FORD CMAX SOLAR CAR!!

Electric cars offer freedom from the gas pump, but they tie drivers to the task of charging up. To truly cut the power cord, it would help if you could carry your generator on board, and the fuel would be free.

That's the allure of the solar car, in many ways the holy grail of clean energy transport. It came one step closer to reality this week with Ford Motor debuting its C-MAX Solar Energi Concept car at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2014 in Las Vegas. (Related Quiz: What You Don't Know About Cars and Fuel)

Ford used the biggest consumer electronics show of the year to showcase not-yet-ready-for-mass-production technology and the possibilities for renewable energy transportation. (See related, "Pictures: Cars That Fired Our Love-Hate Relationship With Fuel.")

The solar plug-in hybrid crossover, based on Ford's C-MAX Energi plug-in hybrid, has 16 square feet (1.5 square meters) of photovoltaic panels built into the roof.

Even with a full day of blazing sunlight, the eight-kilowatt-capacity panels wouldn't capture enough energy to fully charge the car's lithium-ion battery. So Ford, along with the Georgia Institute of Technology, developed a flat acrylic lens to stand over the car in a canopy that can marshal sunlight from a larger area. The lens would act like a magnifying glass and concentrate sunlight onto the car, boosting solar uptake eightfold. It would take about seven hours of sunlight to fully charge the battery, which could then power the car for an estimated 21 miles (33.8 kilometers) before a gas engine kicks in. (See related, "Pictures: A Rare Look Inside Carmakers' Drive for 55 MPG.")

That means the C-MAX Solar Energi is still tethered to conventional fuel, but integrating solar energy into vehicles poses special challenges. Engineers—both professional and student—have been grappling for years with the issues of capacity, aerodynamics, and energy storage, in their zeal to design and build vehicles that run on the sun. (See related, "Wireless Power May Cut the Cord for Plug-In Devices, Including Cars. ")

Baker Hughes Incorporated announced today that the international rig count for December 2013 was 1,335, up 24 from the 1,311 counted in November 2013, and up 82 from the 1,253 counted in December 2012.

 

The international offshore rig count for December 2013 was 306, down 10 from the 316 counted in November 2013, and up 7 from the 299 counted in December 2012.

The average U.S. rig count for December 2013 was 1,771, up 15 from the 1,756 counted in November 2013, and down 13 from the 1,784 counted in December 2012. The average Canadian rig count for December 2013 was 372, down 13 from the 385 counted in November 2013, and up 19 from the 353 counted in December 2012.

The worldwide rig count for December 2013 was 3,478, up 26 from the 3,452 counted in November 2013, and up 88 from the 3,390 counted in December 2012.

USA ENEGRY BOOM

America's energy boom will continue for decades, and natural gas will replace coal as the largest source of U.S. electricity by 2035, the Department of Energy forecast today.U.S. production of crude oil will increase through 2016, when it will approach the record set in 1970, before leveling off and then slowly declining after 2020. Natural gas production will grow steadily, jumping 56% from 2012 to 2040, according to an early release of an annual report by DOE's Energy Information Administration.

"Advanced technologies for crude oil and natural gas production are continuing to increase domestic supply and reshape the U.S. energy economy as well as expand the potential for U.S. natural gas exports," Adam Sieminski, EIA Administrator, said in releasing theAnnual Energy Outlook 2014.

OBAMA WAR ON COAL

With 2013 now at an end, coal industry participants are beginning to take stock of how the fuel fared this past year. Unfortunately, as Resource Investing News recently pointed out, the answer is: not well.

That's especially true in the United States, where President Barack Obama is waging what coal enthusiasts are calling a "war on coal." Perhaps most notably, this past year saw both the US Environmental Protection Agency propose new rulesaimed at decreasing carbon pollution from future power plants, and the Department of the Treasury declare that the US will no longer support new coal-fired power plants worldwide, as per The New York Times.

It's thus not too surprising that coal production in the US was lower in the third quarter of 2013 than it was in the year-ago period. Specifically, it came in at 256.7 million stone, a 0.9-percent decrease from Q3 2013, Platts recently quoted the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) as saying. The EIA's forecast for the entirety of 2013 is similar — based on the first three quarters of the year, it estimates that the US produced about 993.1 million stone of coal last year, around 2.3 percent less than the 2012 total.