Used cars: A sunk cost with positivity

This article in wired explains it all pretty well - If you are buying a hybrid to go green, think again. There are enough used cars in the market. Hybrids or not, these offer a better and more efficient way to conserve energy, stay cheap and go green. In fact, here is a better way to calculate how much your decision to buy any car impacts the environment: Car manufacturers are busy manufacturing the latest models and tracking demand. Each new model picked off from the market contributes to two or more they will produce new. Producing a new car means more energy will be spent and this we need to factor into what we are saving overall with new technology. As the article says, the dent made by the energy required to produce a Toyota Prius is almost 100K miles of driving with it already wasted.

Basically the idea is to choose efficiently and waste less. However, it comes at the cost of affecting profits of car companies which in turn makes the new cars more expensive as time passes and technology adoption/evolution slower.

A slow Volt or a fast Volt

Here is news from GM on how the Volt is coming along, timed to appear in showrooms in 2010. The Volt is a hybrid and the main difference between it and others on the road (since some may ask - why does it take so long for GM to produce a hybrid?) is that it is a different kind of hybrid - the gasoline engine is simply used to charge a Lithium battery. The overall range of the Volt could be as much as 640 miles! For more, read here.

Do we care about this now?

I think when it comes to the average user and energy issues. Clearly there is a split. There is a set of users who are more educated about Green house emissions and the effects of CO2. Carbon based fuels usage needs to be clearly reduced for that. There is another set of users who didn't care about carbon fuels till now until one of them, gasoline, got way expensive. These are the cost sensitive users.

I think at this point, we have a good momentum as far as reducing petroleum consumption simply because it has started to psychologically affect a much larger percentage of people. Gas prices can alter the course of election - something the green house emissions issue was not able to achieve. I believe if both the issues are resolved by a solution which helps on both sides of the equation - reduces dependency on expensive and scarce fuel and helps reduce greenhouse emissions that that is simply great.

Read more here.

A Micro Refinery just for you!

Here is a very innovative concept: A micro fueler. While I am not completely bought into the ethanol concept I am very much into brew your own gas concept. This one allows you to produce it in your own backyard using anything which is sugar based. I will be researching more into E-100 and the benefits of this innovation coming next.

Select Green Funds...

Here is something we can all do very easily without hurting our bottomlines and this will have a great effect: Stop investing in mutual funds and stocks of companies which do not do anything about going green. Clearly the Oil and Natural Gas are out of scope. You will be surprised that 41% of all Oil companies are owned by the American public - firefighters, engineers, doctors etc. When you select a mutual fund, look at the portfolio it has and the sector split and choose carefully. There are green funds as well, which invest money in green technology itself and that is even better. I will be posting some funds here soon...

GreenMoli Gadgets

Going green is all about giving people more control for how they can manage their behavior in a way that micro level decisions can be made easily and it makes economic and budgetary sense to make those decisions.

Fast Company Blogger Anya Kamenetz posted this blog which mentions the following key gadgets which are right-on to implement this philosophy:

1) Wattson: A wireless home energy monitoring device for about $300.
2) iSave: A water monitor which can be used on taps etc.
3) PLOGG: A device which implements zigbee/bluetooth wireless mode to send energy consumption data to your PC.

Also interesting is this article on 50 ways to go green in your business

Ethanol for a buck!

Coskata, a company based in Illinois has figured out a way to make Ethanol without using up the Corn supply. The implication is that now every state and every county can produce ethanol on their own using local biomass supply and reduce the cost of transporting and maintaining it. This means that the number of gas stations which have the E85 supply can now go up from 1% to 100% in a relatively short amount of time.

Some other facts about ethanol you should know: Ethanol cars are most common in Brazil and its produced from Sugarcane there. In the U.S, GM, Ford and Chrysler have sold cars which can run on both gas and ethanol since the last few years (you may be completely unaware of this). However ethanol gas stations are extremely few at this point. More information on Ethanol can be found here.

Who will do it?

I read this post on "But What If We HAVE To Do It?" from Terry and clearly it makes a lot of sense. It also jives in with the message we are trying to send from this blog: Its possible to figure out ways in the next ten years to make our habits and behaviors more sustainable for this planet. California is a benchmark for all of us and it proves that it can be done. I am very concerned of what the EPA is up to with allowing California to get even tougher and set some goals for all of us. Agreed, all that would make life hard for a whole bunch of people, but these are the only people who have the control and the responsibility to do it!

Here is Prius from the future and Here is the Nano from the past

Ah. Tata announced a cool $2,500 car and it has everyone's eyes turning. Somewhat a celebrity since it has cool looks, I think the car is a disaster really if you look at the environmental specs. I blogged on this elsewhere, so I wont repeat it here. The car doesn't use any sort of hybrid or alternate fuels. Gives a mere 60mpg - which is about 20 less than I would expect.

I think the car is a danger to the environment. At $2,500 it gives the key to a lot of people to go gas the environment.

Prius: Lead Star

Learn more about Prius and its hacker community in these articles which reveal how the Prius is allowing users to take control of their energy consumption and self environmental engineering!