EcoGeek monitors and explores the current explosion in technology designed to mitigate our impact on the environment. We report tirelessly on clean tech., but we also dig deeper, providing analysis and criticisms as well as reportage. We've got to move forward to get out of this mess. If you agree with us, we hope you'll become an EcoGeek yourself.
They say losing weight can be easier when you do it as part of a group. You can have all the diet shakes, meal plans, and gym memberships you want, but sometimes you just need people to do it with you. So too can be the story of cutting gas from your budget.
Hypermilers have the Kiwis, the Drivemaster Pros, sure; but now they have a new online networking group through Fuelly that can help them track their mileage and gas consumption, and compare and discuss their efforts with other hypermilers.
Because users add their vehicles to their profiles, you can see how efficient other drivers of your same make and model vehicle can be, so you can compare apples to apples to see if there is more room for improvement in your own driving.
There are also forums where people can share all the secrets of stretching each drop of gas – coasting down hills, utilizing neutral, predicting light changes so you don’t waste acceleration just to have to stop at a red. In this way, Fuelly’s online networking helps users maximize the efficiency they get out of each tank.
The site is still fairly basic, but the forum has a place for site issues, so it looks like the creators will be constantly improving it and making it more detailed.
We have a lot of fun with online maps here at EcoGeek. We like watching clean tech companies pop up on the radar, and organizing vacations with green social maps. There is another very fun map to watch, thanks to Earth2Tech, where you can see coal plants go offline.
There was a recent addition to the growing mass of pins – Georgia Power is looking to convert an Albany coal-fired power plant to a wood biomass plant. The plant is marked with a special green pin to show that it is switching to renewable.
My favorite part of the news blip is that the biomass plant will actually be cheaper to run, let alone that it cuts emissions and uses a renewable source of fuel. It’s great to see businesses realize that renewable energy is quickly becoming less expensive to provide, and I hope that fact will help this map be covered in pins, and soon.
Another couple of pins will be going up within the next four years, as a two Xcel Energy plants in Colorado are shut down, being replaced by natural gas and solar. What a nice way to start out a Monday.
There are a lot of ways to get electronic books, like NetLibrary, Kindle, and so forth. But the titles are often limited. EcoBrain is onto this issue, and is providing an eco-sensitive way to get eco-educated.
They’ve started an online book store on environmental studies that is totally paperless. The main goal of the company is to reduce the environmental impact of reading. Going paperless is a sure-fire way to do that.
Readers can choose from hundreds of books in different areas, from environmental studies to fiction, from memoirs to day hikes, from green building to gardening, from renewable energy to kids books. While there are hundreds of titles, it’s a bit of a bummer that it is so niche. But a whole lot of other sites have the ebook thing covered, so niche marketing works in this case.
The company is only a year old, and more titles are rapidly being added to the library. The downloaded formats work with Adobe Reader, Palm Reader or Microsoft Reader, and there is also a selection of audiobooks in MP3 format. So if you’re running out of green reading material, can’t find many eco-titles at NetLibrary, or haven’t yet gotten your hands on a Kindle, EcoBrain is worth a look-see.
On Monday, eleven hydrogen powered vehicles headed out of Portland, Maine, on their way to Los Angeles, California as part of the Hydrogen Road Tour. Making 31 stops in 18 states, the trip intends to act like the Johnny Appleseed of hydrogen, spreading little nuggets of information about hydrogen-powered cars as they go across the country.
Sponsors include nine automakers (Nissan, BMW, Ford, GM, Honda, Hyundai-Kia, Toyota, Volkswagen, and DaimlerChryser…you know…the biggies), the US Department of Energy, the California Fuel Cell Partnership, the National Hydrogen Association, and the Department of Transportation – in other words, it’s a pretty huge publicity stunt.
The publicity circles around the idea that we make enough hydrogen to power millions of cars already, it’s a clean burning fuel source, and hydrogen vehicles are on their way. We’ve been hearing that for a good long time, though researchers, automakers, politicians, hey even Jamie Lee Curtis thinks it’s true. But…does hydrogen beat EVs charged with renewably generated electricity? I think not. Plus, charging stations are likely easier to throw up than hydrogen refuling stations.
At any rate, the tour is attempting to tell people that hydrogen-powered cars are not perfect yet, but are a viable option for near-future vehicles. We’ll see…
Solar Panels significantly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. But there is a Catch-22 in that we use fossil fuels in order to create solar panels. BioSolar offers a solution to move us a little farther out of this silly loop, and helps us generate solar power with even less use of petroleum. PV cells made of crystalline silicon use plastic polymers as a backing. And we know what plastic is made of.
BioSolar has figured out how to make that protective backing without plastics, using cotton and beans. The backsheets are made by taking used cotton rags and recycling them into cellulose. The cellulose is blended with a nylon made from castor beans. (Okay, okay, I’m sure it takes some petroleum to modify these materials, and it doesn't take all petroleum out of the product – it is an improvement, not perfection.)
The new backsheets last as long as conventional plastic backsheets, work just as well, and are about 25% cheaper, which helps a solar industry that is working hard to reach price parity with coal. Every little bit counts. And as technology improves for production methods, perhaps we’ll get to zero petroleum use in generating renewable electricity.
Finally, a way for the cow barns to mingle with the distantly placed rides. The California State Fair is hosting the first carnival ride powered by cow poo. Aptly called the Barnyard Animal Train, the ride will utilize biogas made from California dairy cows. So not only is it renewable, it’s also relatively locally produced. How very green. And even better, kids hopping aboard will learn about renewable energy during their ride.
I actually just went to my county fair, where everything is still powered by diesel generators, and the ride tickets actually had a $1 fuel surcharge! I think cow pattie power's time has come.
It’d be cool to see this energy coming from the manure produced at the fair itself. Talk about a clean event! With rides going solar, and now biogas powered, we may soon see all kinds of renewably powered ride options. Just wait until the 4H kids have all their cows wearing backpacks to help run the fair using methane.
With gas prices having not a chance of coming down, mass transit is gaining ground in popularity. Kinda of an obvious reaction, since trains have all sorts of one-upsmajor rehauls of designs, others are looking at more immediate solutions that don’t require re-doing whole systems.
For instance, Sweden is soon launching a new high-speed train that can reach up to 183 miles per hour. Utilizing a permanent magnet motor and a system that provides information on speed and traction force, the train improves efficiency by as much as 30%. The island of Tenerif in the Canary Islands is installing a PV solar array to power their electric tramway in the capitol city. Even my own tiny and decidedly un-advanced town has gotten new clean(er) running busses and better options for Amtrak travel.
While steps like this to improve existing systems are excellent, it is also encouraging to see larger projects on the queue for construction, such as California’s high-speed train that will be the cleanest option for getting from LA to San Francisco in under 3 hours, and San Francisco’s intensely green Transbay Terminal.
As someone who is growing ever more frustrated behind the wheel and guilt-ridden about driving, more green mass transit options that can cart me around both locally and to distant locations in an eco-friendly way is pretty exciting.
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