transportation

The evolution of the American transportation industry took another step forward today when the Obama administration finalized historic fuel economy standards for cars and light-duty trucks.  Starting in 2025, the minimum fuel efficiency for all new models will be 54.5 miles per gallon.

If you drive in this city, you’ve probably been in one of these two situations:  One, too cheap to pay for parking, you go to a side street and take advantage of one-hour free parking. But having stayed a little longer than an hour, you find a $30 ticket on your windshield.

I’ve begun thinking that one of the defining questions for clean energy is, “What’s the plan?” Not a company plan, but a country plan -- one that realistically maps us to an economy that gets the vast majority of its energy from wind, solar, geothermal, and that has us drastically minimizing waste.

Environmental and energy issues became one of the central issues of the 2008 U.S. presidential election. While the economy itself took center stage, energy issues were right behind it, being pushed by the insufferable chant of “Drill baby drill.” In the four years that have followed, the U.S. has seen a boom in hydraulic fracturing (fracking), the worst oil spill in our history, skyrocketing (and then plummeting) gas prices, a disastrous oil pipeline plan that threatens the safety of our aquifers, and a Republican-led assault on environmental safety standards.

New York to London in an hour?  That might be in the future if high-speed vac-trains move from concept to reality.

As governments roll out public policy directing increased biofuel production for all sectors of the transportation industry, serious questions around environmental sustainability still remain.

Electricity rates in Germany drop by up to 40% during the hours in which solar power or wind power are active -- and this is what Merit Order ranking is all about, using the cheapest available electricity source first - and then filling in the gaps with more expensive coal-fired electrical power generation.

Despite all the political rhetoric, the bottom line hasn't changed:  carbon emissions are increasing in every corner of the planet.  This is largely due to the fact that the global economy is so unequivocally tied to fossil fuel consumption.

Could it be that the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gas is the same country that spends more on green technology than any other country?

Human beings use different kinds of energy for different purposes all over the planet every hour of the day and night.