Five Percent: Conserve a Little Energy

It is a wonderful thing that car manufacturers are moving to hybrid versions of their vehicles.

Like many of the incremental features introduced in cars over the years, the good ones catch on. Shoulder belts, air bags, anti-lock braking, and many others have made cars safer.

And now, many cars are available with hybrid engines. This adds to the price of the car a little (or sometimes, it seems, a lot). And a hybrid system makes the car greener, right?

Why, the Chevy Tahoe is the green car of the year if you can believe that. (It costs $11,000 more to get the “green” hybrid version, so the car can get a paltry 22 miles per gallon).

A hybrid system does not make a car “green”, it just makes a car a little less of a bad thing. (more…)

Ok, I’m just an iPhone fanboy. This post is entirely off-topic — it has nothing to do with the environment, energy, conservation, or any of that. I should hate the iPhone. But wait. I love the iPhone, and thus, must rationalize my purchase, as I have done in the past with my TV, TiVo, and laptop computer.

Stick with me. Going a bit out on a limb, I believe the iPhone embodies something that gives me (some) hope that us humans will manage to think ourselves out of our global warming issues in three ways (more…)

If you are on the road this Thanksgiving, consider this fact from the US Department of Energy: “Idling gets you 0 miles per gallon“. In fact, idling for more than 10 seconds uses more gas than turning the car off then on as needed. So if you are waiting in long lines of traffic approaching tolls, or waiting in line for fast-food, consider turning off the engine. Be safe, and don’t gun the engine (more…)

My son bought a little device that has a solar panel on it, and generates enough electricity to charge it’s internal battery which in turn can charge an iPod or other small electronic device.

Seems ok at first blush. But of course, as an earnest person on Treehugger.com observed, the total energy benefit from this device is probably negative. The cost of production, shipping, and so on is around $30 (plus shipping). The amount of electricity used to charge an iPod is fantastically small — we use a little more than $100 of electricity each month, and I am thinking the vast majority goes to lighting, the fridge, dryer, and various other significant appliances. Actually getting $40 in electrical savings from this device would take eons.

He thought about it

However, my son did something important. He thought. (more…)

Well folks, no more hiding behind illusions. The EPA has updated the MPG estimates that all vehicles sold in the US are required to display on their sticker. The good news is that these estimates are more realistic, because they account for things like lower fuel economy in cold weather. They also account for things like air conditioner usage, higher speeds on roads (check it out: the site shows an image of an 80 MPH speed limit sign) and faster acceleration — things that have changed since the standards were introduced in, probably 1980 or so? (more…)

I read way, way too many eco-blogs, enviro-blogs, politico-blogs and globalwarmingo-blogs. With several exceptions (e.g. IdealBite and An Inconvenient Truth, to name several) there’s way too much polarity in the conversation — it’s all or nothing, when often the best choice is both, either or just some.

Locally grown vs. Organic food, for instance: both would be great, either is good, some is good. (more…)

Perhaps the fact that it finally melted a little this not-quite-spring-yet weekend is to blame, but I took my bike in to the shop to get a much needed tune-up. I’m ready to start riding to work again, and not a moment too soon. Just because this has been an exceptionally warm, or at least short winter doesn’t mean anything on the scale of global statistics, but I have to say, I’m glad. While there’s no strong evidence that extended daylight savings time actually does anything to save energy, I’m still glad, because I like light, and I don’t think it will hurt. And the Union of Concerned Scientists reports that U.S. Northeast faces a hotter future but I’m still cheery. Because I can ride.

There’s a bit of a paradox: global warming makes it easier for me to do things to reduce global warming. (more…)

We have had some pretty surprising successes in our efforts to reduce energy consumption. But there are a number of things we have tried that don’t work as well as we want. (more…)

This morning was a great day to ride. Global warming has made our normally frosty January quite mild — mid 50′s today. But I drove because I had a meeting. I could have easily taken public transit or gotten a ride with the guy I was meeting … actually in the end I did. So, I got my punishment. (more…)

The “Clear Skies” Initiative and the “Healthy Forests” Act are some of the more glaring euphemisms of the Bush administration. They also worked their magic with “cut and run” and “climate change” (sometimes known as global warming). One message of the 2006 elections was that we see through some of these words (yes, just as we saw through Clinton’s lie about “that woman”).

We should stand up and call something what it is. We need not come up with over-statements, or under-statements, or mis-statements to describe something: we seem to have said that, as a nation, we are able to discern what a thing is, on its face.

Let’s call an SUV an SUV. (more…)

Sometimes it’s easy to see that your tires need more air, but it’s far from obvious in many cases. We recently noticed a drop in mileage in Theresa’s car, and I was ready to chalk it up to different gasoline composition in winter that reduces mileage. But I noticed one of Theresa’s car’s tires was noticeably low, so we filled it up. As it turned out, all the tires were under-inflated, even the ones that looked fine.

Then, one cold day I noticed a tire symbol on my dashboard. I thought it was the below-freezing warning light, but I read the manual, and it turned out my car was telling me my tire pressure was low. I have no idea how it knows that, but it was right (I believe my Prius is smarter than I am), so I pumped up my tires.

So check your tire pressure. Both cars are getting significantly better mileage after this simple effort!

Cold weather is a cause of lower tire pressure (and other other things that reduce mileage). (more…)

Over the last few days I have heard several times about a new Roadster car made by a new car company, Tesla Motors. The car sounds fantastic: it looks great, accelerates like a bat out of hell (0 to 60 in 4 seconds) and has zero emissions because it’s all electric. It also costs about $80K, so not the car for the rest of us … yet. But it sure is interesting, because it is dramatically new, and on the market.

I read Mark Morford’s column in SFGate and he has a very funny piece today on this car. As always, he rants (he’s not a big fan of Bush, for example), and raves (about the car) and, well hell, read the column — it’s hysterically funny. It’s nice to read this column for me because sometimes I feel like I rant and rave a little here. The main difference, I think, is that Morford is funny, whereas I am mostly just a downer. This is also probably why he gets paid.

So, here’s my minor little point about his column to burst the bubble: (more…)

We have been frustrated several times recently hearing people say things about hybrids, like “they aren’t good for highway driving”. I think this is due to the fact that the EPA estimates for the Prius are higher in the city than the highway, which is unusual.

So, just to be clear, the fact that the Prius is rated at 55 Highway, 60 City should not lead you to conclude that it is “not good for the highway”. It’s not true. It was confusing, for example, to Click and Clack who perpetuated this growing myth (more…)

We drove back from Cape Cod today after a long weekend. There sure are a lot of large vehicles on the road … and hardly any small or efficient ones. Repeatedly, we observed trucks of the class Expedition/Yukon/Suburban/Tahoe carrying a single person. Compared to the average mileage, these behemoths do poorly: where average is ~25 MPG highway, they get about 1/2 of average. Our Prius today arrived from our trip in our driveway reporting average mileage of 48.2 MPG, which is about 2x better than average, so about 4x better than the big truck SUVs.

I hear people saying the Prius is small. They need room for … something. I am not sure what. (more…)

In their radio show May 28th, the “Car Talk” hosts let me down. I felt compelled to write them this letter:

Boys (if I may address you formally),

I nearly lost control resulting from my hands being off the steering wheel as I listened to your show last week. You were counseling a woman on buying a car for her husband, and systematically ruled out a hybrid, in particular the Prius because it’s highway mileage was not as good as city. How can you look at yourselves in the mirror? (more…)