Unit 4, Lesson 1
Getting Oriented: The Move to Alternative Fuels
This lesson helps find out what your students know about our ever-changing transportation system and the move to alternative fuels through discussion activities. Discussions include asking students to think about family holidays and the travel requirements of such events, how and why we use gasoline, and how transportation might look in the future. You may wish to contact a "Clean Cities" representative for a presentation. To find the nearest Clean Cities representative, see the U.S. Department of Energy's Clean Cities Coalitions information online.
Objectives:
The students will:
- > become oriented to the major issues involved with transportation (specifically the shift to alternative fuels) and to working in teams, and
- > become aware of the various approaches to the problem of transportation-related air pollution.
TEKS:
English, Language Arts, and Reading
Science
- Environmental Systems: 8B
- Geology, Meteorology, and Oceanography: 9B-C
Social Studies
Agricultural Science and Technology Education
Time:
20 to 45 minutes for each activity
Materials:
- > Project notebooks or folders for organizing handouts and other information students obtain throughout the course of this unit
- > Gasoline-Powered Engines: Time for a Change
- > The Transportation Challenge
- > In Your Community, How Important Is It?
Teacher Preparation:
Background Reading for the Teacher
Gasoline-Powered Engines: Time for a Change
In most areas of the United States we depend on gasoline-powered, privately owned automobiles to get us where we want to go. Private cars have been part of the American lifestyle since they became affordable for the American family in the 1920s and replaced hay-powered horses as a way to move around. With the growing number of vehicles and the increasing number of miles we drive, the horseless carriage has created a wealth of problems that weren’t imagined when cars first became an essential part of American life.
Population is increasing annually at home and abroad. Energy requirements are increasing even faster as standards of living rise throughout the world. Although the United States owns only 2 to 3 percent of the world’s proven oil resources, it consumes 25 percent of the world’s annual oil production. The global demand for oil has risen and created international tensions and even war between oil-exporting and oil-importing countries. Excessive amounts of carbon dioxide, produced when gasoline burns, are building up in the atmosphere and contributing to global warming and climate change.
Rates of lung problems among young children and the elderly have risen, with fingers pointing to the emissions from automobile tailpipes. Despite the improvements in automotive technology that have made individual cars more efficient and less polluting, some problems continue to grow as more people drive more miles each year.
A Major Challenge for the Country
There is no single solution to the challenge facing us. The various approaches generally fall into one or more of these three major categories:
- > Improving fuel efficiency and emissions controls
This approach includes designing more fuel-efficient and less polluting gasoline-powered vehicles, choosing to buy and use smaller and/or more fuel-efficient cars, and making good use of efficient technologies by keeping cars well maintained and driving them conscientiously.
- > Reducing the number of cars or miles driven
This approach includes reducing the number of miles driven per person by using alternative forms of transportation (mass transit, bicycling, walking), carpooling, combining multiple errands into single trips, and telecommuting.
- > Using alternative fuels
This approach includes developing and using alternative-fueled vehicles (AFVs).
While meeting this challenge will require a combination of the three approaches, this unit focuses on the third—the adoption of alternative fuels—and issues related to it. Research and development of new fuels, power systems, and vehicles are very costly. Making informed decisions about the positive and negative impacts of alternative fuels is important if we are to avoid environmental, health, security, economic, and infrastructure problems that may arise with an alternative fuel. In fact, the change to alternatives has been under way for many years. It now involves automotive engineers, automobile manufacturers, fuel companies, environmental policy makers, mechanics, city planners, and people in many other professions and roles.
These groups have taken the following steps:
- > Driven by the desire to make our sources of energy more secure, the federal government has encouraged fuel industries to develop domestic sources of power—that is, power that comes from fuel obtained within our national borders.
- > With the goal of improving air quality in urban areas, the federal government has worked with industry and local governments to develop and field-test buses, cars, trucks, and other vehicles that use various types of alternative fuels.
- > By 2000, over 80 cities had joined the federally sponsored Clean Cities program, which aims to clear the air by working with local businesses and governments to expand use of AFVs and supporting refueling infrastructure.
- > Car manufacturers have developed a variety of prototype cars and begun to market and field-test a few models in certain regions of the country where air pollution is worst and/or where alternative fuels are already available.
- > AFVs have been road-tested, and comparisons have been made between them. They include combustion engines powered by natural gas, propane, biofuels, methanol, and ethanol; electric motors powered by a variety of batteries and fuel cells; and hybrids that rely on both.
Key Pieces of Legislation
Two pieces of legislation are currently moving the United States toward alternative
fuels: the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA) and the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPACT). The Clean Air Act is primarily focused on cleaning the air and promotes any power source for which a vehicle is certified to meet federal clean fuel vehicle emissions standards. The Energy Policy Act has a slightly different focus; it promotes the use of fuels that are substantially not petroleum that would yield substantial energy-security and environmental benefits. The fuels promoted by each act are listed below.
CLEAN FUELS AND ALTERNATIVE FUELS
Promoted by Federal Legislation |
CAAA
Clean Fuels |
EPACT
Alternative Fuels |
| Methanol (M85) |
X |
X |
| Ethanol (E85) |
X |
X |
| Other alcohols or alcohol blends |
X |
|
| Other alcohols separately, or in mixtures containing 85% or more alcohol with gasoline (but no less than 70%, as determined necessary by rulemaking) |
X |
|
| Natural gas |
X |
X |
| Liquefied petroleum gas (propane) |
X |
X |
| Electricity |
X |
X |
| Hydrogen |
X |
X |
| Clean diesel |
X |
|
| Coal-derived liquid fuels |
X |
|
| Reformulated gasoline |
X |
|
Biofuels (fuels derived from biological materials) and
"neat" (100%) biodiesel |
|
X |
Directions:
ACTIVITY 1 - CLASS DISCUSSION
What Do Students Already Know?
Time
30 minutes
Find out what your students know about our ever-changing transportation system and the move to alternative fuels through one of the following discussion activities.
Discussion: Home for the Holidays
- Ask students to think about getting their family together for a holiday dinner (or traveling 50 miles or more to see a grandparent): How do they travel? How long does it take? What equipment, fuel, and resources are needed? Describe the public infrastructure that exists to support travel. What food is on the table (turkey, burgers, pasta, rice, fruit, and vegetables)? Where did the food originate? How was it delivered to their community?
How did they get it from the market to their home?
- If this same dinner were held in 1850, 1890, 1920, or 1950, how would the answers change? What issues were probably raised when the internal combustion engine first replaced the horse and buggy (for example, noise, smell, danger, health, refueling)? How did the community and the country change to accommodate new forms of transportation?
- If this same dinner were held in 2020 or 2050, what kinds of changes would the students expect to see?
Discussion: Why Use Gasoline?
- Ask the class to brainstorm a list of fuels and identify the ones that are or might be used in vehicles. These may include the fuels listed in the teacher’s introduction to this lesson or many more.
- Ask why gasoline, rather than any of the other fuels they’ve identified, is the fuel primarily used in cars.
- Identify issues related to each that might deter its use. The students may raise issues such as lack of knowledge or technology, safety, environmental hazards, limited supplies, lobbying by industry, and so on.
Discussion: Traveling in the Future
- Read the following to students to stimulate their thinking about transportation in the future.
Picture yourself in 10 years as you leave your home to do daily errands or get to where you work. Will you enjoy revving the internal combustion engine of your car or experience the near silence of an electric motor? Will you decide to get some exercise by riding on the new bike path that runs directly to your office, studio, or shop, or to a convenient train stop that takes you to the next town?
How often will you fuel (or charge) your car of the future? Where is the most convenient place to do it? At the service station next to the highway, while you do errands on foot after work, or at the drive-up or walk-up window as you buy your morning coffee?
As you turn on the radio or your CD player, will you hear reports of severe weather problems due to climate change, or will the announcer have more optimistic news
("Declining automobile emissions are decreasing levels of greenhouse gases.")?
- Ask the class what kind of vehicle will move them where they want to go.
How will vehicles change? Will they be running on gasoline or some other fuel? What
fuel might it be? Ask what reasons exist for changing from gasoline to some other fuel.
ACTIVITY 2 - READING AND DISCUSSION
Gasoline-Powered Engines: Time for a Change
Time
20 minutes
- Ask students why it’s important for the United States to make a change from
gasoline and other fossil fuels. They may raise many issues, such as the finite supplies
of oil, global warming, and other environmental issues.
- Distribute the student handout Gasoline-Powered Engines: Time for a Change, which describes in more detail the reasons for learning about alternative
fuels and the issues our country faces related to transportation. Provide students time
to read the handout and discuss the questions at the end. Key points to make and possible answers to the questions include the following:
- At first gasoline was very expensive; it was shipped long distances; it was considered unsafe; and it was dirty, leaving residue on engines and other vehicle parts. Other fuels, such as ethanol, were safer, cleaner, and available domestically.
- Reasons to seek alternatives to fossil fuels include depleting oil reserves, increasing amounts of harmful emissions due to a growing population’s growing use of energy, conflicts between oil-producing and oil-importing countries, global warming and rising sea levels due to a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, pollution of freshwater supplies, and noise pollution.
- Automobile manufacturers are developing AFVs. Many cars, trucks, and buses are already using alternative fuels. Governments and industry are gradually developing new fueling infrastructures.
- Liquid petroleum gas (LPG, or propane) is by far the most common alternative fuel; the numbers of other fuels are growing quickly, however, as new technologies are developed to better use them.
- Some students may have experience with AFVs, especially if they have been to car shows or an electric car race. Riding in most AFVs is similar to riding in a gasoline-powered car. The only differences may be how quiet electric cars are and the french fries smell associated with biodiesel.
ACTIVITY 3 - CLASS DISCUSSION
Preparing Students to Meet the Transportation Challenge
Time
20 minutes
- Distribute the student handout The Transportation Challenge, which describes the six-week project ahead. Explain to students that for the next six weeks they will work in teams to investigate alternative fuels in depth and become the class experts on at least one of them. The students will analyze the impact of widely adopting an alternative fuel in three major areas:
- > its long-term availability and the ease of distribution;
- > its impact on emissions, human health, and the environment; and
- > its ease of operation, maintenance, and refueling.
While researching each of these three areas, the class as a whole will also analyze the needs of its own community and the current transportation system's impact on it.
As the class experts, fuel teams present their findings to their classmates. The evaluation of the fuels can be done by the other students in one of two ways:
> Individual students are assigned a stakeholder or interest group to represent. They listen to the presentations and compare and evaluate the fuels from that perspective.
> Evaluation panels of students are formed and assigned a stakeholder or interest group to represent. (We suggest that each evaluation panel consist of experts on several different fuels.) As a panel, students listen to the presentations and compare and evaluate the fuels from that perspective. The class will then decide which fuel or fuels should be adopted in their community and develop a final presentation to make to community representatives about their fuel choices.
- Explain that their decision might be based on how well an AFV performs on the road, how far one can drive between fueling, or how well the car starts in cold weather. Encourage the class to also consider broader and longer-term goals for the country, such as reducing environmental pollution, improving public health, slowing down global warming, and becoming more self-sufficient. Whatever fuel the students choose, it should be appropriate for their own community. A fuel that’s most appropriate in clearing the air in southern California (where people commute long distances and smog has been a problem for 50 years) may differ from the fuel that is most readily available in the agricultural areas of the Great Plains. Those fuels may differ again from what is cleanest and most convenient for East Coast inner-city residents who use cars for a few short trips during the week. As the students make their decisions, remind them of these questions: What are the most important transportation issues our community is facing? Which fuels best resolve those issues?
- If you have already made arrangements for a public presentation, discuss with
students what form their presentation may take and who will be in their audience.
If not, discuss with students the possibilities for public presentations: where and when
they might take place, who the audience would be, and what form the presentations would
take. Presentations may take one or more forms: a poster or series of posters, a video,
a PowerPoint presentation, a web site posting, or a public forum using transparencies.
Possible venues include the school or public library, other public buildings, or a community happening such as an Earth Day event. Throughout the activity, teams will have at least three opportunities to give mini-presentations to their classmates, which should help them prepare for the community presentation.
ACTIVITY 4 - CLASS DISCUSSION
In Your Community, How Important Is It?
Time
45 minutes
- Distribute the student handout In Your Community, How Important Is It?
- Divide the class into groups of three or four students. Have them work in teams to rate the importance (from 0 to 3) of each of the issues listed. Ask them to come to consensus as a group by giving each person an opportunity to voice his or her opinion about each issue.
- When the teams are finished, have them share their answers and attempt to come to consensus as a class. Remind them to think about the importance of each issue in your unique community.
- Explain that in the coming weeks (assuming you complete more lessons), their opinions may change as they learn more about each fuel and issue. Some issues may not seem as important; new issues may arise. The students should analyze what they learn about the issues as a scientist analyzes data in an experiment, with an open mind willing to look at the facts objectively. Throughout their research, their conclusions and opinions may change. What’s important is that their new opinions are supported with facts.
- As students work through each of the three community research activities, refer back to this discussion and ask if their opinions are changing about the importance of each issue.
Extensions
Ask students to interview their parents about the changes their parents predict in transportation and our vehicles for the next decade. Responses could be pooled and read aloud anonymously in class to compare how the parents' views differ from the students'.
Resources:
Classroom Materials 
Web Sites
Source: "Cars of Tomorrow," Chapter 1, page 8, Northeast Sustainable Energy Association.
