Nissan Leaf

The electrics are coming! By the end of the year, at least six battery-powered vehicles will be on the U.S. market. The cars will finally go from revolving on show stands . . . → Read More: 6 Hot New Electric Cars Soon to Hit Showrooms]]>

As I was searching the Internet to bring you something new, I ran across this article regarding green vehicles.

Nissan Leaf

The electrics are coming! By the end of the year, at least six battery-powered vehicles will be on the U.S. market. The cars will finally go from revolving on show stands to dealer floors, and we’ll finally know if consumers mean it when they say in opinion polls that they’ll consider an EV for their next purchase. Most of these cars will charge in five or six hours on 220-volt home current, and overnight on 110. Fifteen-minute fast charging (480 volts) may be available at some public stations, maybe even at your favorite big-box store.

Here’s a rundown of the cars headed for showrooms, some from major manufacturers and others from ambitious startups. Four are battery-only cars, one is a plug-in hybrid and the sixth (the Chevrolet Volt) is a unique combination of the two:

Photo Credit: Nissan

Nissan Leaf

“This is the new paradigm of the car, and it will change our industry,” said Carlos Ghosn, the chairman of Nissan, introducing the battery-powered Leaf in Los Angeles. “It will also change the way people use and power their vehicles.”

The Leaf, an all-new design, has a range of 100 miles on a single charge of its lithium-ion batteries. Nissan is unique among carmakers in also partnering with charging companies and municipalities to make sure the Leaf will have public places to plug in. Even though the car hasn’t been priced yet (it could be $23,000, plus batteries), 25,000 “handraisers” have said they’re willing to buy one. I drove a “mule” version of the Leaf, and found it great fun — the electric motor gives it great performance right off the line. Available at the end of the year at a Nissan dealership near you.

Photo Credit: Nissan

Chevrolet Volt

The Volt is not only a huge departure for usually conservative General Motors, it’s also a giant leap for cars in general. The all-new Volt sedan is unique: Its li-ion battery pack offers go-power for 40 miles of electric range, but then a small gasoline engine kicks in as a generator to supply electricity to the motor. That sets you up for longer trips, because the gas engine will keep the car going for a total of 400 miles.

The Volt will sell for around $40,000, but a federal tax incentive will reduce that to the low $30s. I drove a pre-production Volt and this is not grandpa’s Chevy: Like the Leaf, the Volt is loads of fun to drive and explodes off the line. The first Volts will arrive at the end of the year, as 2011 models.

Photo Credit: Chevrolet

Ford Focus

Ford has a multi-channel approach to EVs (electric vehicles). This year it will roll out an electric version of the Transit Connect van, and for 2011 we’ll see a limited-production, battery-powered version of the new Focus, with the drivetrain engineered by Canada’s Magna International. As with many other EVs, it will have a 100-mile range on lithium-ion batteries. Ford is being conservative with the electric Focus, and will probably make less than 5,000 annually in the first year or two.

For 2012, the carmaker will roll out a plug-in hybrid, possibly based on the Escape. There is a small fleet of electric Focus cars being tested now, and two of them are in the hands of Jay Leno, who’s been using them on his test track for the “Green Car Challenge.” I tried one out there, but Drew Barrymore had a faster time than I did.

Photo Credit: Jim Motavalli

Coda

Coda is based in California, but its electric car is an international citizen, based on a Chinese design but with a battery-based drivetrain sourced from all over. The Coda, many of whose creators have Goldman Sachs connections, stands out because of the unusual attention to detail that went into it. To ensure a battery supply, CEO Kevin Czinger formed a joint venture with a Chinese company. His packs are unlikely to suffer from cold-weather performance problems (as some of BMW’s Mini Es have) because the Coda has a system to both heat and cool them.

The Coda isn’t as snazzy looking as the Volt or the Leaf, but it’s equally willing on the road — as a recent dash around the leafy lanes of Greenwich, Connecticut proved. The Coda will be available, initially in California only, later this year. The price is around $40,000, but that goes down to $32,500 with the federal tax benefit.

Photo Credit: Coda

Fisker Karma

This is the glamor boy of the coming EVs, and it’s a plug-in hybrid. What’s that, you say? Think of a Toyota Prius, but with a larger battery pack and the ability to recharge from a wall socket. Other plug-in hybrids are coming from Ford and Toyota. The Karma is as sexy as the Tesla Roadster, but with four doors and a gas engine for longer trips. Journalists haven’t actually driven the Karma yet, but it’s supposed to have 50 miles of all-electric range and a zero to 60 time of 5.8 seconds.

As with the Tesla, you pay for that rip-roaring ability: The Karma (which has a more expensive convertible version) will sell for $87,900 when it reaches showrooms in September. Fisker got a controversial $529 million Department of Energy loan to build its next-generation car, the Nina, and recently announced that it is consolidating all of its operations in California (and closing down in Pontiac, Michigan).

Photo Credit: Jim Motavalli

Think City

This cute little bugger has an interesting history. The company is Norwegian, and for a few years (1999 to 2003) it was owned by Ford, which did a lot of engineering work on the car but conspicuously failed to sell very many of them. Now Think is preparing to build its two-seat City, with U.S. battery supplier Ener1 as a partner, in hard-hit Elkhart, Indiana.

The car I drove in Detroit, built in Norway, was quick off the line but a bit noisy and with heavy steering — both things will be fixed before it hits the American market for less than $20,000 (minus batteries and including the federal tax credit) later this year.

Photo Credit: Think

Source:  6 Hot New Electric Cars Soon to Hit Showrooms

The State of California has granted approval for a new solar thermal power plant. The 250-megawatt Beacon Solar Energy Project is the first solar thermal power plant to be licensed in the United . . . → Read More: First New US Solar Thermal Power Plant in 20 Years Approved]]>

While looking for energy news, I ran across this article that is about a solar power plant.

Visit DaylightGifts.com for solar lamp posts, solar landscape lights, and more + take advantage of the Free Shipping sale currently going on.

Take advantage of the Labor Day Sale today @ SolarGardenLights.DaylightGifts.com!

A single college or university can produce an almost immeasurable amount of waste each year — and when you multiply that by . . . → Read More: 7 Green College Campus Programs Making the Grade]]>

Hi everyone!  Sorry I haven’t updated in a few days.  I was looking around the Internet to bring you some news and I found this article.

A single college or university can produce an almost immeasurable amount of waste each year — and when you multiply that by all of the schools in the country, and the world, those numbers add up.

But some schools are taking their conservation efforts beyond recycling bins and CLF bulbs with everything from on-campus community gardens and programs that reach out to student renters to bike incentive programs for commuters — and that’s success you can count on.

1. Reaching Out to Renters

Photo via DailyCamera

Colleges and universities that want to make energy-efficient choices in their own buildings have an advantage — after all, they own the buildings. But as CU-Boulder student Christina Aalto realized, getting students who live off-campus to care about energy efficiency in their rentals is much harder.

Aalto is the student manager of the university’s Environmental Center’s SCORE program — which stands for Student and Community Outreach for Renter Efficiency — and she and her teams of student assessors focus on renters, offering them free CFL bulbs, water-conserving shower heads, insulation for their pipes, and sealant for their windows, along with other tips for saving energy at home. (The teams also bring each group of college students a foolproof offering: free pizza.)

2. Going Carbon-Neutral at Green Mountain College

Photo via Poultney Historical Society

Green Mountain College is known for its commitment to sustainability — it earned a spot on our list of 10 great environmental programs last year — but it also impressed the Sierra Club, which named it the “Coolest School” in the country this year, emphasizing the college’s plans to go carbon-neutral.

Green Mountain opened its own biomass plant in April, and now uses fewer than 41,000 gallons of fuel to provide power to the 155-acre campus — that’s down from 230,000 gallons (and they make up the difference wood chips from local sources — 5,000 tons of wood chips). According to Green.Blorge, the plans for the biomass plant came from a freshman seminar in 2005 that encouraged students to
find ways around using oil.

3. Getting Back to the Garden at Urban Colleges

Photo via vieux bandit @ Flickr

For a generation of students that has never known school without computers, gardening might seem sweetly quaint; at increasing numbers of schools, though, on-campus gardens let them get their hands dirty as they learn more about where their food comes from then they ever expected. At The Evergreen State College, a 13-acre organic farm run by students provides produce to a local farm stand and food bank, and at College of the Atlantic, community members book their own garden plots. Even city schools are getting in on the act: the University of Pennsylvania and George Washington University (among others) also offer students the opportunity to work in the garden for credit or recreation.

4. Commuter Incentives in California

Photo via MoBikeFed @ Flickr

If you live on campus, you can probably get away without a car — but commuters don’t always have it so easy. In California, though, more than one school has come up with a plan to encourage green commuting, from the car-pool dedicated spots at San Diego State University to Mesa College setting aside spaces for hybrid cars.

At Stanford University in Palo Alto, students committed to not driving to campus at all received up to $282 in financial incentives; at UC Irvine, the Sustainable Transportation program encourages the use of public transportation, fitted parking garages with fluorescent lighting, and even adjusted traffic signals; and at UC San Diego, the school bus runs on biodiesel, students who ride their bikes most of the time get free parking for their rare car trips — and Zipcars are available on campus.

5. Banning Bottled Water

Photo via ToddMorris @ Flickr

In February 2009, Washington University in St. Louis announced a campus-wide ban on bottled water; students at three campuses were no longer able to buy the bottles in vending machines or from the school’s restaurants and take-out spots.The school claimed it was the first in the country to enact such a ban, and they reported a surprising side effect: A little more than a month after the plan went into action, the number of sodas those eateries were selling dropped, too.

6. Zero-Waste Fashion at Parsons

Photo via Science Museum via TreeHugger

The fashion industry isn’t generally known for its sustainability, and production waste is a big part of the problem: As much as 20 percent of the material that goes into making the shirts, pants, skirts, and other clothes in your closet finishes its life in landfills. And while zero-waste fashion trims that number, designing to use every last piece of cloth is harder than it sounds.

Parsons the New School for Design plans to tackle the zero-waste challenge from the ground up by adding a course — that will premiere this fall — in zero-waste fashion (as The New York Times reports, this class is one of the first of its kind in the world).

The class will focus on teaching students how to make jeans without wasting any fabric, and the students will be learning from the masters: Timo Rissanen, assistant professor of fashion design and sustainability, and Scott Mackinlay Hahn of Loomstate. The top-of-the-class student will see his or her design produced by Hahn’s team and for Spring 2011 at Barneys New York.

7. Green Grads

Photo via Gateway

Guiding students through four years of energy-efficient, sustainable-sourced education is a big job for any school — and at the University of Texas in Austin, they know that the task isn’t over once finals are finished.

This year, the school outfitted its graduates in GreenWeaver graduation gowns, made from recycled plastic bottles. The school claims that — during just one day of Pomp and Circumstance — they’re saving 200,000 plastic bottles from the landfill.

Source:  7 Green College Campus Programs Making the Grade

Nothing says back-to-school like a brand-new lunchbox — and investing in a reusable container means you can skip the disposable paper bags. There are options for every kid: Send older ones to the cafeteria . . . → Read More: 7 Strategies for Packing a Healthy, Green School Lunch]]>

While looking for green news, I came across this list of 7 steps on back-to-school lunches.

1. Bag the Brown Bag

Nothing says back-to-school like a brand-new lunchbox — and investing in a reusable container means you can skip the disposable paper bags. There are options for every kid: Send older ones to the cafeteria with stainless steel containers that fit sandwiches and sides; help younger students keep track of all their snacks in a cotton bag; or look for an insulated version made from drink or candy wrappers. And if your little one has her heart set on that cartoon character-themed box, look for ones made without PVC, phthalates, or BPA; try your local thrift stores or online auction sites for vintage tin boxes that show off classic superheroes or other favorite characters.

2. Get Rid of the Plastic

Of course, filling an eco-friendly lunchbox with a handful of plastic bags isn’t exactly an environmental home run. Instead, look for alternatives to sandwich and snack bags, like reusable cloth sandwich bags that you can wipe clean after each use; BPA-free plastic (or glass) containers to hold fruit slices and vegetables; and foldable sandwich mats that unclasp to become a placemat. Or look for a lunchbox that comes with its own containers, like the Laptop Lunch system that includes individual containers for each food, or the Goodbyn lunchbox, a recyclable-plastic box with pre-formed compartments that mean you don’t have to worry about the containers ending up in the trash can.

3. Include Accessories

If you really want to pack a no-waste lunch, then including silverware and cloth napkins is a critical step — but you can choose something more fun than the traditional silver you use at home. Bamboo fork, knife, and spoon sets from To-Go Ware come in colorful packets that help you keep each kid’s silverware separate; stackable silicone utensils from Fred and Friends click together like Legos to keep all three pieces handy; and theMicrobites set from Guyot Designs is two interlocking pieces that, together, can be used as a fork, spoon, knife, spatula, or spreader.

4. Pack Organic

As any kid will tell you, the really important part of lunch is what exactly you pack in it. They’re thinking about what kind of treats they can trade with their friends, but they make a good point: The foods you pack can be as sustainable as the box you pack it in. Encourage your kids to eat seasonal foods by packing fresh fruits and vegetables instead of pre-packaged fruit cups; buy organic and natural snacks instead of traditional cookies, pudding, and chips; take your kids with you to the farmers’ market so they can help pick out their snacks; and turn to whole grains and lean proteins instead of white bread, Lunchables, and sodium-packed deli meat.

5. Encourage Sustainable Sipping

You’ve already kicked your bottled water habit (we hope) and now it’s time to teach your kids about the value of a reusable bottle. Instead of a cardboard juice box or pouch, get a junior-sized bottle — try these fun designs from Sigg, Nalgene, and Klean Kanteen — that hold just enough of your student’s favorite drink (without the waste). Fill it with natural fruit juices (not the overly-sugared kind) or — even better — with water. And if you’re still concerned about spills, look for bottles with sport tops or attached straws for neater drinking.

6. Turn to the Experts

If you want to keep your kids from getting bored with PB&J and carrot sticks, then you’re going to need plenty of recipes in your arsenal — and some time set aside for making their favorites. The Vegan Lunch Boxcookbook offers 130 lunch menus that go way beyond the classics, including ones geared toward kids with soy, gluten, or nut allergies. For other homemade takes on lunchbox classics, turn to Planet Green to find recipes for pretzels, granola bars, chocolate-mint cookies, fruit snacks, peanut butter cups, and even peanut butter for days when PB&J just hits the spot.

7. Teach Your Children Well

Even the greenest parent will have days when making a lunch just isn’t in the cards –and on those days, you want your kids to make the best possible choice when they’re facing the lunch line. Teach them to love fruits and vegetables (and to choose the salad bar over chicken nuggets) with simple strategies — offering them a wide variety of foods, modeling healthy habits, and letting them choose their own favorites (find more tips onPlanet Green). Help your kids figure out where food comes from starting when they’re young, and they’ll carry those healthy habits into adulthood.

Source:  7 Strategies for Packing a Healthy, Green School Lunch

Panel discussions on building energy . . . → Read More: Empire State Manager Fuels Energy Debate]]>

While reading up on green buildings, I ran across this article in the Wall Street Journal about ‘greening’ the Empire State building.  I figure it is a good read, because it is showing how the office space market in New York is being moved by the green movement.

Panel discussions on building energy efficiency tend to be low-key affairs. But that was before Anthony Malkin, who runs the Empire State Building, entered the fray.

At a panel discussion put on by a real-estate think tank earlier this summer, Mr. Malkin called it “outrageous” and “a crime” that a popular benchmark for the environmental sustainability of existing buildings didn’t do enough to push landlords to improve energy efficiency.

Anthony Malkin spent about $100 million to improve the efficiency of the Empire State Building’s windows, systems and other infrastructure. He’s hoping the investment will save energy and attract tenants.

He added, to some applause: “I’d go further and say it’s bull—.”

Mr. Malkin, a New York City real-estate scion well known for skirmishes over whom he honors with the Empire State Building’s lights, is becoming a vocal player in a different world: the green-building movement.

Mr. Malkin insists green-building advocates and governments aren’t doing enough to reward landlords who spend money to make their real estate more energy-efficient. Office building landlords should be required to disclose energy consumption in the same way that auto makers must publicize how many miles their cars get to the gallon. He’s being partly driven by his concern that the U.S. uses too much energy. In his panel remarks, he warned that if the rest of the world follows this country’s energy consumption model, “We’re all going to die and we’ll go to war along the way.”

Mr. Malkin has a clear financial incentive to make people—particularly prospective tenants—more conscious about energy efficiency. As part of a long-planned $550 million renovation of the Empire State Building in recent years, Mr. Malkin spent about $100 million to improve the efficiency of the Empire State Building’s windows, systems and other infrastructure.

Now he’s hoping the investment in efficiency—which he says will save $4.4 million a year in energy but cost only $13.2 million more than the renovation would have otherwise cost—will, along with the attendant publicity, help him lease space in the 79-year-old skyscraper.

Success is by no means assured. In one of the worst office markets in decades, about 25% of the Empire State Building’s 2.8 million square feet is up for lease. “This is about money and this is about energy,” Mr. Malkin says. “The better-credit tenants are focused on this issue of energy efficiency from a bottom-line, profits-and-loss perspective.”

Mr. Malkin’s vocal stance comes as building owners are increasingly using environmental features to attract tenants. Features like solar panels, low- flush toilets, rainwater recycling, state-of-the-art windows are being touted as ways to save energy—and money—as well as to do the right thing for the planet. Brokers say the push is catching on with tenants.

Mr. Malkin is wading into a debate about a high-profile ranking program devised by the U.S. Green Building Council that gives buildings grades—like platinum, gold and silver—for how environmentally friendly they are. Mr. Malkin says the program—known as LEED for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—in its version for existing buildings gives too much weight to non-energy features, like bike racks, and not enough to building elements that cut down on energy usage, like smart lighting systems.

The Empire State Building would qualify for a gold LEED certificate, Mr. Malkin says, adding that he hasn’t decided whether he wants to pursue it. He says the skyscraper would qualify for a higher platinum grade if he had spent $4.5 million to put plants on its set-backs. “Green building practices have become divorced from energy efficiency,” Mr. Malkin said at the Urban Land Institute panel.

The council responds that much of the program’s value comes in getting as many landlords as possible interested in improving the environment. “Making it a discussion simply about energy I think is shortsighted,” said Al Skodowski, an executive at commercial-property-services firm Transwestern and a Green Building Council board member. “The focus has to be, how do we make the program so that everybody can participate in it?”

Mr. Malkin’s positions also put him at odds with many of his colleagues in the real-estate business. He advocates more government oversight of building energy use. Other landlords are wary of more government involvement.

“We certainly would prefer voluntary standards,” said Dennis Oklak, chief executive of Duke Realty Corp., a publicly traded real estate company, and co-chairman of the sustainability policy committee of industry group Real Estate Roundtable. “It’s going to be really very, very difficult to put a one-size-fits-all proposition out there to make it mandatory to achieve certain levels in buildings.”

Mr. Malkin, president of Malkin Holdings LLC, is the son of Peter Malkin and the grandson of Lawrence Wien who worked closely with the late real-estate mogul Harry Helmsley. Much of the Malkin family’s real-estate empire consists of stakes in the pre-World War II office buildings they purchased during that era. After Mr. Helmsley’s death in 1997, his widow, Leona Helmsley, for years fought with Peter Malkin and others over control of the Empire State Building. Mrs. Helmsley died in 2007 and the skyscraper is now managed by Anthony Malkin.

Mr. Malkin says he now plans to implement a similar energy-efficiency program in the remaining 7.25 million square feet of office space he manages in the New York area.

Source: Empire State Manager Fuels Energy Debate

Chlorophyll concentrations worldwide; Image via SeaWiFS satellite of NASA

Recent research shows . . . → Read More: Ocean’s Color Can Change Hurricanes]]>

While reading some green news, I ran across this piece which is interesting to say the least.  Obviously, the color of the ocean is not the only factor that changes hurricane patterns, but it is an interesting bit nonetheless.

Chlorophyll concentrations worldwide; Image via SeaWiFS satellite of NASA

Recent research shows that the color of the ocean can have a big influence on the occurence of hurricanes — the greener the ocean, the more hurricanes. And that’s a good thing. The ocean’s tint comes from the presence of chlorophyll, the green pigment in phytoplankton that helps the organisms convert sunlight into food, and thus forms the foundation of the oceanic food chain, as well as a prime environment for hurricanes. However, as we recently pointed out in another study, warming temperatures of the oceans are having a negative impact on phytoplankton populations, which have dropped 40% over the last 60 years. And that means fewer hurricanes as well.

According to a press release from the American Geophysical Union, “In a simulation of such a change [in color of the ocean] in one region of the North Pacific, the study finds that hurricane formation decreases by 70 percent. That would be a big drop for a region that accounts for more than half the world’s reported hurricane-force winds.”

Anand Gnanadesikan, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey, and his team are publishing the study in the next issue of Geophysical Research Letters. They describe how a decrease in chlorophyll concentration, and thus a drop in the greenish hue of the ocean, directly causes a drop in the formation of hurricanes in that area.

The discovery occurred when the team used computer simulations of real conditions of chlorophyll concentrations in the North Pacific, and simulations where chlorophyll concentrations in the subtropical gyre of the of the North Pacific were set to zero. They found that the absence of chlorophyll in the subtropical gyre modified air circulation and heat distribution patterns enough that hurricane formations were impacted. Outside the gyre, hurricanes increased by 20%, yet there was a 70% decrease in storms further north — more hurricanes would hit the Philippines and Vietnam, but fewer would make landfall in South China and Japan.

Why is this the case? It’s all in how chlorophyll moderates how sunlight penetrates the ocean:

In the no-chlorophyll scenario, sunlight is able to penetrate deeper into the ocean, leaving the surface water cooler. The drop in the surface temperature in the model affects hurricane formation in three main ways: cold water provides less energy; air circulation patterns change, leading to more dry air aloft which makes it hard for hurricanes to grow. The changes in air circulation trigger strong winds aloft, which tend to prevent thunderstorms from developing the necessary superstructure that allows them to grow into hurricanes.

The drop in phytoplankton numbers due to warming water stretches far beyond the food chain — which alone is frightening enough — but also into weather patterns. And changes in weather patterns can have unknown and wide-reaching affects on land.

Source:  Ocean’s Color Can Change Hurricane Patterns