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photo Anyone like to fly?  Raise your hand.  Don’t be shy. Yeah, that’s what I thought.  But we don’t have a choice — in this great big country of ours, there’s no viable alternative for most trips.  We spend at least four hours to take a one-hour flight, including getting through security and transportation to and from the airports.  And more importantly, with one cross-country trip, we destroy all the other good work we do to reduce our carbon footprint (air travel accounts for 3.5% of humanity’s contribution to climate change). But the age of the airplane uber alles may be waning.  Amtrak is seeking support from Congress for a high-speed passenger rail between Washington DC and New York City.  If the plan goes through, it’ll be the first of similar train lines across the country. Photo via Kris Kros.

Anyone like to fly?  Raise your hand.  Don’t be shy.

Yeah, that’s what I thought.  But we don’t have a choice — in this great big country of ours, there’s no viable alternative for most trips.  We spend at least four hours to take a one-hour flight, including getting through security and transportation to and from the airports.  And more importantly, with one cross-country trip, we destroy all the other good work we do to reduce our carbon footprint (air travel accounts for 3.5% of humanity’s contribution to climate change).

But the age of the airplane uber alles may be waning.  Amtrak is seeking support from Congress for a high-speed passenger rail between Washington DC and New York City.  If the plan goes through, it’ll be the first of similar train lines across the country.

Photo via Kris Kros.

December 16, 2008

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Further proof that Sheikh Mohammed, Crown Prince of Dubai, is trying to kill us

From the Daily Mail:

The world’s first refrigerated beach is to be built at a luxury hotel in Dubai so the filthy rich holidaymakers don’t burn their feet on the scalding hot sand.

The revolutionary beach will sit next to the new Palazzo Versace hotel and will include a system of heat-absorbing pipes built under the sand and giant wind blowers, designed to keep tourists cool in the searing 40-50C heat.

Next up: planners announce that the world’s first heated ski slope will be completed in Gstaad in 2012.

December 16, 2008

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For the past thirty years, the Big Three have been promising one hyper-efficient vehicle after another—the electric car, the “super car,” the hydrogen car—only to produce bigger and bigger gas guzzlers. (It was while the carmakers were supposedly working together, and with a billion dollars of federal money, to create a “new generation of vehicles” that G.M. purchased the rights to the Hummer.)
— Elizabeth Kolbert, “Car Talk”

December 4, 2008

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Cap and trade doesn’t lead to all reasonable action being taken to reduce carbon emissions. It’s like saying, ‘Murder rates are a bit high in this city—let’s hand out murder permits to the people of the city, and have them trade them with each other, so as to arrange for economically optimal murder.
—

David MacKay, a professor of natural philosophy in the physics department at the University of Cambridge // via MoJo

In an interesting article critiquing some of the favored approaches to the climate crisis, Chris Lehmann writes that “you see the strong business bias of the sustainability outlook in the present consensus scheme for curbing greenhouse emissions—a cap-and-trade market permitting polluters to trade, purchase, and sell carbon credits.”  He adds that under a cap and trade scheme, “one surefire winner will likely be, you guessed it, Wall Street investment banking concerns brokering carbon credits to major energy companies.”

November 25, 2008

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Hat in hand, they come a-callin’

CEOs of the Big Three American automakers have convinced Congress to give them $25 billion in low-interest loans.

What a joke.

Maybe they shouldn’t have spent the 90s pouring federal dollars into developing foolhardy, pointless diesel-electric hybrid cars that got nowhere, while putting all their eggs in the SUV and truck basket.  (Hummers for all!  Or at least an Expedition.)

Meanwhile, Toyota and other Japanese car makers rushed to make their own hybrid models, fearful that the American car industry, subsidized under the Clinton administration, would pull ahead in the fuel efficiency race.

So now that they have to beg for money from the government, have they learned their lesson?  Heck no.

As an NYT editorial notes, “with nary a blush, the Ford Motor Company introduced the new star in its line: the 2009, 3-ton, 16-miles-per-gallon, F-150 pickup.”  The company spent $150 million retooling a a Michigan plant to make the trucks.

The editorial concludes:

[The Big Three] evidently haven’t learned enough from their mistakes. Perhaps Congress, from which the automakers are lobbying for more taxpayer money, can help correct their ways — at the very least — by attaching strict fuel-economy requirements to any future aid.

November 6, 2008

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A German ad for wind power.  Great stuff.

November 6, 2008

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[The] economic crisis is the perfect time to make the investments that are necessary to transform our energy infrastructure.[…] We need to create employment opportunities, and the shouldn’t just be ‘make work’ jobs. Let’s build what we need to build: renewable, clean energy infrastructure. That puts money in the pockets of people who will then help to get the economy moving in the right direction again — and not just based on senseless consumption but on sustainable economic progress.
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Al Gore

I run an internship program at CUNY, placing students in positions working to make NYC real estate more energy efficient.  I’ve been pitching a version of Gore’s argument to potential employers, who are understandably hesitant to hire anyone right now.  But now is the best time to invest in relatively inexpensive measures, like hiring an intern or retrofitting your buildings for better system performance, because they will put the companies ahead when the economy rebounds.  Plus, why pay more for energy than you have to?

October 30, 2008

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link Facing New European CO2 Rules, Airlines Promise Higher Fares

The EU is planning to cap greenhouse gas emissions from planes.

By early next decade most of the jets that take off or land from busy airports in cities like London, Paris and Frankfurt will have to comply with European rules on greenhouse gases. The system will include non-European carriers like American Airlines and Singapore Airlines.

A decade from now, a jet thar runs on biofuels may be the only way to fly. Well, we can dream, anyway.

October 28, 2008

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photo “A Google worker trying to determine which of the company’s electric rental cars, which are powered by solar panels, is his.” I want the spearmint-green one! From “Google’s Green Agenda Could Pay Off.” Google is looking into “collaborat[ing] on policies and technologies aimed at improving the electricity grid.”  Company engineers are working on “tools that could help consumers make better decisions about their energy use.”  They’re probably talking about some version of “smart meters,” home metering devices that can regulate when electricity is used.*  In September, California passed $1.63 billion for the Edison SmartConnect program.  Meters that connect to appliances and control when they’re used — shutting off when electricity becomes expensive — would be an easy way for households to save money on energy. * At times of peak demand, electricity is more expensive for the utility but not for the customer.  Customers have no incentive to reduce usage at these times and increase usage at other time — helping to “shave the peaks,” as they say in the business.  In the hottest days of summer in NYC, when the system is almost maxing out, Con Ed is forced to tap into dirtier source of electricity (coal and oil).  If power was more expensive then, people might use less of it, and we’d reduce the city’s overall carbon footprint.

“A Google worker trying to determine which of the company’s electric rental cars, which are powered by solar panels, is his.”

I want the spearmint-green one!

From “Google’s Green Agenda Could Pay Off.”

Google is looking into “collaborat[ing] on policies and technologies aimed at improving the electricity grid.”  Company engineers are working on “tools that could help consumers make better decisions about their energy use.”  They’re probably talking about some version of “smart meters,” home metering devices that can regulate when electricity is used.*  In September, California passed $1.63 billion for the Edison SmartConnect program.  Meters that connect to appliances and control when they’re used — shutting off when electricity becomes expensive — would be an easy way for households to save money on energy.

* At times of peak demand, electricity is more expensive for the utility but not for the customer.  Customers have no incentive to reduce usage at these times and increase usage at other time — helping to “shave the peaks,” as they say in the business.  In the hottest days of summer in NYC, when the system is almost maxing out, Con Ed is forced to tap into dirtier source of electricity (coal and oil).  If power was more expensive then, people might use less of it, and we’d reduce the city’s overall carbon footprint.

October 28, 2008

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photo The motion of the world’s oceans generate twice the energy that the U.S. currently generates from all sources at the very top of their capacity.  In September, the first commercial wind farm began producing electricity off the coast of Portugal. Inhabitat explains how it works: Pelamis Wave Energy Converters are tethered to the ocean floor by cables and are pointed perpendicular to the coastline. Each device is composed of several sections connected with articulated joints. As the waves roll in past the device, each section is driven up and down, while the hydraulic rams inside resist the motion. This resistance pumps high pressure fluid through hydraulic motors, which drive electric generators, thereby producing electricity. This electricity is then transmitted via underwater cables to the mainland. Naturally, the amount of electricity generated depends upon the power of the waves at any given time, so like wind and solar energy, the electricity generated is not on demand.

The motion of the world’s oceans generate twice the energy that the U.S. currently generates from all sources at the very top of their capacity.  In September, the first commercial wind farm began producing electricity off the coast of Portugal.

Inhabitat explains how it works:

Pelamis Wave Energy Converters are tethered to the ocean floor by cables and are pointed perpendicular to the coastline. Each device is composed of several sections connected with articulated joints. As the waves roll in past the device, each section is driven up and down, while the hydraulic rams inside resist the motion. This resistance pumps high pressure fluid through hydraulic motors, which drive electric generators, thereby producing electricity. This electricity is then transmitted via underwater cables to the mainland.

Naturally, the amount of electricity generated depends upon the power of the waves at any given time, so like wind and solar energy, the electricity generated is not on demand.

October 25, 2008

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