Blogs & Ecology

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Date Set for Jatropha-Powered Test Flight

It's All About Incentives, Baby
It's not big mystery: If you have a flat rate for water, people will waste more of it than if they pay in function of how much they use. The same thing also certainly applies to cars. If people paid less insurance if they drove less, that would be an incentive to put fewer miles on their vehicles, thus using less fuel and polluting less. This would also reduce road congestion and accidents.

One company that has understood this is MileMeter from Texas. Read on for more details....

In these days when presidential candidates talk about biofuels, carrying a reusable shopping bag has moved beyond the crunchy to the mainstream, and CFL light bulbs are doing brisk business at Walmart, you'd think we as a society were making progress, in terms of energy use and resource consumption.

In these days when presidential candidates talk about biofuels, carrying a reusable shopping bag has moved beyond the crunchy to the mainstream, and CFL light bulbs are doing brisk business at Walmart, you'd think we as a society were making progress, in terms of energy use and resource consumption.

In this time of economic volatility, it’s no surprise to hear that even the experts disagree about the impact that the financial meltdown will have on renewable energy development. Rarely do we get to hear them frankly discuss their thoughts, expectations, fears, and disagreements. Enter the National Journal’s Expert Blog.

Forgive me for making partisan political plugs in this most political of seasons, but the states that consistently vote for Democratic party candidates also lead the nation in energy efficiency efforts according to a recent study by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). Their annual report and ranking of statewide initiatives is funded by the U.S. government through the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

2009 Fuel Economy Guide

It’s easy for those of us consumed with the ins and outs of the new green economy to get a little obsessed with the latest technological solution. The fact of the matter is that for families that are struggling to pay their $40 per month electric bill, the investment in efficiency upgrades is simply out of reach. It’s so easy to save money when you consume less energy, yet the cost of capital improvements can be insurmountable. That’s where Rising Sun Energy Center in Berkeley, California comes in.

Remember how Uncle Bob, the person everyone in the family looked to for automotive advice, once said 'you can't even tune your engine any more because of those computers they got in there, and how everything is crammed in under the hood. Got us over a barrel!" Over the barrel indeed.

Boost Mileage and Horsepower With A Simple Bolt-On Device
Rongjia Tao, Physics Department Chair at Philadelphia's Temple University (pictured), has published a report describing the science behind his newly invented way way to green-hack an engine (our term)...

It's as simple as the name of the company's diminutive, inexpensive yet iconic product, the Civic. Honda Motor Company has built a world-beating business rooted in a straightforward social commitment. As Tetsuo Iwamura, president of Honda North America puts it, ". . . We want to make Honda the company that society wants to exist."

It would be nice to think that politics was about honest people putting forth honest positions for citizens to chose among, but instead we have Newt Gingrich telling Fox viewers that gas stations make higher profits selling air than gas, so "Sen. Obama was urging you to go out and enrich Big Oil by inflating your tires instead of buying gas."

Extraordinary. via ::Think Progress

Check and fill your own tires. It's a personal responsibility. The places we buy fuel, a.k.a. "Service Stations," are nothing of the kind any more. Full service with a smile is a faded marketing myth. So, get an air pump or compressor and use it. You'll save money and live longer.

Why "Do It Yourself" Is The Best Solution

Radiohead isn’t the first band to tout their “greenness” lately or claim a “carbon free” operation while touring. Having some modest experience in this area (as I more fully describe an earlier post called The Sustainable Circus), I’ve always been a little dubious about such claims. 

Will Uncle Sam pay those in need to reduce emissions and stimulate the economy? Would it work?

A recent editorial in the New York Times drew attention to a stimulus proposal that exemplifies the intersection of the triple bottom line and continues to fuel discussion.