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Archive for January, 2009

The 2009 Detroit Auto Show is this week, and there is plenty of exciting green automotive action going down! The auto companies exhibiting seem to be working to “out-green” each other…. which is fine by us. 

Toyota unveiled its new 2010 Prius to great excitement. This new model will offer 50 MPG, up from 46 MPG for the current model. The new model also featured solar panels on the roof which power the car’s cooling system. The new Prius is also faster, accelerating from 0 to 60 MPH in 9.5 seconds. (Although how many Prius drivers are really into gunning it?)  They have not yet announced the price (current models start at ~$22K), but the new Prius will be on sale in the US this Spring.

Another green car leader, Honda, unveiled its new Insight hybrid model for 2010.   According to MSNBC, the Insight’s hybrid design is quite different from Toyota’s, functioning as a primarily gas-powered vehicle with an electric assist motor, a decision that produces better highway fuel economy than city mileage. The Insight will get 40 in the city and 43 on the highway, according to Honda.  The Insight will also likely cost less than the Prius as it has a smaller battery and electric motor.  Honda has not announced the price of its new Insight, but said that it will be below that of its Civic hybrid.  Likely it will go for around $20,000.

The American companies were also trying to seem like they were on the green super-highway to the future. Chrysler showed off the 200C EV with an electric power train. This is still a concept car, based on the existing Chrysler 300C model.  This new hybrid car will go 40 miles on electricity, with an engine generating more energy for additional range when needed.  Let’s hope they stay in business long enough to bring this car to market!

One of the sexiest cars on the floor was the Karma from Fisker Automotive. The car is simply gorgeous. While the Karma debuted as a concept car at last year’s show, this year it was back as a production-ready vehicle. They also showed off a new concept– the Karma S, which is a two-door with a retractable roof.  (The S stands for Sunset.)  Fisker will start delivering the four-door Karma sedan this year and it already has over 1000 pre-orders. The Karma is a plug-in hybrid that, when fully-charged, burns no fuel for the first 50 miles. According to CNET, Fisker says the Karma will go to 60 mph in 5.8 seconds–which is fast, but not outstanding.   Still, you’d look so cool in it, who would care?  But not many of can afford this height of eco-cool: the starting price for the production Karma is $87,900.

Images: Prius from Jalopnik.com; Insight from Honda; Karma from Fisker Automotive.

These days, there are more and more options for those of you who want a small wind turbine out in the yard or on your roof. Residential wind power systems range from the standard to the somewhat bizarre, and come in sizes that can power several major appliances all the way up to your whole house and beyond. In the right conditions, residential wind power can be much more economical than other renewable energy options such as solar or geothermal.

Traditional propeller-type wind turbines remain the best options for residential settings outside of urban areas. They are efficient and time-tested, and the leading manufacturers of these turbines have been at it for a long time. Two of the leaders are Bergey Windpower and Southwest Windpower. Bergey makes several versions of its Excel turbine suitable for home wind power use. The Excel can be connected to the electrical grid and is big enough to power an entire home.

Southwest Windpower makes the Skystream 3.7 turbine (shown above), an innovative machine that has a number of advances specifically targeted to residential users. It is meant to be tied to the electricity grid, and in reasonably windy conditions could power an average home.

In the past few years, a number of new manufacturers have come out with radical turbine designs intended to make wind turbines easier to install and better for tightly packed suburban and urban environments. Most of these turbines are vertical axis wind turbines, or VAWTs. Instead of spinning on a horizontal axis like their propeller-based cousins, VAWTs rotate around a vertical axis. The key advantages are that they can be quieter, are more amenable to the swirling wind conditions found in urban environments, and can have a smaller overall footprint (both tower width and height). The downsides? The companies that make them don’t have long track records, and the turbines are less efficient because a portion of each turbine is always spinning into the wind.

One example is Mariah Power, who makes the Windspire wind turbine (shown in the upper right image above). Each Windspire turbine is 30 feet tall and two feet wide, and it resembles a sculpture as much as it does a renewable energy device. The cylindrical structure makes it very quiet and compact, meaning you could install multiple turbines alongside one another for more power. Each unit should provide from 10-50% of the electricity for a typical home depending on where you live in the country.

Another example is Helix Wind. The company make several vertical axis turbines that, in my opinion, most closely resemble a ram’s horn. The complex (and weird or beautiful, depending on your sensibilities) design efficiently transforms variable winds into clean electricity. Their largest model, the S594, can provide 50-100% of a typical home’s electricity use under the right conditions.

So, now that you’re intrigued, should you run out and buy a new wind turbine for your rooftop or back yard?

Not so fast - there are some major caveats with residential wind power. The first is pretty self-explanatory - you need quite a bit of wind. Ideally it should be windier more often than not, and the harder the better. The energy that wind turbines generate is proportional to the cube of wind speed, which means that a wind turbine in 20 mph of wind will generate EIGHT times as much energy as the same turbine in 10 mph of wind (all other factors being equal). Ideal spots for wind power are coastal areas with steady sea breezes, or open expanses such as the Great Plains where winds really howl.

Second, the turbine should be as high as possible and well away from any obstructions. We’ve seen many Photoshop images or illustrations of wind turbines on rooftops in urban areas, but the truth is that there’s just more wind the higher you get off the ground or rooftop. As an example, the wind speed at 50 feet above ground will be about 25% faster than the wind speed at 60 feet. That’s great if you’re on the 90th floor of a skyscraper, but not if you own a one-story home in a typical neighborhood. The buildings, structures and trees in urban areas play havoc with wind speeds and directions. That wind turbine happily spinning five feet above your garage might look good, but it will perform much better (2x better or more) if it’s 50 feet higher. And payback period is all about performance. Typical guidelines for horizontal turbines are that the bottom of your turbine should be 3x above the nearest upwind barrier, or 25 feet above any upwind obstacles within 300-500 feet (whichever is higher).

Third, getting the required permits and approvals to install a home wind turbine can be thorny. There are a number of issues with wind turbines that you don’t have to face with solar panels. There’s a perceived noise issue, although testing of modern turbines doesn’t support this negative. There can be an impact on views, especially if you’ve elevated your turbine into the proper wind zones.  Some people and jurisdictions are worried about safety should a turbine fall, but the American Wind Energy Assocation states that there haven’t been any injuries from falling turbines in 25 years. And, there’s a concern about the impact of turbines on birds and wildlife. This is a major issue for utility-scale turbines, but the National Audubon Society in California found that small wind turbines pose little or no additional risk to our feathered friends. The net result of all of this is that depending on where you live, you’ll have to go through a somewhat complicated permitting process. A good installer can help navigate the process, so choose wisely! (we have a number of good wind energy installers in our service providers directory.)

We hope that the technology, zoning laws and financial incentives all improve to the point that small wind turbines are a common sight on our skylines. Until then, we applaud those urban wind pioneers among you who are willing to overcome the challenges of small wind. Should you choose that path, here are some additional resources that talk about the challenges and how to manage them:

• An overview of the permitting issues, and another permitting, siting and safety discussion based on California’s experiences with small wind turbines from the American Wind Energy Association;
• Guidelines on installation from Skystream / Southwest Windpower;
• A review of the latest “production” small turbines from Home Power Magazine.

We want to start the New Year off with an eco-bang, and so we’re launching a new Green Home Contest.  Low Impact Living and Joie de Vivre Hotels challenge you to make your home as green as you can! We’re going to reward the greenest home of all with a luxurious 3-night stay at the very environmentally-friendly Hotel Carlton in San Francisco. More on the hotel and the prize in a minute!

Low Impact Living will identify the single family home (and its proud owners) that has the lowest Low Impact Living Index (calculated using our Environmental Impact Calculator), and we’re going to share with you what that family has done to get there. Don’t worry if you haven’t done big projects like installing solar panels or a wind turbine - as the calculator shows, many of the best green home projects are simple and inexpensive. We’ll show you how to identify projects to make your home more eco-friendly. The contest will close on February 15, 2009. So you have time to make green changes!

What you have to do to enter

1. Visit our Household Environmental Impact Calculator and calculate your base LILI (Low Impact Living Index). It will only take you five-ten minutes to use the calculator and create your account.
2. Once you have entered all of your base inputs, move on to the “select projects” page of the calculator. Make sure you only check projects that you’ve finished (or will finish by February 15th) before you log out.
3. Make sure that you log out or save your profile before leaving - if you just move on to another web site without logging out, your inputs could be lost.
4. If you’ve already created an account through our calculator, then you need to return and, log in again. We’ve added some new features recently, and they won’t work unless you refresh your account.
5. The calculator isn’t all-encompassing yet, so there may be projects that you’ve done that don’t show up. If this is true, send us an email at contest@lowimpactliving.com describing what you’ve done. Low Impact Living staffers will review your efforts and award up to a 5% additional deduction for compelling projects.

How we’ll select the winner

The contest closes on February 15, 2009, and we will announce the winner on March 1. This will give us time to check with the finalists to make sure that they’ve completed all of their checked projects. (Past entrants to our green home contests are not eligible.)

If you are a finalist (in our top 10 lowest LILI scores), we may ask you to verify that your projects are actually completed, via photos or receipts / invoices for work performed. We’ll also ask for your address (not to be published!) so that we can verify entered information about your home. If you are a winner, then you have to be willing to let us share your projects and process with everyone via our blog, and to provide us with the photos and project descriptions necessary to do that. You’ll become a green star overnight!

What you could win!

The greenest homeowner will receive three nights at Hotel Carlton in San Francisco. The Hotel Carlton is a member of the Joie de Vivre chain of hotels, which is deeply committed to making sustainability part of its core business operations. In fact, their mission is to “adhere to the strictest environmental standards, engage in sustainable practices and maintain an impeccable quality of guest experience.” The JDV Hotels environmental program includes hotel-wide recycling programs, composting, use of renewable energy, use of recycled paper products, energy-efficient lighting and much more. To learn more about Joie de Vivre’s commitment to sustainability, click here. To learn more about the Hotel Carlton, click here.

So, good luck, and get to greening!

Written by Karen Pease, courtesy of Gas2.org

For those who haven’t heard of it, the Aptera 2e is the first vehicle from Aptera Motors, a Carlsbad startup with funding from Idealab, Google, and other sources. (Also for those who hadn’t heard of it: it’ll look great in your cave.)

The all-electric, three-wheeled 2e weighs in at around 1,500 pounds due to high-strength composite construction, has a small fraction as much aerodynamic drag as a Prius, goes 100-120 miles with a top speed of 85-90mph, and boasts normal car safety features, impressive crush test results, and crash testing (TBA).

With a price ranging from the mid $20s to the mid $40s (depending on options), Aptera is aiming to produce 10,000 a year in 2010 and 100,000 by 2015, including a subsequent four-wheel, four-seater code-named Palomar.

Now, they’ve announced what many have been long awaiting: a basic production schedule.

As Aptera has neared production, the details have been coming in fast and furious. Aptera officially announced what many had been suspecting for a long period of time — the production version is front-wheel drive. Founder Steve Fambro also stated in an interview that there will be an optional fast charger to charge it in 2-3 hours.

On Tuesday, those on the Aptera waiting list received a letter including some news:

“Our most recent corporate commitment was that we would deliver the first production Typ-1, now known as the 2e, by the close of 2008. Despite our well-intentioned efforts, we were unable to complete that vehicle before the close of the year, so it’s now slated for January 16. However, unlike prior plans, this vehicle will not be delivered to a retail customer. We will continue our builds but at a much slower rate starting with a small test fleet of the enhanced vehicles, then moving to our volume production launch on October 1, 2009.”

To put the delay into perspective, Aptera’s original production goal to deliver in late 2008 was set over a year ago, so a shortfall of a couple weeks isn’t bad. The wording is unclear as to whether all unit production will go toward the test fleet or whether unit production will commence for customers before mass production commences, but it is clear that the launch date for mass production will be this fall. Aptera goes on to explain that the delay and the use of a test fleet before full production was due to changes brought about due to customer expectations of ease of use and the advice of automotive professionals in Aptera’s ever-growing staff.

The other main piece of news is a “lock-in” proposal. As they near production Aptera says, “it has become equally important for Aptera to properly model our operations to meet demand.” As a consequence, they’re giving depositors an option: keep your $500 reservation refundable, as it always was, or change it to be non-refundable (but still escrowed) and get a $250 discount when you make your purchase. They note that they’re moving toward production “in the face of this challenged economy,” and having more firm commitments will help them with forecasting demand — a model that, they hope, “maybe Wall Street will see … as a role model for offering these types of returns on investments.”

Aptera concludes with their pledge:

“We will manufacture the most efficient vehicle on the road and continue to apply the input we receive from our consumer.” As we fly in the face of this challenged economy and write a new page in transportation history, we simply can’t afford to cut corners. We are going to do what it takes to get it right, and we cannot get there without your help and continued support. You have stood with us faithfully and we promise that our vehicles will be worth the wait.”

“We look forward to sharing our dream with you as Aptera introduces the world to the most energy efficient solution for personal mobility.”

Image credit: Aptera Motors

In case you missed it yesterday, President-Elect Obama laid out his economic stimulus package plans– and there was plenty of good news for us green folk.  Green leaders around the country are applauding the plan.  Quoted in Grist, League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski said, “This morning, President-elect Obama reaffirmed his commitment to invest in efficiency and clean energy technologies as part of his economic recovery package.  [He is] ready to hit the ground running, he offered specific details that offer great hope for America’s future success.”

To read more laudatory comments from environmental leaders, visit Grist here.
To read the full text of the speech, click here.

In the speech Obama called for radically increasing the use of clean, renewable energy–both in government buildings and in private homes.  He said, “To finally spark the creation of a clean energy economy, we will double the production of alternative energy in the next three years. We will modernize more than 75 percent of federal buildings and improve the energy efficiency of 2 million American homes, saving consumers and taxpayers billions on our energy bills.” 

That is music to our ears.  As my Low Impact Living co-founder, Jason Pelletier, wrote earlier this week, we now have an outstanding opportunity for the government to drive private and public adoption and use of renewable energy and other eco-smart technologies.  And as President Obama seems to understand, driving that adoption is also an excellent way to create new jobs for Americans.

Now let’s all pray that he can get this plan signed and get the green train to leave the station!

You can see a draft of the full plan here.