Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
We Have Made It Our Mission to Be Sustainable
Spiegel
German car maker BMW has long had a reputation for producing sporty luxury cars. Now, CEO Norbert Reithofer wants to shift toward sustainability. He spoke with SPIEGEL about how he intends to combine greater fuel efficiency with high performance.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Reithofer, what can a car company like BMW learn from former Green Party leader Joschka Fischer?
Reithofer: Joschka Fischer was a Green Party politician and Germany’s foreign minister. We hired Mr. Fischer, as well as former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, as advisors because we, as an automaker, want to know, for example, how new emissions laws will develop in the United States, Europe and Asia. Fischer and Ms. Albright have diverse contacts worldwide. They can call our attention to trends early on, information from which we can benefit.
SPIEGEL: Are Fischer and Albright expected to do lobbying work so that environmental regulations for the auto industry will be less stringent?
Reithofer: Absolutely not. But they can set up contacts with non-governmental organizations, for example. If you have a one or two-hour conversion with them, you’ll have a better idea afterwards about what the industry could face in the future.
SPIEGEL: For many BMW executives, Joschka Fischer is probably almost as repellent as speed limits on the Autobahn. How did you react to his hiring?
Reithofer: There were certainly those who rubbed their eyes in astonishment. But when we held a company discussion forum with Mr. Fischer, interest was high. Six hundred senior managers came to the meeting. In the end, there was tremendous applause for Fischer, because he offered a precise analysis of the challenges our industry faces worldwide…
(24 February 2010)
Smacks of the usual greenwash, but interesting that BMW feels that it needs to be taking this road right now. -KS
World’s fastest container ships mothballed
Robert Wrights, Financial Times
Near the waterline inside the Maersk Beaumont lies the main reason why this new container ship is set to spend at least the rest of this year unused on a Scottish sea loch.
Twelve cylinders, whose linings alone weigh eight tonnes each, sit ready to accelerate the ship to speeds of nearly 30 knots (55kph). They make the Beaumont and her six sister ships, built to rush Chinese goods to the US east coast, the world’s fastest modern container vessels. But fuel consumption is nearly as high as on the world’s largest container ships, which carry three times as much cargo.
The fast ships, which analysts say would have cost well over $50m (€36.7m, £32.3m) each, have fallen victim to a doubling in fuel prices, slumping demand for containerised goods and changes in industry practice.
Denmark’s Maersk Line, owner of the vessels, moved the Beaumont and four of the sister ships to Loch Striven, off western Scotland’s Clyde estuary, in July. Another redundant Maersk ship was added to provide more stability when the group was lashed together. The remaining two B Class ships, as they are known, are laid up at Laem Chabang in Thailand.
The ships are among hundreds laid up worldwide to see out the worst downturn in container shipping’s 53-year history. AXS Alphaliner, a Paris-based consultancy, estimates that 10.1 per cent of worldwide container ship capacity is currently idle after a 10 per cent slump in container movements last year.
(22 February 2010)
Inspired Ethonomics: Portland, a Global Model of Transit-Oriented Development
Fast Company
Portland, Oregon, is consistently ranked as one of the country’s most livable cities (and it was a Fast City in 2007). And it continues to show solid growth despite having the second lowest per capita transit spending of the 28 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. A system of trains, streetcars, buses, and aerial trams give the city one of the most diverse transportation portfolios in the world. In this episode of e2, we find out how have city planners integrated transportation planning into their decision-making over the past 40 years?
Peter Calthorpe | Calthorpe Associates: A formula for a transit-oriented development (TOD) is very simple. Its diversity: diversity in population and in land use. So you have a place where you have a range of housing opportunities. You don’t ever want to say this is a place for one kind of person; lofts for young people, or condos for empty-nesters, or apartment buildings for seniors, or anything like that. You want it to be a complete neighborhood, so you get a pretty broad range of household types and ages and incomes.
And then is has to be mixed with local destinations, local stores, cafes, shops, civic places, parks, schools. So diversity of populations and of land use. Now that’s not enough, I can show you places in the suburbs that are actually diverse, there are office parks on one corner, a shopping mall on another, and a condo on the 3rd and a subdivision on the 4th. Yet there’s no walk-ability, they are all divided by these huge massive arterials with giant pedestrian unfriendly crossings.
We really had to work hard to invent a landscape that would make a local destination a car trip. It took some doing, but we somehow achieved it. Any local destination now happens to be on an arterial, a place where you look kinda foolish walking, if not in danger…
(23 February 2010)
