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Eco-Driving
Staff, Falls Church News Press
If you are not yet ready for eco-driving, you will be soon. Once gasoline reaches five dollars or more per gallon, drivers will have only one concern about their vehicles’ performance: “How do I get the most distance out of this tank of gas for which I just paid so dearly?” Performance, acceleration, speed limits, radar detectors, speeding points and all the other concerns that grew out of cheap oil will disappear before the altar of miles-per-gallon. This is where eco-driving (getting the most out of each gallon) comes in. …
The basic principle of eco-driving is a lot of gasoline and diesel fuel can be saved just by being very, very careful about when and how hard we push on the gas pedal. Most authorities say a 10% to 15% saving in fuel consumption is easy and that higher is possible with some special efforts.
In Europe , a whole eco-driving culture has grown up with formal classes, on-the-road training, and eco-driver certificates. Many European trucking companies require their drivers to be eco-certified and monitor their fuel consumption. Of course, Europe is already at six dollars per gallon so squeezing a bit more out of each liter is obviously more important. …
(25-31 August 2005)
Italy Eyes Concept of Selling Sun’s Energy
Frances D’Emilio, Associated Press via the Guardian
ROME (AP) – Italy is blessed with some of Europe’s most brilliant sun and cursed with some of its highest electricity rates, but the nation has long lagged behind its more inclement neighbors in harnessing energy from the sun’s rays.
But the government, hoping to cash in on Italy’s most abundant natural resource, is trying to change that. It approved incentives this summer that could see solar panels blooming on Italy’s rooftops like bougainvillea on sun-kissed terraces.
The measures could mean that Italian homeowners, condominium buildings and private businesses can profit by selling solar power to energy companies at a handsome, government-guaranteed price.
(25 August 2005)
The rest of article has good background information on Italy’s energy situation. A problem Italians will encounter is the global shortage of solar PV cells, partly due to similar existing schemes in Germany and Japan.-LJ
Heal the Planet, Heal Ourselves
Katherine Stapp, Inter Press Service via Common Dreams
NEW YORK – Ten years ago, Costa Rica received a modest 25,000-dollar United Nations grant to expand the use of biomass technology, which transforms the energy from organic matter into fuel.
Today, the Biomass Users Network of Central America operates in seven countries and administers multi-million-dollar projects, with the ambitious goals of spurring rural development, preserving natural resources and reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.
It is this kind of success story — merging sustainable development with environmental protection — that must be replicated around the world if humanity hopes to ease the shocking poverty afflicting billions of people around the world, experts say.
(25 August 2005)
The Hundred-Mile Diet Goes North
Wish you were here
J.B. MacKinnon and Alisa Smith, TheTyee.ca
To be honest, we thought we’d cut ourselves some slack. We were going to northern British Columbia, for god’s sake. We could hardly be expected to stick to some monkish vow to eat only those foods produced in a hundred-mile radius. Environmental sustainability would, like us, be taking a summer holiday.
Where are we headed exactly? Let’s call it Devil’s Elbow, B.C., which is, in fact, one of its names. It’s not quite a ghost town (population: 1), but you’d agree with that description if you heard some of the noises that haunt the 80-year-old homestead shack we’ve been in for a month. The place is like a visit to the doomsayers’ version of the End of Oil: no road access, no power, no sewage, no cell signal, no running water except for a glacial river. I think we could be forgiven for fudging our Hundred-Mile Diet rules. I haven’t used toilet paper for weeks (ah, the double-ply softness of thimbleberry leaves); surely I could allow myself a couple bags of Californian granola.
What has amazed us, though, is just how achievable a Hundred-Mile Diet actually is here on the 55th parallel — and beyond. There is tendency, south of 50_, to imagine everything north of the Lower Mainland and Okanagan (they make wine there, right?) as a hinterland of thick forest, early frost, and people who prefer shooting road signs to planting vegetable gardens. Well, witness these two markets. Nothing we’ve seen in Vancouver can compare.
(23 August 2005)
Energy Bulletin just posted the previous columns in this series: Living on the Hundred-Mile Diet.
Oregon: Project could be the wave of the future
Rick Osborn, theworldlink.com (S. Oregon)
As the price of gasoline continues to rise and the United States’ dependence on fossil fuels continues to play a role in global affairs, Oregon residents don’t need to look far to see what could be energy’s wave of the future.
Mariners have known about the ocean’s power for hundreds of years. Now, researches are looking to harness the energy of waves.
“There’s a real good chance that Oregon could turn into kind of the focal point in the United States for wave energy development and I think that would be a boon to the economy,” Central Lincoln People’s Utility District Communications Manager Gary Cockrum said.
This project isn’t just a hit in the world of electrical engineering. It’s a home run for the Reedsport area. The entities planning to begin working with this experimental technology have been eyeing the International Paper mill site in Gardiner as the perfect place for wave energy to come of age.
“We have a lot of momentum going for it, I think, but we still have to work out lot of details,” said Alan Wallace, Oregon State University professor of electrical engineering. “(We would) take over the entire site and make that and the ocean off of there a renewable ocean extraction system and demonstration point.
(24 August 2005)
Sidebar giving background: Motion of the ocean can create power
Bacteria Are Key To ‘Green’ Plastics, Drugs
Rice University via Science News
HOUSTON — Trials have begun in Kansas on a “green” production method for succinate, a key ingredient of many plastics, drugs, solvents and food additives. Developed at Rice University, the technology uses a genetically modified form of the bacteria E. coli that metabolizes glucose and produces almost pure succinate.
Finding “green” methods to make key chemical intermediates like succinate is a high priority for the chemical industry. Green technologies use renewable resources like agricultural crops rather than non-renewable fossil fuels, and they produce less waste.
(23 August 2005)
