New Energy Watch

Google's Pedal-Power Contest

Google and Specialized Bicycle Components are teaming up with a great contest called Innovate or Die. The idea is to promote and reward clever pedal-powered machines, both to spur technical innovation and to help take a bit of pressure off the fossil energy load. They're looking for "zero-emission inventions that transform human energy into unprecedented results and can help save our planet, one pedal stroke at a time."

The results will be shown on YouTube. Good on 'em.

We did a 12-volt pedal-power project a few years ago. The picture above shows the contraption we made, and here's an article from Practical Sailor called Seat of Power (PDF) that describes the whole deal. It worked just fine, but we can tell you that the most valuable thing this Google/Specialized contest can do will be to show people just how much energy it takes to get serious work done.

Humans are basically "geared low." At hard levels of exertion we can produce enough energy to light one or two light bulbs, but not for long. Even when we exert moderate energy for hours, we don't get much done compared to fossil fuel. If you're not pulling energy out of a wall socket or out of a combustion chamber, but pedaling your legs off to generate 100 watts or so for half an hour, you really begin to understand how valuable fossil fuels are, and suspect that maybe we shouldn't waste them. Even better, you can marvel at a wind turbine that produces 2.5 megawatts.

So, while this contest is entirely cool and worthy, it should be noted that the best thing you can use a bicycle for is transportation. Here it can make a really tremendous difference, because it amplifies the results of your caloric expenditure. Think of it this way: If you ride your bike 5 miles to work and 5 miles home, you burn maybe 400 calories on your commute, and get great exercise. If you take your 30-mpg Subaru, you do save some time, but you burn at least a third of a gallon of gasoline, which equals 41,334 Btu, or 10,416 calories --  a 26-fold increase in energy expended to get you to work and back.

To figure out  useful energy conversions like this, see NEW's Gasoline Energy Equivalents and Conversion Calculator.

~ Doug Logan, New Energy Watch

Step Up, Mayors. Offer Preferred Parking

If you have a hybrid or alternative-fuel vehicle registered in the city of New Haven, CT, you can park it free at any meter in town. When New Haven passed this ordinance two summers ago, it was the first city to do so in New England and fourth in the country, following Los Angeles, Albuquerque, and San Jose. Residents need to stop by City Hall to pick up stickers for their vehicles. That's the deal.

Meanwhile, New Haven city buses use ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel, and the city is gradually converting its bus fleet to hybrid power.

Bust Your Energy Burglars

Those little red and green and blue lights that glow in the dark after you’ve thrown the switches on the way to bed? Those are the signs of electricity burglars working while you’re asleep or away. They’re on the TV, the computer, the printer, the microwave, the DVD player, the stereo – you name it. They show that an appliance is in stand-by or “sleep” mode, not fully on, but not fully off, either. Some of these burglars steal a lot of electricity, anywhere from 2 to 20 watts, day in, day out, year in, year out. For instance, an older TV “standing by” in an unused room at 6 watts would run about 1 kilowatt hour every week, or 52 kilowatt-hours a year, just sitting there.

Standby power levels recommended by the government’s EnergyStar program range from 1 to 3 watts, but when you have a dozen such recommended burglars in the house, it can still add up to real waste and money. Appliances whose electronic clocks are vital to their function need to be left on, but others should be plugged into power strips with switches that fully break the circuit when you turn it off.  If you have a computer, monitor, printer, and scanner all plugged into a single power strip, you can manage them all at once.

Lose the Plastic Bags -- Seriously

They’re called “urban tumbleweed.” When they’re in trees along the highway, they’re “ghosts.” But plastic bags aren’t cute. Statistics about their use are staggering – something like 500 billion per year worldwide, 380 billion in the U.S. alone. Only a tiny fraction are recycled; meanwhile many millions are let loose in the world. They’re used for a matter of minutes, and they take decades to break down in the environment, poisoning, tangling, and choking birds and sealife as they go. This is not news to anyone. The trick is to remember to take reusable bags with you when you shop, to politely refuse plastic bags at stores, and to recover plastic bags you find out loose in the world.

For more on the havoc these little monsters wreak, visit noplasticbags.blogspot.com.

~ Doug Logan, New Energy Watch

If Heat Rises in an Empty Room, Will Anyone Be Kept Warm?

As winter comes, isolate your unused or seldom-used spaces. Close warm-air vents and radiator valves in those rooms, put thin-film coverings on windows that won’t be opened for the winter, and keep the doors shut. This will reduce the amount of space that needs to be kept warm, and will make the whole heating system much more fuel-efficient. Set your thermostat at 68 degrees during the daytime, and a couple of degrees lower at night when everyone is under the covers. Lower it more -- to 55 or even 50 -- if you're going to be away for a few days or more (taking care not to overchill pets or plants). Programmable thermostats can be great for taking over routine settings.

~ Doug Logan, New Energy Watch

Preachers Preaching, Choirs Screeching, and Lions Lying Down With Lambs

This is a re-post of an essay put online here over two years ago, when the Bush administration was lame-duck and the Obama administration was a long-shot. Nothing much has changed.

A lot of the environmental "movement" is froth -- without form, and void. Information abounds, but individual activity does not. Preachers exhort the choir, and every day there are more non-profits, more media outlets, more bureaucracies spreading more information to those who already know enough to take action themselves, but would prefer to donate money to those who would take action for them. People who are inclined to lift a finger are already doing it.

Some education is always needed, but really, we've been inundated in recent years with greening and conservation tips. They're everywhere. Taking action doesn't require much deep understanding. It just takes getting up and doing something, whether it's changing a lightbulb, caulking a window, or correcting tire pressure. After initial action comes momentum. With momentum comes change.

It seems as if there are a fair number of people who get the picture and are active, and a somewhat larger number of people who just don't get it, or who actively thumb their noses at environmental responsibility. Then there's a really big middle group who sort of care, but don't get around to doing anything.

This big group in the middle is not going to move without a push. The time will never come when they'll get off their collective couch of ease merely to do the right thing, no matter how much education you throw at them. If they are to budge, it will take one or more of three things:

1. Harsh economic realities set  by outside forces -- natural disasters like hurricanes, or geopolitical disasters like oil embargoes or widespread war in the Middle East.
2. A "stick" disincentive to guzzle energy, in the form of punitive laws and taxes set by federal, state, and local governments.
3. A "carrot" incentive to conserve energy, in the form of compensatory laws and rebates.

While it's impossible to be exact in predictions of hurricanes and wars, it's easy enough to predict the progress of politicians hammering out big, decisive laws at the risk of losing their jobs. It's rare, and it's slow. That's why the only real progress is being made through individual effort and private interest. There's no point in waiting for this government -- or, probably, the next --  to lead in the way FDR did with the New Deal, or Eisenhower with the interstate highways, or Kennedy with the space program. This bunch in Washington isn't up to the task.

Is there irony in the fact that some of the strongest leadership in conservation and alternative energy today is coming from big American corporations like Pepsico and Conoco Philips?  Sure, but the people who run these companies can read the economic writing on the wall. There's profit to be made by an alignment with the environmental movement, and it's corporations that have the money, the technology, and the expertise to get things done on a large scale. Here's a huge list of the EPA's Green Power partners.

The environmental track record of big business is sketchy at best. When a big company turns around and does the right thing, it makes long-time, knee-jerk environmentalists cynical and skeptical. But, with  exceptions, this is old-fashioned thinking. While some of the big corporate moves may be disingenuous, many are obviously not. Sheer altruism is hardly possible when money must be made, Wall Street convinced, and shareholders satisfied. But if the prospect of new technologies, new partnerships, new facilities, new jobs, and rapid growth are incentives for business to climb into a bed of green, the covers should be thrown back and the pillows fluffed.

~ Doug Logan, newenergywatch.com

The Simple Home: The Luxury of Enough

Mies van der Rohe's architectural aesthetic was expressed by “Less is More.” Today's phrase, in light of the MacMansioning of America, should probably be “Enough is Enough.” But lest the concept suggest some sort of diminution or restriction or impoverishment, we need someone like Sarah Nettleton, an award-winning AIA architect, certified in the practices of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), to adjust the perspective. Her book is called The Simple Home: The Luxury of Enough. What a great title.

For two decades or so, even in the face of post-9/11 oil urgencies and the acceleration of global warming, we've allowed developers to overwhelm the landscape with bloated starter-castles (much as Detroit has encouraged the blistering our our roads with Hummers and Escalades). Young couples and families have been brainwashed into buying these houses, often at sub-prime interest rates, and now look -- environmental and fiscal disaster. There's been an obvious disconnect, brought on by hyper-consumerism in America, between what people think they want, and what they might actually want if given half a chance to consider their priorities. The disconnect seems to cause a tremendous yawing, back and forth, between the urgent desire for more and the urgent need to hassle with less.

This is our rant, not Nettleton's. She's more graceful in trying to make the connection again, with chapters covering what she calls the Six Paths to Simplicity:

• Simple is Enough
• Simple is Thrifty
• Simple is Flexible
• Simple is Timeless
• Simple is Sustainable
• Simple is Refined

Of these, the first is paramount. Why do we allow clutter to overwhelm us? Why would we have a 5000-square-foot home when we rarely if ever use 3000 square feet of it? Why would we feel compelled to heat, light, clean, and insure so much unused space? It’s tough on the environment, tough on the bank account, and, inevitably, tough on the psyche. How can we get to a point, in architecture and in our own perceptions, where we can find luxury in what we need and can arrange properly, separate from what someone else might have?

Flexible, Thrifty, and Timeless tie into this. In a typical American house, for example, the kitchen serves as nerve center, sitting room, homework room -– you name it. If you were freed from the strictures of thinking you also needed a separate family room, study, living room, and dining room, you might be able to conceive a space flexible enough to serve your needs more efficiently and more pleasingly.

While there are plenty of books on the topics of simpler living and smaller homes, Nettleton's is distinguished by superior photographs, typical of the Taunton Press, that illuminate a refined and responsible architectural philosophy.

Here are excerpts from the book, published on Taunton's Fine Homebuilding site.

~ Doug Logan, New Energy Watch