It's Easy Being Green

If you aren’t already familiar with the organization 25x’25 and are interested in our country’s progress in eliminating the usage of fossil fuels, you should check out the group’s new blog.  Their goal is that by 2025, 25% of America’s farms, ranches and forests will provide 25% of the total combined energy used by the U.S.

They’re goal is also set on continuing to provide safe, abundant and affordable feed, fiber and food.  The group’s new blog, just rolled out last week during their 5th National 25x’25 Renewable Energy Summit, contains a host of information about the progress toward that goal and what each state is doing to get there.  The blog also offers RSS feeds for those of you on the blogging go.

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Engineers at Toyota are apparently working to build a completely solar powered car.  It will be a few years before the solar powered vehicle will be ready for sale but it’s a move the auto manufacturer hopes will help turn it’s business aound.  Toyota, just like most other auto manufacturers, have been hit hard by a slumping globabl economy and reduced demand for their products.

Sources say the car will be equipped with solar panels on the roof and will also be able to be recharged by conventional solar panels you might have on your house or business.  Toyota also hopes to eventually build and market a car that can be solely powered and recharged by it’s own installed solar panels.  The move has surprised many since Toyota is reporting its first sales loss in 70 years of business.  But the auto giant says it won’t halt it’s research in green technology despite the current bad business environment.

Toyota already has a history with solar power and other green technology.  The company’s plant in Tsutsumi has solar panels spread across it’s roof that would cover 60 tennis courts.  The panels produce enough electricity to supply 500 homes with power.  The company says the panels are reducing 740 tons a year of carbon emissions…the equivalent of 1,500 barrels of oil in reductions.

Toyota will also apparently get some help through one of it’s battery research partners, Panasonic.  Panasonic just recently took over Sanyo Electric Corp., a leader in solar energy.

I hope these researchers are able to get this done sooner rather than later and are able to make the technology affordable to the normal car buyer.  Can you imagine in sunny locales like Arizona and California, these cars would work like a dream…quietly whisking you from one errand to another powered by the cosmic giant above.

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During the last post, I talked about my neighbors, furiously dealing with the falling leaves here in Indiana.  Again just the other day, the full force of leaf blowers were out moving around piles of dead leaves.  They move them into the street and into their neighbors yards.  Anything to get them out of their way!  But what if they understood the environmental impact of doing all that yard work?

The Environmental Protection Agency broke it down for us and the results are a tad startling.  They estimate 54 million Americans mow their lawns every weekend.  We use 800 million gallons of gasoline to power all those lawn mowers and garden equipment every year.  The EPA estimates mowers are the cause of about 5% of our pollution, spewing Greenhouse Gasses and other emissions into the atmosphere unchecked.  One lawn mower is said to produce the equivalent emissions of driving 43 brand new cars for 12,000 miles.  Just one hour of mowing will produce the same amount of emissions equivalent to a 350 mile drive in your car.  And as we fuel up all our lawn equipment, Americans spill some 17 million gallons of gas each year.  That’s more fuel spilled than the disastrous Exxon Valdez oil tanker!

Those numbers show why we need to change our thinking, especially when it comes to trimming the lawn and cleaning up all the dead leaves around our house.  Convenience changed a lot of people’s thinking for the worse.  Sure it’s relatively easy to walk out to the garage, fire up the gas lawnmower and be done in 15 minutes.  Instead, everyone should be getting some essential exercise by dragging out a new push-reel lawn mower.  That’s right, a push-reel just like this one:

A new push-reel lawn mower

Technology has helped to make some advances with push-reel mowers believe it or not.  They’re much lighter than what your Grandpa might have had sitting around in his shed.  They only need their blades sharpened once every 7 to 10 years and can now cut most varieties of grass to a variety of differnt heights.  They’re quiet, don’t use any gas and give you the benefit of a little added workout.  If you want to reduce the strain even more, some of them even come in electric versions with rechargeable batteries.  It gives you up to an hour and a half of mowing time before having to recharge!  I think it’s great and plan to put one on my list instead of a gas-powered mower which is just as expensive before you even add in the cost of gas.

And for everyone using leaf blowers, I suggest putting on a pair of gloves and using a good old fashioned rake and broom for your cleanup chores.  It willl get your heart rate up, give you some fresh air and reduce the emissions required just to keep your yard looking pretty.

If you’re interested in some clean garden and lawn equipment, check out these two websites:

People Powered Machines or the Clean Air Gardening Supply

If you have ways to maintain your lawn or garden while keeping an eye on your environmental impact, please share your story!

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This weekend I watched oodles of neighbors wrestling with the falling leaves.  Whole lawns have disappeared beneath carpets of red, orange and gold leaves as they tumble from the trees lining our streets.  I think it’s beautiful and shows the changing seasons but it seems most think of it as an annoyance.  This weekend neighbors up and down the block dug out their noisy leaf blowers and moved all the leaves either into the street or onto the lawn for mowing.  Not only is it noisy but it’s also kicking a lot of emissions into the air and for what?  This morning most of the lawns have disappeared again.

I’m taking the wait until the tree is bare approach to leaf raking.  I’ve gone out a couple of times in the last month and created a couple of big piles to compost.  I like that idea instead of piling them into lawn and garden trash bags to be hauled off to the dump.  Then I can use the compost around the garden beds and in the lawn to add beneficial nutrients into the soil.  If you don’t have the room to compost in your own yard, you might want to think about giving the material to a local yard waste recycler.  Usually your local dump or transfer station will know of someone in the area who can help.

Composting isn’t that difficult though.  Even if you’ve got a little corner of your property you can dedicate the process, you can do a lot.  I’ve simply created a large pile of dead leaves in one corner of my yard by the garage.  It originally was well over 4 feet tall but as they have started breaking down, the pile has shrunk down to about 2 feet tall and half as wide.  Once a week, I head out with my pitchfork and turn the inside of the pile outward.  That mixes the dry, whole leaves into the middle where they can begin to break down.  I also keep the pile moist, like a rung out sponge.  So, if it hasn’t rained during the week spray your pile down with the hose.  Over a few weeks you’ll begin to notice the leaves breaking down and turning into black gold, compost!

For tomorrow:  How you can continue your fall cleanup while reducing the environmental impact

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While both sides of the presidential election begin to unleash their war of words, they’re also dragging environmental and energy stances into their statements. The Democratic National Committee will unveil a new anti-McCain campaign today called “Exxon McCain ‘08″. The campaign will include a special gas pump logo, bright red buttons, bumper stickers and yard signs sure to be seen in a city near you sometime soon! The campaign is aimed at rebuking the Republicans tire pressure gauges they handed out to political reporters earlier this week that were labeled “Obama’s Energy Plan”.

Do you think one candidate has a better energy policy than the other? Let us know who you think has the best eye for the environment and energy issues daunting our nation!

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A World Naked Bike Ride Event

I’m having a good chuckle while waking up to my first cup of coffee this morning.  Heads were apparently turning in St. Louis Saturday night, while hundreds of mostly nude bicyclists protested society’s dependence on oil.  It was all part of the “World Naked Bike Ride” which stretched for 10 miles through the city.  So far 70 cities across the globe have unknowingly been host to one of these political rides.  Officers with the St. Louis Police Department checked to make sure the bike riders were within the decency laws, wearing minimums like pasties, body paint, loin cloths and thongs.

For more information about organizing your own World Naked Bike Ride, check out their website.  There is also an entertaining video of what the rides look like.  You can also Google search for pictures using the ride’s name.  It’s quite entertaining.  I’d really like to see one of those come to Flagstaff!

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As noted in the report, solar power has been expanding rapidly in the past eight years, growing at an average pace of 40 percent per year. The cost per kilowatt-hour of solar photovoltaic systems has also been dropping, while electricity generated from fossil fuels is becoming more expensive. As a result, the report projects that solar power will reach cost parity with conventional power sources in many U.S. markets by 2015. But to reach the 10 percent goal, solar photovoltaic companies will also need to streamline installations and make solar power a “plug-and-play” technology, that is, it must be simple and straightforward to buy the components of the system, connect them together, and connect the system to the power grid.

The report also places some of the responsibility with electric utilities, which will need to take advantage of the benefits of solar power, incorporate it into future “smart grid” technologies, and create new business models for building solar power capacity. The report also calls for establishing long-term extensions of today’s investment and production tax credits, creating open standards for connecting solar power systems to the grid, and giving utilities the ability to include solar power in their rate base. See the Clean Edge press release and the full report.

Reprinted from EERE Network News, a free newsletter of the U.S. Department of Energy.

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