Fast and green. That’s what it takes to get to the winner’s circle in a new type of auto racing.
Called green racing, it’s a meshing of the fast and furious world of auto racing with the quest for cleaner-burning fuels and more energy efficient engines. But make no mistake about it, being green does not mean being slow.
The conference is organized by the ACS Green Chemistry Institute®, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting and advancing the discovery and design of chemical products and processes that eliminate the generation and use of hazardous substances in all aspects of the global chemical enterprise.
Green racing is a concept that awards a prize to the fastest car that produces the smallest environmental footprint in a race. The hope is that the concept will lead to vital innovations in the cars we use in everyday life, clean up the environment and help reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
“Race cars actually move the technology of street cars in several ways,” John C. Glenn, an environmental specialist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says. “One, the technology of race cars develops at a much faster pace than the technology in street cars. And two, they form the basis of what kind of cars people want. They see cars racing on the track, and that’s the kind of car they want to buy.” American Chemical Society
“We clearly did not want to change racing. We didn’t want to make it boring and slow,” he said. “We didn’t feel as if that would accomplish our goal, which is to get people to use more energy-efficient vehicles and to stimulate the development of more energy-efficient technologies.”
Rather than holding a separate competition for green vehicles, the Green Challenge judges scored the cars already entered in the 1,000-mile Petit Le Mans endurance race at Road Atlanta, using a formula that accounted for the cars’ energy efficiency, greenhouse-gas emission and petroleum-equivalent fuel cost.
The Le Mans race was the perfect place to start, Glenn said, because the rules permit a wide range of “street-legal” fuels including E10 and E85 ethanol blends, sulfur-free diesel and gas-electric hybrids.
Tom Wallace, GM’s global vehicle chief engineer for performance vehicles, called the Green Challenge results “Corvette Racing’s greatest victory.” Glenn was pleased as well - pleased enough to spread the green-racing gospel far and wide.
“When I talk to people involved in racing, I tell them, ‘You’re coming to a crossroads. You can either be the poster boys for global warming, or you can be part of the solution. It all depends on you,’” he said. msnbc.com
