This Week in News: July 31st
Government
Senate Democrats are calling for the resignation of the EPA chief Stephen Johnson. Stemming this decision is detailed in a previous article I had about the EPA ignoring the Supreme Court’s ruling on the danger of greenhouse gases. Many of the senators are saying that they have no more confidence in the Johnson and that he also made false statements earlier in the year. Whatever decision is made, I just hope whoever is the head of the EPA decides to take better action to improve our environment.
With the absence of Senators Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, a renewable energy tax credit bill failed to meet the required number of votes to pass. The tax credit would allow Abengoa Solar to build the Solana solar plant in Arizona, the home state of John McCain. This solar plant would be the largest in the world and would provide a large number of jobs for the state. The tax credit is still short 7 credits even with the three senators being absent which makes it seem like it wouldn’t pass regardless of whether they were there or not they were there. A new power plant needs to be built in Arizona regardless, so why not push to make it solar? It makes me really angry that our Congress continues to fight against moving towards renewable energy and keep our reliance on energy sources that produce tons of carbon emissions.
Wind Energy
BP and Clipper Windpower plan on splitting the costs for a project to build one of America’s largest wind farms in South Dakota. The project will be called Titan wind project and is expected to produce around 5,050 MW which will make it the world’s largest wind farm. If the proposed plan is successful, it will provide wind power for approximately 1.5 million homes and offset nearly 24 billion pounds of carbon emissions. It’s great to see an oil company starting to invest in more renewable resources, but their motives are still to make more money.
Solar Energy
In much lighter news, Johnny Depp is planning on running his private island completely on solar and hydrogen power. The cost of the project will cost around 150,000 pounds or $300,000 US dollars. Depp decided to go to Mike Strizki to build the system for him. The system will use solar energy in the day and store any excess energy as hydrogen during cloudy days or at night. The hydrogen is stored in 10,000 gallon propane tanks to hold him over during the nights. Regardless of how efficient this system is, it just seems wrong that you need such a large system to power an island just for two people.
Mail to be Delivered with Hydrogen
Hydrogen is still a young technology for use in cars with fuel cell engines. The U.S. Postal Service and GM are teaming up to begin delivering mail in hydrogen powered fuel-cell vehicles. Before you get too excited like I did, they are only going to be providing these vehicles to two USPS locations, one in Irvine California and the other that will be announced shortly. The car they will be using is a Chevrolet Equinox that has been tested over the last several years by the USPS in several locations. GM needed to test these vehicles in real driving situations to perfect the model that will be used.
Photo by Mike Babcock.
Chevy already has a program out called Project Driveway where they are testing 100 hydrogen powered fuel-cell vehicles in several locations throughout the country and the world. Living in the DC area, I previously heard about a few people testing hydrogen vehicles. A gas station in downtown DC recently built the only hydrogen pump in the area at their gas station. The postal workers in California will be using hydrogen located at the University of California, Irvine.
Hopefully this plan is a success and hydrogen pumps become a standard in gas stations throughout the country. It will be a difficult hurdle to overcome in that it will cost nearly $1/2 trillion in order to setup an entire infrastructure for hydrogen throughout America.
Save and Go Green: Buying in Bulk
I shop in bulk all the time because it saves me tons of money. I buy large quantities of foods and household items that I use all the time to save money and reduce the number of times I have to take a trip to the store. I have never thought of buying in bulk as going green, but I wanted to find out if it does and does it always save you money.
Buying In Bulk Bins
When it comes to the environment, it makes sense that it is a greener alternative to buying smaller quantities. There is less packaging involved that with traditional retail packaging. When you buy a large amount of the same product, there is only a minimal amount of packaging involved. The EPA reported that we generate about 80 million tons of waste from packaging and containers every year. That is a lot of wasted packaging that we don’t need. One really good example comes with cereal. There is such a small bag of cereal inside of a big box which is completely unnecessary. If you ever go to a natural food store, you see the bins with cereals and granola in them. You can buy whatever quantity you want and it only requires a small bag with none of the packaging.
Wholesale Stores
Natural food stores are not the only places that can save on packaging when purchasing in bulk. Even in wholesale stores like Costco and Sams Club you can really save on packaging. Be careful with some of the products though, they still have just as much packaging as with traditional retail packaging. If you are going to purchase something in bulk from these stores, just make sure to recycle the packaging. I found an interesting article that talks of Costco uses an environmental friendly packaging made by Natralock and recyclable cardboard for their packaging. These products are still inexpensive so the cost is able to stay down.
Saving Money
it’s easy to see that you can easily save money on buying bulk with less packaging and larger quantities. When I was in college, I would buy granola and other cereals from a co-op located on campus. The price of them would be around $1.50 per pound for both. I would leave with a huge bag of granola for only a few bucks. It would probably cost close to double for a similar amount of product in packaging. What was also great is that everything I purchased was organic.
Going to wholesalers can also save you tons of money because you are purchase much larger amounts of the same products. I save money by buying bulk, especially when it comes to meats. I buy large quantities of beef, chicken and other meats at a fraction of the cost I am able to get them in a grocery store. I freeze any of the meat that I don’t eat immediately and they last several months. Here is a good reference to how long meats and other products can last in the freezer.
The next step for me is to buy meats in bulk from local farmers. I have previously purchased meats from local farms. They aren’t fed any hormones and are free-range. The price was about the same as the price of meats in any grocery store. I should be able to save a little by purchasing in larger quantities from local farms.
Pay to Live Green’s First Month
It’s has been a great first month. I have really enjoyed sharing my thoughts on trying to save money by being able to go green. Thanks for the great comments so far and hopefully Pays to Live Green will have many more successful months.
T. Boone Pickens Goes to Washington
I promised everybody an update on the status of T. Boone Pickens and his plan. The latest news is that T. Boone Pickens met with the the U.S. Senate Homeland and Security and Government Affairs Committee on Tuesday.
He is pushing his ideas about how Wind energy can reduce our huge $700 billion dependency on foreign oil. An interesting comment he made was that natural gas could be used in other places instead of fueling power plants throughout the U.S.
This trip to Congress really makes it seem like he is really genuine about moving our country to using alternative energy. I’m not sure how much he really cares about the environment, but his intentions seem to be to keep more profits here in America. Regardless of his intentions, I think it’s great that he is really pushing this idea. Hopefully Congress listens closely to what he had to say and they take action now. The sooner we can start to invest heavily in alternate sources of energy, the more environmentally friendly this country will become.
In related news. Texas has just passed a plan to allow Electric Transmission Texas LLC (ETT) along with several subsidiaries to invest in transmission lines. The $4.9 billion plan will increase the number of electric transmissions lines to carry wind power from Western Texas to the rest of the state. Texas is currently the leading state in America in Wind Energy production. The major problem is they do not have enough transmission lines to transport the energy produced from the wind farms currently there and are sometimes forced to even turn off some of the wind turbines. They are setting up the building blocks to have wind energy as one of the state’s primary energy sources.
Aptera: A New Generation Vehicle
The Aptera Typ-1 is new concept vehicle being made by the California based company Aptera. It’s actually a vehicle, not a car and technically classified as a motorcycle. The vehicle looks a little weird at first as it only has 3 wheels, but I dug a little further to find out more information about it.
The Typ-1 will come in two varieties, the all electric version and a plug-in hybrid-diesel version. The electric model has an approximate range of 120 miles when the battery is properly draining. That is not bad considering the average daily commute for Americans is under 20 miles per way. The plug-in hybrid version get 300 miles/gallon when traveling 120 miles in a day. That incredible compared to the current hybrid cars available. Since the average person only travels closer to 50 miles per day, the mpg raises to about 500!! That’s what i call truly gas efficient.
After hearing about this car on the radio several times, I am convinced that it will succeed. You can hold up to 15 bags of groceries. One really awesome feature about this car is that it has a fan that will maintain the temperature of the car to the temperature outside. This is done through a fan that will automatically start when you leave you car and is completely controlled through a solar panel on top of the car. The problem with a lot of cars that are available that get really high mileage or are electric is the price. This car ranges anywhere from $27,000 - $30,000 depending on the model you buy. That really makes this car much more affordable for the average person.
There are a few downsides to this car. The biggest is that it is not yet available to the entire nation because Aptera is such a small company. Also, the car can only fit two people and an infant. If you have a big family, this car is out of the question. You also have to charge the battery nightly that will cost you about $1-$2 of electricity to do so. That still saves the huge gas costs we are currently paying.
If you really want to get a hold of this car and live in the state of California, you can reserve one for only $500 at https://aptera.com/reserve.php. It would be awesome if this car was made available to all states in the next few years and the priced dropped a little further. Even though the more practical model of the Aptera still uses gasoline, I think it is the first step to eliminating our reliance on gasoline.
This Week in News: July 24th
Government
Al Gore told reporters earlier in the week that he will better serve the environment as private citizen. He rejected the idea of running along with Barrack Obama even if he were to wins the presidency. This is a smart move by Al Gore because it allows him to accomplish more without lobbyists and special interest groups holding him back. It’s great to see that he can continue to spread his environmentalist views to the general populous.
Photo by Roo Reynolds.
Hydrogen Technology
The National Research Council believes that hydrogen technology can be widely available within 15 to 20 years. This makes logical sense because the technology is currently expensive and will take some time to setup the infrastructure for it. In the meantime, technologies like hybrid and electric will have to take the place of our current all gas cars if we want to start reducing carbon emissions. The federal government is going to have to provide some assistance, around $55 billion in total, if we want this plan to come into fruition.
Eco-Friendly
The National Bank in New Zealand has just opened an environmentally sustainable bank in Blockhouse Bay. This build is completely constructed of materials that are renewable and contains rank collecting bins, solar panels and even compost bins. This is incredible news. This bank is really make huge strides in being a one of a kind. Not just banks, but other companies need to take notice to this bank and model future buildings after this one. This bank was able to save substantial amounts of money on both their energy bills and their water bills because of the solar panels, the use of recycled water and strategies so it can maintain its internal temperature. I would love to one day have a house that is modeled off of this type of building.
