Greg Keoleian, a professor of Sustainable Systems at SNRE and director of its Center for Sustainable Systems, was interviewed by SmartPlanet’s Ian Mount regarding plans by Uruguay to become the world’s biggest producer of wind power and one of the planet’s greenest countries.

U-M students in the Sustainable Energy Systems course (NRE 574/ESENG 599/PP 519) had two electrifying guests this past week, as a pair of 2011 Chevy Volts came to campus. The Volts, manufactured by General Motors, were used to demonstrate topics being discussed in the course taught by Greg Keoleian, the Peter M. Wege Professor of Sustainable Systems at SNRE and the director of its Center for Sustainable Systems (CSS). Students had a chance to sit inside the cars, look under the hoods at the battery system and learn more about the special monitoring equipment installed by GM to assess the car's performance. Nearly 40 GM engineers are also taking the course via distance learning.

Researchers from the University of Michigan and Ford Motor Co. have assessed the global availability of lithium and compared it to the potential demand from large-scale global use of electric vehicles. The research findings, published in the current issue of the Journal of Industrial Ecology, conclude that sufficient resources of lithium exist for the next 90 years to supply a large-scale global fleet of electric vehicles through at least 2100. The study's main authors were Paul Gruber and Pablo Medina. They conducted the research as part of a graduate student research project before graduating in 2010 from the School of Natural Resources and Environment. The research partner was Ford Motor Co., the global automobile manufacturer based in Dearborn, Mich.