Drawing from a higher source
For Peter Hoffman, there’s no incongruity in being part of the auto industry and being environmentally concerned.
The 52-year-old president of his family’s Sierra Autocars dealership in Monrovia graduated from UCLA School of Law, where he wrote about solar energy and conservation for its journal of environmental law.
Hoffman worked one summer at a solar energy research institute. He installed a solar water-heating system at his home in 1979. He drives a 57-miles-per-gallon, gasoline-electric Honda Insight hybrid car.
He has been avid about curtailing electrical consumption at Sierra’s 6.5-acre facility and says efforts in the last two years to eliminate unneeded lighting, turn off computers at night and reduce heating and air conditioning have resulted in a 20% reduction in use.
So it didn’t take all that much for Herb Mendelsohn from 3 Phases Solar, a 2-year-old Manhattan Beach solar energy systems designer and integrator, to make a sale. On Tuesday, Hoffman will trip the switch that activates a $400,000 solar energy system on the roof of the service area for Sierra’s Honda and General Motors franchises.
Mendelsohn, a 3 Phases account executive, says he called on “just about every auto dealer in Southern California” trying to sell the idea that solar makes sense for them. Sierra’s is one of just a few, and by far the largest, of the solar power installations at the region’s new-car dealerships, he says.
Solar makes sense in car dealerships, he says, because they typically have the big, flat-roofed structures that make installation of sizable solar arrays economically and physically possible. Dealerships also have electrical usage patterns that benefit from daylight solar generation and nighttime use of power bought at off-peak rates.
In Sierra’s case, Hoffman figures that the 50-kilowatt system will help reduce his draw on power from Southern California Edison Co. during the day, especially when the air conditioning is going full bore. On slow Sundays, the system could even generate excess power that would automatically flow back onto the electrical grid and be sold to Edison.
Hoffman says that the monthly electricity bill for his main facility runs from $10,000 to $15,000 and that he expects to see it decline by $1,500 to $2,000 with the solar power system in operation. Amortizing a $400,000 system at that pace would take at least 16 1/2 years.
But tax incentive and rebate programs helped cinch the deal, Hoffman says.
Edison, which supplies electrical power in Monrovia, offers 50% rebates on commercial power systems. State and federal tax credits will reduce Sierra’s out-of-pocket cost by about 12% more, he says, leaving the dealership with a direct cost of $152,000. And that, Mendelsohn notes, can be paid in 7 1/2 years from the dealership’s monthly power bill savings.
“It’s nice,” Hoffman says, “to be able to do something that’s socially responsible and economically sound.”
Global warming resolutions
A coalition of environmental groups with investments in General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. stock is set to announce this morning that it will file global warming proxy resolutions with both automakers today.
The resolutions will demand that the companies -- ranked No. 1 and 2 in the world in new-vehicle sales -- implement programs to reduce the production of so-called greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that are believed to contribute to global warming. Greenhouse gases are produced in automakers’ factories and in the tailpipe emission of the cars and trucks they build.
The coalition members can file the resolutions because they are shareholders. The resolutions then must be voted on by all shareholders at the GM and Ford annual meetings in 2003.
Lead organizations in the coalition are the New Jersey-based Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment and the Investor Responsibility Research Center and the Union of Concerned Scientists, both based in Washington.
Honda comes out cleanest
Honda Motor Co. has the cleanest overall passenger vehicle fleet in the U.S., truck-heavy DaimlerChrysler has the dirtiest, and Ford has jumped ahead of General Motors in the green-car sweepstakes, according to a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The group’s biennial ranking is based on published emissions and fuel economy data from the federal Environmental Protection Agency and looks at the model year 2001 fleets of the six largest automakers active in the U.S. In all, the companies sell 90% of the passenger vehicles in the country.
Their vehicles, though, account for 93% of all smog-forming pollution and 92% of all carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles, says Jason Mark, the study’s author and director of the UCS Clean Vehicles Program.
Industry leader Honda was followed by Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co., Ford, GM and DaimlerChrysler.
Ford was the only one of the six companies to move up in the ratings, supplanting GM because of its efforts to reduce smog-forming emissions in its truck fleet, Mark says.
The lead is narrow, though. Ford promised two years ago to boost its sport utility vehicle fuel economy by 25%, and although it is moving in that direction, Mark says, mileage for the rest of its trucks is dropping and erasing Ford’s SUV gains.
The combined gas mileage rating for Ford’s truck fleet is a mere one-tenth of a mile per gallon better than GM’s. And overall, Mark says, Ford vehicles still emit slightly more carbon dioxide, one of the gases linked to global warming, than do GM’s.
Honda in fuel-cell deal
Canadian fuel cell maker Ballard Power Systems has signed a contract to sell 32 fuel cells to Honda during the next three years.
Honda says it intends to place 30 fuel-cell vehicles into test fleet use in California and Japan between now and the end of 2005, with five of them already snapped up by the city of Los Angeles.
Actor’s ‘drive to survive’
Actor Dennis Weaver has been an environmentalist for decades and in recent years has become a big believer in hydrogen engines and the need to develop passenger vehicles that don’t depend on oil.
He lives near Denver and runs an organization called the Institute of Ecolonomics, whose purpose is to promote an economy based on environmentally friendly technologies.
As part of his drive to increase public and political awareness of alternative energy sources, Weaver is sponsoring a cross-country “Drive to Survive” that will start May 1 in Los Angeles and wind up in Washington on May 21.
He’s looking for alternative-fuel vehicles -- and their owners -- to participate.
Those interested can contact Weaver through the institute, (970) 626-3820, or via the program’s Internet site, www .drivetosurvive.info.
