How’s this for a unique and eco-friendly way to get from the funeral home to your final resting place? Wade Lind, owner of Sunset Hills Cemetery in Eugene, Oregon came up with the “bike hearst” as an option for those really looking to limit their impact once they’ve passed on. Let’s hope there aren’t many hills along the way.
As I mentioned earlier, living in Ithaca, NY means having to negotiate several steep inclines to get to work. Most bikers around here either find alternative windy roads that slowly make their way to the top — or walk their bike up the tougher sections. Either way, when you’re dressed to impress, sweating your balls off is one thing you want to try and avoid. This in mind, ever since hybrid-electric bikes hit the scene, I’ve been eying them as a means to avoid roundabouts and just hit these hills straight on. iZip offers a bunch of different bikes to handle such scenarios and I was fortunate enough to be given one to test drive.
The IZIP instead is an electric-assist — giving you some extra torque to help you up some tough inclines. To that end, you still have to pedal. The beauty of this system is that you can choose to have it on or off — or at different levels of assist. About to hit a hill and want some support? Simply press the “+” button on the left handlebar and watch the LCD indicator light a few bars higher. Want to back off? Hit the “-” button. It’s as simple as that — and believe me, you still get a workout.
In my rides to work, I generally kept the power button on high — which even on flat portions of the trip, never seem to interfere with normal pedaling. As soon as I hit those nasty inclines, however, I could hear the electric motor kick on and the exertion normally needed to huff and puff greatly reduced. The electric-assist can’t overcome huge inclines, however, — so on some of my trips, I avoided the monster hills and took side streets. This strategy seemed to favor the technology and the assist definitely got me to my destination much faster than normal — and with less sweat.
If you’ve ever lived in or visited Ithaca, NY your probably familiar with the phrase “Ithaca is gorges”. It’s a funny little saying that gives a good indication of the region’s topography — hills, hills, and steeper hills. In fact, the inclines we have around here would make even Lance Armstrong break a sweat. So, it was with great expectation that I took advantage of an opportunity to review the IZIP Trekking Enlightened hybrid-electric bicycle from Currie Technologies. Could it be possible to bike to work and not immediately have to take another shower?
Environmental Research Web recently posted “Calculating the real carbon footprint of vehicles“, an article by Mikhail V Chester and Arpad Horvath of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, which looks at the environmental impact of various forms of transportation (Planes, Trains, Buses and Automobiles) over their entire lifetime, to determine overall greenhouse gasses and energy used. The study includes vehicle manufacture, infrastructure, fuel, delivery of fuel and operation of the vehicle.
The energy usage numbers were simplified into MJ/PKT, mega-joules per passenger-kilometer-traveled. When looked at this way, many passengers riding a single vehicle, even if relatively inefficient, actually use less fuel each. 2 people riding an SUV (.9 MJ/PKT) can use less energy, per passenger, than 5 riders in a standard city bus (4 MJ/PKT); however, the numbers change once the bus is full (.5 MJ/PKT). Large Jet aircraft (1.4 MJ/PKT) compare quite favorably, simply because of how many passengers they can carry.
Energy consumption and GHG emissions per PKT (image from study)
My take-away from the article is that finding ways to share rides, rather than simply focusing on miles-per-gallon, can go along way toward conservation.
A PDF of the complete report can be downloaded from IOP Electronic Journals here. What’s your take?
Google’s Street View fleet has a new low-tech edition: the Google Trike. For those not familiar with the street capture technology, it’s a feature on Google Maps that allows you to view actual images of a street location — in 360 degrees. Beyond the fascinating technology that puts this all together — what’s even more impressive is the army of employees out there on the roads of America (and almost every other country) taking panoramic snapshots using the Google camera vehicles.
Of course, cars (thankfully) aren’t allowed to go everywhere. But that hasn’t stopped Google. The search engine giant has instead hacked a trike to carry the necessary equipment to get the digital deed done. From Autobloggreen,
The three-wheeled, human-powered overgrown tricycles carry 250 pounds of ballast in the form of “a mounted Street View camera and a specially decorated box containing image collecting gadgetry,” says the internet giant. All that extra heft reportedly requires a “specially trained super fit” rider. Google’s new trikes will be deployed first in Genoa, Italy, this spring. Assuming that launch proves successful, Google will send its pedal-powered cameras to the United Kingdom, where they’ll point their lenses towards a slew of famous British landmarks.
We imagine one would definitely have to be “superfit” to lug these things around — but a great design effort on the part of Google nonetheless to overcome vehicular limitations.
In what’s surely the most expensive freebie I’ve ever heard of, a development in France is offering a free Tesla Roadster in ever driveway for every person that purchases one of their new luxury green villas. Since my French is terrible, I’m going to rely on the folks over at Autobloggreen to shed some light on the details:
Although its exact location is not yet known, it’s rumored to be not far away from Paris and it will be outfitted with all kinds of amenities, from a heliport to green technologies such as solar panels, geotermal units and biologic waste water management. However, sinte the estate market is not exactly at its peak, the sellers have decided to offer an little additional bait to potential buyers: a Tesla Roadster in the garage for those who choose the “green package.” If nothing else, this confirms to us these houses are not going to be cheap.
No kidding — but a sweet deal for the mega-rich nonetheless.
While baskets are the eternal favorites for lugging things around with your bike — there may be times when you’d like those groceries or books to be a bit more contained. That, or you just need some additional space. Either way, these travel bags from Detours are a fantastic option — and with a very green characteristic: they’re made from recycled juice packs.
Each bag is made up of about 100 juice packs — with the company quick to add that no two bags are alike. Each features a bathtub rubber bottom, wide mouth, removable rain cover, reflective tail-light tabs on both ends, and will hold about 15lbs of your stuff. The only caveat is to beware placing sharp objects inside your Toocan — as the pouches can rip and tear up the seam. Otherwise, the company says the bag will last many years and then when done, you can just recycle it!
President Obama announced today that 2.4 billion dollars of the stimulus cash will be spent on the development of electric vehicle technology. With the goal to get one million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015. On his trip to California President Obama toured Southern California Edison’s electric vehicle testing center today; “This investment will not only reduce our dependence on foreign oil, it will put Americans back to work,” President Obama said. “It positions American manufacturers on the cutting edge of innovation and solving our energy challenges.”
All of this money will be administered by the Department of Energy, where agency head Steve Chu has recently streamlined the funding protocols with the intention of making sure the stimulus money is put to use quickly. The bulk of it, $1.5 billion, will go to the development of battery technology and manufacturing capacity. This was the sort of thing US battery manufacturers were looking for, as they’ve already formed the National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Battery Cell Manufacture in the hope of spreading some of the risk of investment in expanded battery manufacturing technology.
Cnn.com reports that bike riders might have to pay $54 every two years, if a new bill passes. The money would be dedicated to improving bike lanes and safety.
Ah, where to begin? Taxing healthy behavior? Check. Taxing non-polluting source of transportation? Check. Pulling over riders to see if they’ve “registered” their bikes? Creepy (and double plus good).
This is a link to my first publication in a peer-reviewed journal. I am honored to have worked with Charlie Hall (my advisor) and my colleague Dave Murphy on this paper, and thrilled to be published in a journal alongside David Pimentel.
Many thanks to the editors of the journal Energies. PDF available for free download.
Economic production and, more generally, most global societies, are overwhelmingly dependant upon depleting supplies of fossil fuels. There is considerable concern amongst resource scientists, if not most economists, as to whether market signals or cost benefit analysis based on today’s prices are sufficient to guide our decisions about our energy future. These suspicions and concerns were escalated during the oil price increase from 2005 – 2008 and the subsequent but probably related market collapse of 2008. We believe that Energy Return On Investment (EROI) analysis provides a useful approach for examining disadvantages and advantages of different fuels and also offers the possibility to look into the future in ways that markets seem unable to do. The goal of this paper is to review the application of EROI theory to both natural and economic realms, and to assess preliminarily the minimum EROI that a society must attain from its energy exploitation to support continued economic activity and social function. In doing so we calculate herein a basic first attempt at the minimum EROI for current society and some of the consequences when that minimum is approached. The theory of the minimumEROI discussed here, which describes the somewhat obvious but nonetheless important idea that for any being or system to survive or grow it must gain substantially more energy than it uses in obtaining that energy, may be especially important. Thus any particular being or system must abide by a “Law of Minimum EROI”, which we calculate for both oil and corn-based ethanol as about 3:1 at the mine-mouth/farm-gate. Since most biofuels have EROI’s of less than 3:1 they must be subsidized by fossil fuels to be useful.
our mission at speesees is to be fun, fair + organic in the products we make, the way we conduct business + the baby steps we take towards creating a more sustainable future for the animal, plant + human speesees on our children’s planet. we’re in this t
Loading ...