Mitsubishi Motors' shares jumped Friday on a report the Japanese automaker would double its annual electric car output plan.
The Nikkei business daily said Mitsubishi would lift its production target for i-Miev cars to 20,000 as well as more than double lithium ion battery output.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
The green business of pig poop
Pig farmers in Sweden are trialing a new network to sell the combustible gasses emitted by their fertilizer, raising cash and helping the environment.
Eighteen Swedish farmers and the 130,000 tonnes of excrement produced at their farms each year are part of a pilot bio-gas project in which methane gas is extracted from the pig by-product before it is put out in the fields as fertilizer.
Once infrastructure is in place, methane gas will be pumped to a purifying installation via a network of underground pipes and turned into bio-gas.
According to the project managers, the amount of energy they expect to be developed in the first phase lasting two years and using 130,000 tonnes of excrement, will be the equivalent of 2.1 million liters of petrol that is enough to run 30 trucks, 30 busses and 250 cars per year.
(SOUNDBITE)(Swedish) PIG FARMER GUNNAR JOHANSSON: "I have a lot of fertilizer from all my pigs and if one could create gas and fuel for cars and buses from my fertilizer I thought it would be a great idea. That is why I got interested you see."
(SOUNDBITE)(Swedish) BIOGAS BRALANDA PROJECT MANAGER KARIN STENLUND: "No one has done this before. We see an enormous interest from all of Sweden, today we have a visit from Scotland and we have inquiries from different parts of the world as well. And what is unique is that everyone else has been thinking in the opposite way, to move the fertilizer to a big plant. And then you drive away all profit and environmental gains on the way there."
"We haven't been thinking like this. That this could be a source of fuel, not gasoline, but still to power buses and cars. We simply haven't understood the potential until now. So we are taking this with us to other places exporting the knowledge."
(SOUNDBITE)(Swedish) PIG FARMER GUNNAR JOHANSSON: "There is steaming methane from wells and mounds of fertilizer around here all the time. And if we can extract that and make fuel out of it… That would be brilliant both for the environment and for my wallet I hope."
"Well I hope that I will be able to make loads of money. I hope that I will become a proper oil sheikh…"
Eighteen Swedish farmers and the 130,000 tonnes of excrement produced at their farms each year are part of a pilot bio-gas project in which methane gas is extracted from the pig by-product before it is put out in the fields as fertilizer.
Once infrastructure is in place, methane gas will be pumped to a purifying installation via a network of underground pipes and turned into bio-gas.
According to the project managers, the amount of energy they expect to be developed in the first phase lasting two years and using 130,000 tonnes of excrement, will be the equivalent of 2.1 million liters of petrol that is enough to run 30 trucks, 30 busses and 250 cars per year.
(SOUNDBITE)(Swedish) PIG FARMER GUNNAR JOHANSSON: "I have a lot of fertilizer from all my pigs and if one could create gas and fuel for cars and buses from my fertilizer I thought it would be a great idea. That is why I got interested you see."
(SOUNDBITE)(Swedish) BIOGAS BRALANDA PROJECT MANAGER KARIN STENLUND: "No one has done this before. We see an enormous interest from all of Sweden, today we have a visit from Scotland and we have inquiries from different parts of the world as well. And what is unique is that everyone else has been thinking in the opposite way, to move the fertilizer to a big plant. And then you drive away all profit and environmental gains on the way there."
"We haven't been thinking like this. That this could be a source of fuel, not gasoline, but still to power buses and cars. We simply haven't understood the potential until now. So we are taking this with us to other places exporting the knowledge."
(SOUNDBITE)(Swedish) PIG FARMER GUNNAR JOHANSSON: "There is steaming methane from wells and mounds of fertilizer around here all the time. And if we can extract that and make fuel out of it… That would be brilliant both for the environment and for my wallet I hope."
"Well I hope that I will be able to make loads of money. I hope that I will become a proper oil sheikh…"
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