a third said they were actively researching it for their own companies. But 54% said current infrastructure is inadequate and 23% worried about the higher cost of the trucks.

Mr. Burns' conclusion: "If you have a long-enough time frame, it's a pretty bullish picture."

Some truckers soon will have the ability to hedge their bets. That is because the Environmental Protection Agency recently approved retrofit technology for big rigs that lets them burn LNG and diesel.  Kathryn Clay, executive director of the Drive Natural Gas initiative of the American Gas Association, says "the new technology is really game changing because the trucker can run on either fuel, eliminating refueling anxiety."

The potential market is enormous. The 3.2 million big rigs on U.S. roads today burn some 25 billion gallons of diesel annually. Almost 7 million single-unit trucks, such as UPS or FedEx Corp. trucks, consume another 10 billion gallons of diesel.

Converting even a modest number of these trucks, which often get 5 to 8 miles a gallon, to natural gas could save significant amounts of money. Tailpipe emissions also would drop, since natural gas burns cleaner than diesel or gasoline.

If large numbers of fleet operators decided to embrace natural gas, it could rev up truck manufacturing, which slowed dramatically during the recession. North American heavy duty truck sales peaked in 2006 with 360,000 units, just ahead of tighter emission standards, and plunged to 110,000 units in 2009.

Noel Perry, principal at Transport Fundamentals Inc., a trucking research company in Lebanon, Penn., says one disadvantage of natural gas is that it isn't as dense as diesel. CNG is only 25% as dense and LNG is 60% as dense. That means trucks need more tanks or bigger tanks to go as far, or they must refuel more often. That's not a big deal for city buses or delivery trucks that go back to home base each night, where they can refuel. But it's a problem for trucks that drive unpredictable routes or venture out into the hinterland.

Ann Duignan, managing director at J.P. Morgan Equity Research, says "there's huge excitement" about natural gas but infrastructure immaturity will depress truck sales. She expects fastest adoption among fleets that can run on CNG and return home each night but is skeptical about long-haul trucking. "It will be slow, steady, one-fleet-at-a-time type growth," she says.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304707604577422192910235090.html

Green Roofs in Big Cities Bring Relief From Above

MAY 23, 2012, 7:00 AM

By TINA ROSENBERG

New York Times

It’s spring — time to plant your roof. Roofs, like coffee, used to be black tar. Now both have gone gourmet:  for roofs, the choices are white, green, blue and solar-panel black.

All are green in one sense.  In different ways, each helps to solve serious environmental problems.  One issue is air pollution, which needs no introduction.The second is the urban heat island. Because cities have lots of dark surfaces that absorb heat and relatively little green cover, they tend to be hotter than surrounding areas — the average summer temperature in New York City is more than 7 degrees hotter than in the Westchester suburbs.  This leads to heavy air-conditioning use — not good — and makes city dwellers miserable. For a few people every year, the heat is more than a discomfort — it’s fatal.

The other problem is storm water runoff.  In New York, as in about a fifth of American cities, there is only one sewer system to conduct both rainwater and wastewater. About every other rainfall in New York, sewers flood and back up, discharging their mix of rainwater and wastewater into the city’s waterways. It doesn’t take much to overload New York’s sewers — it can take only 20 minutes of rainfall to start water from toilets flowing into Brooklyn’s waterways.  The water does more than flood streets.  It makes us sick — cases of diarrhea spike when sewers overflow. When sewers back up, polluted water runs into our lakes and oceans, closing beaches.

How can a new roof help?

At 1:45 in the afternoon on August 9, 2001, the temperature in Chicago was in the 90s. Eleven stories up, on the roof of City Hall, the surface temperature of the black tar measured 169 degrees. But Mayor Daley, environmental innovator — yes, that Mayor Daley — had done something interesting. The year before, a section of the City Hall roof had been painted white.  The surface temperature there was between 126 and 130 degrees. And much of the roof of the building, and the adjacent Cook County building, had become a garden — 20,000 plants in 150 varieties, chosen for their abilities to thrive without irrigation and stand up to Chicago’s notorious wind. The surface temperature of the green roof varied between 91 and 119 degrees.

So the difference between a black tar roof and a green roof was at minimum 50 degrees. And the green roof was able to retain 75 percent of a one-inch rainfall.  The two tasks go hand in hand — green roofs cool by capturing moisture and evaporating it.

Putting living vegetation on the roof is not a new idea.  For thousands of years people have made sod roofs to protect and insulate their houses, keeping them cooler in summer and warmer in winter.  The modern movement for green roofs began in the last 50 years in Europe.  Germany, where about 10 percent of roofs are green, is the leader; some parts of Germany require green roofs on all new buildings.

Greening a roof is not simple or cheap. Over a black roof — flat is easiest but sloped can work — goes insulation, then a waterproof membrane, then a barrier to keep roots from poking holes in the membrane.  On top of that there is a drainage layer, such as gravel or clay, then a mat to prevent erosion. Next is a lightweight soil (Chicago City Hall uses a blend of mulch, compost and spongy stuff) and finally, plants.

An extensive roof — less than 6 inches of soil planted with hardy cover such as sedum  — can cost $15 per square foot. An intensive roof — essentially a garden, with deeper soil and plants that require watering and weeding — can double that. But because the vegetation is thicker, it will do a better job of cooling a building and collecting rainwater. Plants reduce sewer discharge in two ways. They retain rainfall, and what does run off is delayed until after the waters have peaked.

A study conducted by Columbia University and City University of New York of three test roofs built by Con Edison in Queens found that the green roof — an extensive roof, planted with sedum — cut the rate of heat gained through the roof in summer by 84 percent, and the rate of heat lost through the roof in winter by 34 percent.

Another study (same researchers, same Con Ed test sites) found that green roofs are a very cost-effective way to reduce storm water runoff.  If New York has one billion square feet of possibly greenable roof, planting it all could retain 10 to 15 billion gallons of annual rainfall — which would cut a substantial amount of sewage overflow. “If you add in all the other green infrastructure, such as street trees, permeable pavement and ground collection pits, it might be possible to eliminate the combined sewage overflow without building specialized water detention tanks, which are hugely expensive,” said Stuart Gaffin, a research scientist at Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research, who co-authored both studies with colleagues from City College.

Green roofs have other advantages.They scrub the air: one square meter can absorb all the emissions from a car being driven 12,000 miles a year, said Amy Norquist, chief executive of Greensulate, which installs green roofs.And green roofs can provide the plants that animals, birds and bees need where parks are far apart.

White roofs are cheap and don’t require any engineering — just a layer of special paint. New York City is trying to coat a million square feet of roof a year. Building owners can do the work themselves, or they can engage CoolRoofs, a city initiative that promotes white roofs and organizes hundreds of volunteer painters. Since 2010, about 3,000 volunteers have coated 288 buildings.

But less investment buys less return. White roofs don’t catch rainwater, help biodiversity or clean the air. Gaffin’s group found that the white portion of the Con Ed roof averaged 43 degrees cooler than black at noon on summer days. That’s something, but it’s a smaller cooling effect than green roofs offer. Green roofs improve each year as vegetation becomes denser and taller.But after a few months, a white roof tends to look like city snow — covered with soot. As a white roof dirties, it loses a lot of its cooling ability.

The newest roof variation is a blue roof. It’s a roof covered by a waterproof membrane and gravel, with controlled-flow drains, and costs about $5 a square foot. Blue roofs don’t cool anything — they help only with storm water control by releasing water more gradually.  Despite the price, a blue roof is a hard sell — not everyone is comfortable with the idea of a pond on the roof.

How have New Jersey and California done it?  Private vendors install and maintain the solar panels, and are paid in future energy savings. Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, argues that New York should use this system to put solar panels on the roof of every public school.  Stringer’s report says putting solar roofs on all available public schools would eliminate as much carbon emissions as planting 400,000 trees — eight times the number in Manhattan now.The fourth roof option doesn’t save energy — it creates it. New Jersey has installed 500 megawatts of solar power — enough to run half a million homes. California has installed double that. New York City?  So far, just 6.5 megawatts.

Public schools have become a testing ground for the new roofs. At the Robert Simon complex in the East Village, which houses three schools (my children attend two of those schools), work is beginning this summer on a farm. A committee at the Earth School was looking for green ideas that would go beyond recycling and create a curriculum.  Abbe Futterman, the science teacher, was already growing vegetables and fruit in sawed-off pickle barrels right outside her classroom window, using the garden to teach plant science and nutrition. The kids tend it, and use the produce to cook food from around the world.

The Fifth Street Farm will be a much larger vegetable and fruit garden in planters raised above the roof on steel girders — not a classic green roof.The money has come from various government offices — those of Stringer, State Senator Daniel Squadron and City Council member Rosie Mendez.  Douglas Fountain, the architect who is implementing construction (and a parent of a Tompkins Square Middle School student) said that it was designed to be easily replicable by other schools.

Is a green roof a good investment for a building owner? Perhaps, but the biggest reason might not be reduced energy costs — lots of factors affect a building’s energy use.  More savings come from the fact that temperature swings make a black tar roof expand and contract. The smaller the spread, the longer the roof life. Roanoke, Va., for example, just installed a green roof on its municipal building, at a cost of $123,000, adding anywhere from 20 to 60 years to the life of the current roof membrane. “I personally believe a green roof is the last roof you’ll have to put on,” said Gaffin.

But any changes to a black tar roof are undoubtedly good investments for cities — indeed, interest in green roofs is soaring largely because of the sewage problem and the costs of trying to solve it the old way.  New York City decided it was more cost effective to build green infrastructure, including green roofs, than to construct more sewer pipes or storage tanks, and it is spending $1.5 billion over the next 20 years on green projects that will reduce rainfall runoff.   The goal is to cut sewer outflows by 40 percent by 2030.

“The good news is that this is a ‘no harm’ intervention,” said Carter Strickland, the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection.  “People want it; there’s a lot of other benefits.  If at the end of the day it doesn’t do the full job, whatever you have to build on top will be much smaller and less expensive.”

To encourage building owners to install green roofs, New York City has a pilot program that will end next year offering a $4.50-per-square-foot tax abatement for green roofs that cover more than half a rooftop.  (There are also tax abatements for solar-panel roofs.)

Amy Norquist of Greensulate said this was less attractive than it sounded.“What you have to do to get that is quite onerous,” she said. “You need permits, filing fees, people have to sign off — it ends up being a lot of money.”

Strickland said that permits were required for a good reason.  “It requires you to do a structural analysis of the roof,” he said.  “You’re going to need that permit whether you build it with a tax abatement or alone.”

New York City was not one of the first American cities to promote green roofs. “But the city is doing quite well,” said Gaffin.  “The green infrastructure plan is very ambitious.”  The problem is that the little-by-little approach won’t produce real environmental benefits until they reach a critical mass, and that could take a long time.  “We get biodiversity benefits from small scale greening, and individual building owners will get an energy benefit,” said Gaffin. “ But to make a difference to the city’s climate or hydrology we’d have to get up to 30, 40 or 50 percent coverage. What we have now is a drop in the bucket.”

Civil engineers find savings where the rubber meets the road - MIT News Office

by Denise Brehm, Civil and Environmental Engineering


A new study by civil engineers at MIT shows that using stiffer pavements on the nation’s roads could reduce vehicle fuel consumption by as much as 3 percent — a savings that could add up to 273 million barrels of crude oil per year, or $15.6 billion at today’s oil prices. This would result in an accompanying annual decrease in CO₂ emissions of 46.5 million metric tons.

The study, released in a recent peer-reviewed report, is the first to use mathematical modeling rather than roadway experiments to look at the effect of pavement deflection on vehicle fuel consumption across the entire U.S. road network. A paper on this work has also been accepted for publication later this year in the Transportation Research Record.

By modeling the physical forces at work when a rubber tire rolls over pavement, the study’s authors, Professor Franz-Josef Ulm and PhD student Mehdi Akbarian, conclude that because of the way energy is dissipated, the maximum deflection of the load is behind the path of travel. This has the effect of making the tires on the vehicle drive continuously up a slight slope, which increases fuel use.

The deflection under the tires is similar to that of beach sand underfoot: With each step, the foot tamps down the sand from heel to toe, requiring the pedestrian to expend more energy than when walking on a hard surface. On the roadways, even a 1 percent increase in aggregate fuel consumption leaves a substantial environmental footprint. Stiffer pavements — which can be achieved by improving the material properties or increasing the thickness of the asphalt layers, switching to a concrete layer or asphalt-concrete composite structures, or changing the thickness or composition of the sublayers of the road — would decrease deflection and reduce that footprint.

“This work is literally where the rubber meets the road,” says Ulm, the George Macomber Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “We’ve got to find ways to improve the environmental footprint of our roadway infrastructure, but previous empirical studies to determine fuel savings all looked at the impact of roughness and pavement type for a few non-conclusive scenarios, and the findings sometimes differed by an order of magnitude. Where do you find identical roadways on the same soils under the same conditions? You can’t. You get side effects. The empirical approach doesn’t work. So we used statistical analysis to avoid those side effects.”

The new study defines the key parameters involved in analyzing the structural (thickness) and material (stiffness and type of subgrade) properties of pavements. The mathematical model is therefore based on the actual mechanical behavior of pavements under load. To obtain their results, Ulm and Akbarian fed their model data on 5,643 representative sections of the nation’s roadways taken from Federal Highway Administration data sets. These data include information on the surface and subsurface materials of pavements and the soils beneath, as well as the number, type and weight of vehicles using the roads. The researchers also calculated and incorporated the contact area of vehicle tires with the pavement.

Ulm and Akbarian estimate that the combined effects of road roughness and deflection are responsible for an annual average extra fuel consumption of 7,000 to 9,000 gallons per lane-mile on high-volume roads (not including the most heavily traveled roads) in the 8.5 million lane-miles making up the U.S. roadway network. They say that up to 80 percent of that extra fuel consumption, in excess of the vehicles’ normal fuel use, could be reduced through improvements in the basic properties of the asphalt, concrete and other materials used to build the roads.

“We’re wasting fuel unnecessarily because pavement design has been based solely on minimizing initial costs more than performance — how well the pavement holds up — when it should also take into account the environmental footprint of pavements based on variations in external conditions,” Akbarian says. “We can now include environmental impacts, pavement performance and — eventually — a cost model to optimize pavement design and obtain the lowest cost and lowest environmental impact with the best structural performance.”

The researchers say the initial cost outlay for better pavements would quickly pay for itself not just in fuel efficiency and decreased CO₂ emissions, but also in reduced maintenance costs.

“There’s a misconception that if you want to go green you have to spend more money, but that’s not necessarily true,” Akbarian says. “Better pavement design over a lifetime would save much more money in fuel costs than the initial cost of improvements. And the state departments of transportation would save money while reducing their environmental footprint over time, because the roads won’t deteriorate as quickly.”

This research was conducted as part of the Concrete Sustainability Hub at MIT, which is sponsored by the Portland Cement Association and the Ready Mixed Concrete Research & Education Foundation with the goal of improving the environmental footprint of that industry.

“This work is not about asphalt versus concrete,” Ulm says. “The ultimate goal is to make our nation’s infrastructure more sustainable. Our model will help make this possible by giving pavement engineers a tool for including sustainability as a design parameter, just like safety, cost and ride quality.”

“This MIT research pioneered a rigorous mathematical framework relating fuel consumption with mathematically predicted pavement deflection. This framework lays a foundation for continued development and future improvement of advanced pavement-vehicle interaction models,” says Lev Khazanovich, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in this research. “Integration of the results of this study with the Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide recently adopted by the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials will enable transportation agencies to account for traffic fuel consumption in pavement design decisions. This makes Akbarian and Ulm’s research especially important today in light of the efforts of transportation agencies to reduce the environmental footprint of the transportation system.” 

Civil engineers find savings where the rubber meets the road - MIT News Office

U.S. Agency Approves New Gas Line to Run Under Hudson

By MIREYA NAVARRO

New York Times

May 22, 2012

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved the construction of a much-debated natural gas pipeline that would run beneath the Hudson River from New Jersey into the West Village in Manhattan, connecting with Consolidated Edison’s distribution system.

The 4-to-0 decision on Monday had been widely expected since the commission’s staff concluded in March that the construction and operation of the pipeline would not pose significant environmental hazards.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg supports the project, which would transport up to 800 million cubic feet of gas a day, as a way of meeting New York City’s growing energy needs. But antidrilling groups and many public officials in the region, including the mayors of Hoboken and Jersey City, oppose the pipeline, and legal challenges are expected.

The $1.2 billion project, proposed by Spectra Energy of Houston, includes 15.2 miles of new pipeline that would run from Staten Island through Bayonne, N.J., and Jersey City before crossing over to Manhattan beneath West Street. It would be the first major natural gas transmission line to reach the city in 40 years.

“This approval clears the way for a much-needed new natural gas supply in the New York City region,” Mr. Bloomberg’s deputy mayor for operations, Caswell F. Holloway, said in a statement. Mr. Holloway said the project would make the city’s energy supply more reliable and help reduce emissions of soot and heat-trapping greenhouse gases by providing an alternative to more polluting energy sources like oil.

But opponents on both sides of the Hudson have cited safety concerns, including the possibility of accidental explosions beneath densely populated areas, industrial sites and bodies of water.

Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy of Jersey City said in an interview that he also worried that the pipeline and the construction bustle would discourage investment in his city, where the population of about 250,000 is already doubled on weekdays by commuters. He said the city planned to appeal the commission’s decision and, if need be, to challenge it in court.

“This is a foolhardy place to put this high-pressure pipeline,” Mr. Healy said.

The pipeline has also been caught in the furor over horizontal hydraulic fracturing, which involves injecting large volumes of water and chemicals underground to extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale. New York environmental officials are weighing whether to begin granting permits for such drilling upstate.

The federal commission addressed some of the concerns in its order approving the pipeline, saying it would bring in natural gas from multiple sources.

“This project is driven by a desire to bring additional, reliable, competitively priced gas supplies to New Jersey and New York end users,” the order said. “It is not designed to serve as a gathering system for gas from the Marcellus Shale.”

It added, “The development of the Marcellus and other shale reserves is expected to proceed over decades, and will do so with or without the proposed project.”

Spectra officials said they hoped to begin construction on the pipeline, an expansion of the company’s Texas Eastern Transmission and Algonquin Gas Transmission interstate pipeline systems, in June and to complete the work by November 2013, when the pipeline would start service.

“We remain committed to safely constructing this critically needed pipeline and look forward to a timely notice to proceed,” said Marylee Hanley, a spokeswoman for the company.

Spectra officials said that the project had been modified considerably to meet safety concerns and that it now exceeded federal requirements. Plans call for the pipeline to lie as deep as 200 feet underground.

The project also involves replacing five miles of existing pipeline from Staten Island to Linden, N.J., and installing associated equipment and facilities in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. It would span Middlesex County in Connecticut; Bergen, Hudson, Morris and Union Counties in New Jersey; and Manhattan, Staten Island and Rockland County in New York.

Parties have 30 days to request a rehearing of the action by the commission, which regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas and oil as well as proposals to build interstate natural gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/nyregion/gas-pipeline-beneath-hudson-river-is-approved.html?_r=1&src=rechp&pagewanted=print

Energy Crisis: Power protesters go on rampage

Pakistan News Service

May 11, 2012

LAHORE: Extremely irked by the prolonged and unscheduled load shedding, people across Punjab were compelled to take to the streets on Thursday in simmering anger against the apathetic rulers.

The power shortfall has crossed 7,000MW and the government is resorting to more than 20 hours of power outage in rural, and more than 18 hours in urban areas of Punjab. Thousands of protesters took out rallies, staged sit-ins, ransacked offices and residences of lawmakers and politicians, attacked WAPDA installations, damaged vehicles and clashed with police, resulting in several injuries in different parts of the province.

Protest demonstrations against unannounced load shedding were held in all major cities of Punjab, including Lahore, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Multan, Vehari, DG Khan, Bahawalpur, Mianwali, Mandi Bahauddin, Sargodha, Khushab, Bhakkar, Pir Mahal, Burewala and Jhelum. In Lahore, protesters burnt tyres and blocked traffic on several roads. Protesters took out rallies in Faisalabad, chanting slogans against the government and stopping businesses from operating. A large number of industrial workers also joined the protests and blocked traffic by burning tyres on the roads. The protesters said the power shutdown in different areas had made it impossible for them to earn their livelihoods.

A complete shutter-down strike was observed in Vihari, and people went on rampage during protest rallies against power outages. The angry protesters damaged public property and a WAPDA office. They broke open the main gate and walls of the WAPDA office, broke windowpanes and doors, and set on fire the office record and equipment. They also set fire to cars, motorcycles and bicycles parked in the office.

The furious protesters also attacked the offices and residences of lawmakers and politicians. They attacked the office of PML-N MNA Tehmina Daultana and broke windows and doors, and set them on fire. They also attacked the offices of PML-Q MPA Tahir Iqbal Chaudhry and PTI District President Tahir Anwar Wahla and set them on fire. The angry mob also pelted stones and damaged Rescue 15 office.

The protesters, including members of the Vehari District Bar, forced their entry into the DCO Complex and MEPCO Complex and clashed with police. Police resorted to baton charge and tear gas-shelling. The clash and crossfire between police and protesters resulted in injuries to five protesters, two cops and a journalist.

http://paktribune.com/news/Energy-Crisis-Power-protesters-go-on-rampage-249707.html

Middle class eager to buy cars in congested China; automakers try to keep up with demand

By Alisa Priddle

Detroit Free Press 

BEIJING -- Juan Lu and her husband, Jun Gao, can't suppress their new-car grins. The young Chinese couple have taken delivery of their first car, a Ford Mondeo midsize sedan, from a Ford dealership in western Beijing. They are part of a burgeoning middle class that wants to trade in their subway tokens for their own wheels to get Lu to work at the hospital and Gao to his government job, and also take them away for a weekend holiday.

Automakers like Ford and Fiat-Chrysler are racing to establish themselves in China to meet this growing demand while dominant players such as General Motors, Volkswagen and Hyundai invest to maintain their leadership.

While growth has slowed in the world's largest market, the sheer volume and sales potential mean no one can afford not to compete in China. There has always been wealth in China. With a population of 1.3 billion, there are more than a million millionaires and the number keeps growing, making it a target-rich environment for large luxury vehicles with hired drivers and sumptuous backseats.

Driving is a harrowing experience

China is a country where driving is not for the faint of heart, especially in major cities, but that has not curbed consumer appetite for vehicles. The congestion -- it can take hours to travel a short distance in Beijing -- has bred precision driving skills on roads where pedestrians, bikes, scooters and odd three-wheeled minicars give way to larger luxury cars and alpha buses that blare their horns incessantly to warn everyone to move aside.

The overarching rule: first is right, meaning the vehicle closest to a gap in traffic goes for it. Lane markings and red lights are mere suggestions. Against all logic, left-hand turns are executed from the far-right lane in an asphalt dance where the spaces between vehicles and their surroundings are measured in inches. Near-misses are constant, actual accidents surprisingly rare.

Into this mix now wade an excited Lu and Gao, both 30, who live frugally and have saved for their first car for as long as they can remember. They bought a Mondeo because it cost less than the Volkswagens, Hondas or Buicks they researched online. "Our friends bought a Mondeo and recommended it," Lu said. "We picked Ford because the Mondeo price is affordable and the car is very big, safe, spacious and good for family use."

Word of mouth and Internet comparisons are as important in China as in any mature market.

They paid 150,000 yuan, or renminbi (RMB) in cash, about $23,834. Credit is available in China, but less than 20% trust or use it. Lu and Gao got financial assistance from their parents instead.

Lotteries for licenses

The couple won the lottery in February -- the one that gave them a license plate. Megacities like Beijing and Shanghai with populations of about 20 million and 23 million, respectively, are addressing traffic gridlock and smog by restricting license plates.

Beijing issues 20,000 new plates a month. Would-be car buyers stand a 1-in-32 chance of securing a plate that allows city driving six days a week. The last number on the plate determines the days the car can enter the city. Driving on the unauthorized day can be punished by a fine or even imprisonment. In Shanghai, 8,000 plates are auctioned monthly and sell for an average price of 45,300 RMB or $7,200.

Lu and Gao beat the odds and won a license plate in the February draw. They ordered their new Mondeo in April from Zhangqi Furui Ford. "Furui" means lucky, said sales manager Wen Gao Jiang. The model they wanted was not among the roughly 100 vehicles in stock so they waited 10 days for it to arrive. Delivery day provided a joyous excuse to be late for work.

Both have their driver's licenses -- no small feat in China where there is a series of about 10 stations to pass, including written and driving examinations, as well as sight, hearing, strength and flexibility tests, involving squats and other calisthenics that may take westerners by surprise.

But Lu said she might leave most of the driving to Gao."I'm not good at it," she said with a shy smile. Zhangqi Furui is one of about 400 Ford dealerships in China. That will grow to 700 by 2015.

"Overall, Beijing car sales are down more than 50%," said Jiang, who has sold cars for almost six years. He insists the Ford dealership is not down as much as the competition and hopes to see sales double in the next few years with the new Focus and four utility vehicles in the lineup.

Spinning wheel in service department

Customers who spend 1,000 RMB (about $160) on service at Zhangqi Furui can spin a wheel for a chance to win a prize or gift to show customer appreciation. Jiang said service brings in 70% of revenue. When between 60% and 70% are first-time buyers in China, first impressions are crucial. That is why Ford doesn't want to add more than two dealerships a week, to ensure it is done right, said Joe Hinrichs, president of Ford Asia-Pacific and Africa. But he knows 400 dealers in a country of 1.3 billion people means accessibility is limited.

At a flagship Buick dealership in the eastern part of Beijing, the showroom and service areas are massive. The dealership sold 1,200 vehicles in 2011 with about 11 salespeople and another 77 staffing the 45 service bays and paint shop that service about 36,000 vehicles a year.

Tea and massages

Common waiting areas have room for extended families, including grandparents, who pick up the new car or spend part of the day waiting for their car to be serviced. There are VIP lounges for elite business clients with formal tea service areas and high-end massage chairs to work muscles from head to toe.

There are 3.7 million Buick owners in China and 60% of sales are high-end, said Jean Liu-Barnocki, brand director for Buick China, which has 114 dealerships offering full coverage in larger tier 1 and 2 cities and 50% coverage in smaller tier 3 cities. "We try to standardize the sales process from the way we welcome them into the showroom to the sales process and even the walk through the dealership," Liu-Barnocki said.

GM will expand its retail network from 2,900 in 2011 to 3,500 this year, including the Buick, Chevrolet, Cadillac and the new Chinese Baojun brand, said Kevin Wale, president of GM China. To meet demand, CEO Dan Akerson said GM is on track to boost production capacity in China to 5 million vehicles a year by 2016.

Growth will come from smaller cities

GM is determined to hang onto its No. 1 sales status in the country by expanding into midsize cities in China's interior to make up for a drop-off in cities like Beijing because of the license restrictions.

An Ernst & Young report said the restrictions will continue to dampen vehicle sales. Large cities like Beijing could see half their dealerships go out of business with smaller domestic Chinese automakers taking the brunt of the pain. But it has to be done, said Yale Zhang, managing director of Automotive Foresight in Shanghai.

Beijing now has 70 cars for 1,000 people and almost total gridlock. In the U.S., there are more than 700 cars per 1,000 people. But that density is just not feasible in China's megacities. "Beijing's congestion can't handle it," Zhang said.

http://www.freep.com/article/20120506/BUSINESS01/205060429/1014/business01

Energy audits may be beneficial for both home buyers and sellers

Energy audits can save buyers thousands of dollars in future operating costs. One real estate broker says they help sell houses — even raise prices — rather than wrecking deals.

By Kenneth R. Harney

May 6, 2012

WASHINGTON — It may be the best-kept secret in residential real estate: For a couple of hundred dollars, a potential buyer bidding on an existing house can ask for a formal energy audit along with the standard inspection clause. That audit, in turn, can save the buyer thousands of dollars in future operating costs and pinpoint the specific features of the house that need correction to improve efficiency. It might also be a tipoff to a sobering reality: This house is an energy guzzler. Either the asking price comes down, the seller fixes the problems or I walk.

Though energy audits have been available to consumers for years — the best known is the Home Energy Rating System — virtually nobody in the real estate field promotes them to buyers. Of the 120,000 HERS audits completed last year in the country, according to experts, just 12,000 were done on existing houses — a trivial number in a market with 4.5 million resales. The rest were performed on newly built homes.

Since energy costs rank high on the list of ongoing expenses for many homeowners, and multiple studies have demonstrated that energy-efficiency renovations more than pay for themselves in utilities savings, why aren't more audits performed? In an era of $4-a-gallon gas and autos that are marketed on the basis of their low fuel consumption, shouldn't buyers know about the operating costs of the houses they are bidding on? Shouldn't energy audit contingency clauses in purchase contracts be as commonplace as home inspection clauses?

June Gardner, an EcoBroker with the Evers & Co. realty firm in Washington, D.C, says "it's not on people's minds really. They're much more worried about mold or radon and lead paint" — the sort of defects that standard home inspections turn up.

Even real estate agents who carry the "EcoBroker" green designation don't necessarily push the subject. Frances Vernon, an EcoBroker with Dilbeck Real Estate Real Living in La Cañada Flintridge, said that she's "never been asked by a buyer or seller" to order a HERS energy audit on a house. "It's just not done here. It's not a pressing issue."Realty agents who primarily list houses and represent sellers say buyers almost never ask for them. Nor do sellers, who prefer to avoid giving purchasers ammunition to make costly demands for repairs before closing.

Of four EcoBroker designees randomly selected for interviews around the country, only one said he regularly recommends energy audits to both sellers and purchasers, and finds that they help sell houses — even raise prices — rather than wrecking deals.

Leland DiMeco, owner and principal broker of Boston Green Realty, said although not all clients opt for an energy audit, "I do bring it to the table" with everyone. "It just makes sense. Most buyers want to feel comfortable that they've done their due diligence and know what they're getting." Even sellers are warming to the idea.

DiMeco recently made the energy audit pitch to a seller of an 87-year-old New England colonial that had significant energy leakage and efficiency problems. The seller agreed to do a HERS audit, then spent money putting spray cellulose insulation in the attic, replacing the leakiest windows, upgrading interior lighting and replacing some low-efficiency appliances.

The result: Shoppers loved seeing the energy audit, the upgrades and the seller's full disclosures. The house sold six days after listing for $50,000 more than nearby, energy-wasting comparable homes. Doing the HERS audit "turned out to be a great marketing benefit for the sellers," said DiMeco, even though they needed some convincing upfront.

Steve Baden, executive director of the Residential Energy Services Network, the organization that trains and certifies inspectors conducting HERS audits, says that although the "adoption rate" on existing homes "has been low," builders of new homes have been enthusiastic. Forty percent of homes constructed in the country now get HERS audits and scores, he said.

About 4,000 auditors are certified to conduct HERS studies. They can be found, along with information on contractors to do energy-efficiency improvements, at http://www.RESNET.us. Equally important to home buyers, said Baden: RESNET has negotiated agreements with two of the largest home inspection networks to begin offering lower-cost energy-efficiency surveys and performance audits as add-ons to standard inspections. Once this becomes commonplace, there may be little need for separate contract contingencies for an energy audit: Energy efficiency will just be part of the package.

http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-harney-20120506,0,7456238.story

Greening New York's most iconic skyscraper

By Nick Zieminski

NEW YORK | Sun May 6, 2012 7:03am EDT

(Reuters) - The Empire State Building has long been a signature feature of Manhattan's skyline. But owners of the iconic edifice, planning a $1 billion initial public offering, hope to convince investors and tenants that it's what's on the inside that really counts.

The 81-year-old New York tower has undergone a massive, 3-year makeover designed to cut energy use, modernize office suites, and attract tenants willing to shoulder higher rents. Building owners and key suppliers on Monday will detail the energy savings they've achieved so far.

While the new One World Trade Center has claimed the title of New York's tallest from the Empire State, the 102-floor Art Deco building towers over many others when it comes to the world of building retrofits.

The Empire State is the highest-profile project in a growing collection of renovations that are becoming big business for industrial conglomerates and electrical service firms.

As America's towers show their age, especially in the Big Apple, where nearly half of office space was built before 1945, companies like Honeywell International Inc, Johnson Controls Inc, Siemens AG and United Technologies Corp are eyeing a retrofit market predicted to generate $16 billion in annual revenue by 2020, up from about $5 billion last year.

Johnson Controls, a building efficiency systems supplier based in Milwaukee whose contract for the Empire State is worth about $20 million, estimates six jobs are created for every million dollars spent. By that measure, the retrofit industry will provide almost 100,000 jobs, a meaningful number for a U.S. construction industry in which unemployment remains high after the housing bust and financial crisis.

To be sure, not everyone can afford the tens of millions of dollars needed for a sizable retrofit. Financing is scarce and investments can take years to pay off.

But for those who can pull off the upfront payment, a renovation can boost rents, lead to longer leases, lower vacancy rates and attract larger, higher quality tenants.

The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated the return on investment of the Empire State Building's renovations at 4 percent, but other less famous buildings have returns in the triple digits.

HIGHER RENTS, LOWER COSTS

Seeds for the Empire State project date back to the 2006 launch of the Clinton Foundation's Climate Initiative. Anthony Malkin, president of the Malkin Group that controls the Empire State Building, was at a cocktail party at the just-completed "green" Hearst Tower when he offered another building he owned at 35th Street and Broadway as a retrofit test case.

But the Clinton Foundation was keen for something more iconic and pushed for the Empire State Building.

In 2008, Malkin's team started the project in secret, initially unsure whether a retrofit could deliver double-digit energy savings. More than 60 possible fixes were considered before the team settled on eight with the best payoff. They weighed factors like carbon dioxide emissions, expected pay-back and whether the scheme could be marketed to tenants.

In fixing the building, there were two things that could not change: the landmark's Art Deco exterior and the 86th-floor observation deck, a cash cow for the business. The deck and the building's tenants were not disrupted, which forced much of the work to be done at night.

The retrofit was launched the following year as part of a more than $550 million capital investment plan. The upgrade promises a steady pay-back, as building owners expect to shave $4.4 million a year off energy costs. Johnson Controls expects the redo to deliver the promised 38 percent energy savings by next year.

And tenants are already paying more, especially as the 2.85 million-square-foot, 1,454-foot-tall building has replaced small renters with large organizations such as LF USA, part of Li & Fung Ltd, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp and French cosmetics company Coty Inc.

"I get a competitive advantage when big tenants come in here," Malkin said, adding that average office rents in August 2006 were $26.50 per square foot, compared to the high $40s to high $50s nowadays.

While the building is still leasing below comparable properties in Midtown, the gap has narrowed such that the Empire State's average rent is now a third under market, compared with two-thirds below in 2006, according to data supplied by Studley, a real estate services firm representing tenants.

WINDOW FACTORY

The way Americans work has changed and this forces offices to evolve. Many jobs that involved coming in and sitting at a desk in an enclosed space for eight hours can now be done from home. There is less need for hat racks, but more for open floor plans and collaborative spaces for talking face-to-face.

And mobile workers need electrical power, servers and high-speed networks - which means equipment to cool all the equipment. A high-tech tenant, or anyone concerned about image, is willing to pay a premium for space assigned a government Energy Star rating or the related, third-party LEED rating.

The updated Empire State Building ranks in the top 10 of all buildings in terms of efficiency and won a Gold LEED rating. It mixed quick-pay back measures, such as new lighting and new ventilation systems, with a host of longer-term fixes, such as replacing or modernizing boilers and chillers.

A retrofit of the basement chiller plant was initially budgeted at $22 million but ended up costing far less once the team realized the giant chillers, resembling submersibles, could be rebuilt rather than replaced.

Engineers took over one floor for a factory to upgrade the building's 6,500 windows. These were remanufactured with suspended coated film and gas fill to boost insulation, then reinstalled. The windows and radiative barriers account for a hefty chunk of expected energy savings.

On many floors, engineers removed dropped ceilings that had been installed in various stages over the years, which blocked out part of the light.

"It felt stuffy," said Johnson Controls project engineer Paul Rode. He is currently overseeing 10 retrofits, up from the one or two in a typical year.

Tenants can go online to access information on their energy use thanks to 25,000 sensors that dot the walls and feed data into a central management system. Like an eco-friendly big brother, the system knows when someone is in the room and when to adjust the temperature.

"PROGENITOR" FOR JOBS

The Empire State Building is hardly alone in the world of Manhattan retrofits. Google Inc's recent takeover of a sprawling art deco Port Authority facility in Chelsea is another. Near Central Park, Sir Norman Foster's celebrated Hearst Tower rose atop a 1928 Art Deco building, whose insides were gutted. JP Morgan renovated its 1960s Park Avenue tower with such amenities as an 11th floor herb garden.

"For the next 50 years, the majority of architects' work will be on projects that are already built," said Bill Worthen, who directs sustainability efforts at The American Institute of Architects.

Johnson Controls estimates the current market for retrofits of public sector buildings, such as schools and courthouses, alone is around $5 billion to $6 billion a year.

"The opportunity on the commercial side is probably double that," said Dave Myers, head of the company's building efficiency segment, who noted that the Empire State Building's experience is now discussed on every project.

Nevertheless, hurdles remain to wider adoption of retrofits. Financing is difficult as few lenders have ventured into loans for capital-intensive commercial projects. And even if capital can be raised, building owners are often skeptical about a pay-back that can take years.

Malkin plans to publish an unfiltered diary of costs and savings for others to emulate, saying he wants to be a "progenitor" for jobs created by the energy efficiency movement.

Other buildings may take ideas from the project's performance contracting, in which a service provider guarantees certain energy savings, as by Johnson Controls did for the Empire State. This method has been mainly visible in the municipal, university, schools and hospitals, or "MUSH", market.

Some owners are put off by a long planning process, or by the split incentive between building owners, who bear the cost of investment, and tenants, who benefit from lower operating costs.

Johnson Controls' engineer Rode is frustrated when he sees retrofit projects stall for no good reason, but he subscribes to the notion of a tipping point in the industry.

"If we figure it out here, we can do it anywhere," Rode said, chuckling at his own riff on Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York," a song as iconic as the Empire State Building.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/06/us-usa-construction-retrofits-idUSBRE84505S20120506?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=71&google_editors_picks=true