Who needs cars?

News flash: public transportation is good for you. Who knew? As I was telling somebody just the other day, I've lost a good five pounds since I started walking, biking, and taking the bus instead of driving. What's not to like about that? The people-watching is pretty entertaining also.

Transportation is on my mind at work lately, so I dug up a video I'd been meaning to watch for awhile on the National Building Museum's website about going carless (i.e. "without a car", not "CAREless"... although indeed, you may have less to worry about if you try it).

This video reminded me about Walkscore, which is a website that measures your neighborhood's pedestrian-friendliness based on walking distance to basic services. If you live in a neighborhood with a walk score higher than 70, you could get by without a car. My neighborhood scored 49.

Co-founder of Zipcar Robin Chase was one of the panelists in the NBM video, and she shared some thought-provoking numbers:

A mere 20% of our driving is to work. Of the 80% that isn't, many trips are short, as in under three miles. Does this reflect your driving habits? Are there trips that you could make by bike or bus, or consolidate your errands into one big driving loop rather than multiple short excursions?

There are about 1.1 cars per person in the USA right now. If more neighborhoods adopted carsharing networks like Zipcar, we could get down to one car per 20 to 50 people, which is the model they use.

Recommended population density for a Zipcar network is about 14,000 people per square mile, obviously best suited to urban areas. In one model, there are 5500 cars for 300,000 people (which is 0.018 cars per person... much lower than 1.1!).

Zipcars have names like Peter Prius and are parked in neighborhoods to encourage feelings of ownership and accountability. You wouldn't mistreat Peter if you knew you'd be driving him regularly, right?

Other food for thought:

How much do you spend each year to own, register, maintain, and insure your car? Maybe it would make sense to let someone else assume these asset costs, and just rent car time on the occasions you need it, especially if you live in an area with good public transportation access or walk/bike-ability.

I'm very interested in this idea of "pay as you drive" car insurance, particularly because I telecommute most days. In the average week, I move my car so infrequently that I often forget where I last parked it. I'd be paying a lot less if my rates were set proportional to miles driven.

Some more links for you:

MTA Maryland - get your ride on

One Less Car - a local organization for alternative transportation advocacy

GoLoco - Robin Chase's ridesharing site. Also check out her blog.

Adventures in agriculture

My friends can tell you that I tend to dive into things before fully thinking them through. Especially green things: even my best intentions can't create the time required to follow through on all the projects I envision or attempt to start!

So when I read this article in the Urbanite about the rude awakening a local writer experienced with the very CSA I'd just joined, I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. No zucchini? Few berries? Just kale and chard?? Eww, what have I gotten myself into? I don't know how to cook those things. But thanks to the positive spin she put on the ending, and my own dogged determination to do the green thing even when it's inconvenient or uncomfortable (I'm stubbornly sitting in my upstairs home office right now with the air conditioning off despite the forecast for high 80s. It's hot.) I'm reconciling myself to a summer of collard greens, if that's what the farmer brings. I'm gonna need a new cookbook.

Even before signing up for CSA and realizing its potential shortcomings, I'd been planning to expand my usual tomato & zucchini patch out back. Reading that article just reinforced my decision: I've already put in a few raspberry canes, a pack of strawberry plants, spinach, lettuce, peas, and beets. I'd like to harvest more than one beet this year... last year was disappointing that way! At Towson Gardens day I picked up some interesting heirloom tomato plants in purple and yellow (did you know they come in green zebra stripes too? There's a tomato seller at the Waverly farmers market on Saturdays that sells tomatoes in every color of the rainbow, it's fascinating). I will also have eggplant, onions, beans, and flowers, because I'm tilling up a 15-foot square chunk of my yard this week, and because I can.

I just hope I'm not getting in over my head...

Speaking of overhead and gardening, there's a program on Vertical Farming at the National Building Museum in DC this week as part of their Greener Good series. If you can't attend, they usually post a recording online afterward.
.
.

More spring green happenings

Just because Earth Day is over doesn't mean the local green events are! Check out some of these activities:

Baltimore Sustainable Speaker series: Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore's Dilemma, on May 16th. This event is sponsored by Baltimore Green Works.

Baltimore City votes on 1+1 recycling and trash pickup schedule: if you live in the city, tell your council representative to vote yes!


Baltimore county resident gardeners, don't forget that you can get free compost and mulch at the Days Cove Road landfill. I'm getting some this very week. Call ahead to 410-887-2000 to check supplies)

.

Get your green on

With Earth Day coming up this week, there are lots of green activities going on in the Baltimore area!

Baltimore Green Week kicked off with the Eco-festival this past Saturday at Druid Hill Park. Check out their schedule for more events as the week progresses.

Today I visited Maryland Presbyterian Church to hear Joan Norman of One Straw Farm speak about their organic farming operations and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, then drove up to the farm for a tour. Saw the infamous chard in baby plant form, and looking forward to getting my first vegetables come June!

Looking for something to do on Earth Day on Wednesday? Check http://earthday.net/search/location for an event near you.

.

Earth Hour this weekend

This Saturday, millions of people around the world will be turning off their lights at 8:30pm local time in a call to action against global warming. This event was started by the World Wildlife Federation in Australia, and has been growing since 2007. WWF estimates that more than 27,000 companies and organizations in 84 countries will take part this year.

Read more at the main Earth Hour website.

To get a better sense of the magnitude of this event, watch some of these short videos...

Earth Hour 2009

Vote Earth

.

This old fridge

I recently had a home energy audit done on my house, which I will be blogging about in installments because it taught me so much! In this first part, let me tell you what an energy hog my old refrigerator is...

It took a bit of detective work to track down the model and serial numbers, but Whirlpool customer service was able to tell me that my fridge was born in 1982 - almost thirty years old. A quick check on the Energy Star "recycle my old fridge" website showed that this appliance uses more than 1800 kWh per year. That's about 42% of the total kWh my entire house uses in a year! If I replaced it with a newer Energy Star model that uses 470 kWh per year, I'd save about $160 a year on electric bills, which means it would pay for itself in about six years.

Other things I learned about refrigerators and energy efficiency from the Energy Star website:

• Position your refrigerator away from a heat source such as an oven, a dishwasher, or direct sunlight from a window.
• To allow air to circulate around the condenser coils, leave a space between the wall or cabinets and the refrigerator or freezer and keep the coils clean.
• Make sure the door seals are airtight.
• Keep your refrigerator between 35 and 38 degrees Fahrenheit and your freezer at 0 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Minimize the amount of time the refrigerator door is open.
• In most households, the refrigerator consumes more energy than any other kitchen appliance.
  

.

Local green events in March

Spring is coming... and with it, a bunch of green events in the Baltimore area. Mark your calendars!

Environmental Film Festival in Washington DC, March 11-22.

National Facilities Management & Technology conference, which includes Greentech conference & expo, March 10-12.

The Chesapeake Sustainable Building Alliance usually holds a happy hour on the first Monday of each month: this month it was postponed to 3/9 due to snow. Will be held at Earth Alley, a groovy little green gift shop in Hampden.

Our local USGBC chapter (formerly known as the Baltimore chapter, now the Maryland chapter) is hosting the first annual Chesapeake Green Building Expo on March 25-26.

Baltimore AIA's 2009 spring lecture series promises to be another good one. Catch the first lecture on March 18: architect Stefan Behnisch of Germany will discuss sustainable building design.

Also, the Baltimore Ethical Society is hosting speakers on the topic of sustainability this year. I've been invited to speak on March 29 about how you can take action here in Baltimore to shrink your environmental footprint.

Stay tuned for more green events coming in April, like Baltimore Green Week.
.

Software training for infrastructure professionals

Are you a recently laid-off infrastructure professional? Want to get some free software training to give you an advantage in today's tough job market?

Check out a new program called BE Employable by Bentley Systems.

Press release here.
.

Google, GE, and smart energy

Back in September 2008, Google and GE announced a partnership to explore a smart electricity grid. Yesterday they held a public event at Google’s DC office to discuss their progress and future plans. Dan Reicher, Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives at Google.org, and Bob Gilligan, Vice President at GE, moderated two panel discussions about energy policy and developing technologies.

The first panel included representatives from a traditional power company, a solar power company, GE’s Ecomagination group, Tendril/Zigbee, Google, and the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. As they discussed their visions for a smart power grid in America and took questions from the audience, the ideas of informing consumers and providing incentives for smarter energy use came up time and again. Google’s marketing video depicted a number of PowerMeter testers declaring that their energy usage was much easier to manage now that they could see the high points and change their behavior accordingly. To paraphrase a famous quote from Lord Kelvin that has been mentioned many times in the context of Bentley’s carbon footprint data collection, you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

Historically, the flow of electricity from generation sites to consumers has been a one-way street controlled exclusively by utility companies. However, with the rise of solar and other renewable energy generation technologies, panelists suggested that this model must change to accommodate two-way flow from other generation sites: Jeff Renaud from GE’s Ecomagination used the term “energy internet” to describe the concept. There should be public API and data compatibility standards to allow for entrepreneurial development, yet enough security measures to maintain data integrity and consumer privacy.

The idea of informing and empowering consumers to be better managers of their household energy usage is certainly attractive from an economical standpoint: homeowners stand to save quite a bit of money by running certain appliances only during off-peak hours, unplugging devices that draw unnecessary trickle current (Americans waste $5 billion a year on parasitic power), and investing in more energy-efficient appliances (like Energy Star). But what about the environment? Off-peak energy usage saves money, but in order to save the planet, we also need to curb our overall energy usage. As the tide turns from blissful ignorance to awareness of energy consequences, we should all be keeping an eye on the big picture, not just on our own checkbooks.

The second group of panelists (utility policy experts) agreed that consumer education and utility company outreach programs could and should be improved. People should know the distribution of power sources in their regional mix: what percentage of electricity comes from coal, nuclear, solar, etc. State and federal policies should require more transparency and disclosure in the utility industry, and not in the format of the pesky “fine print” disclosure documents we all receive from our credit card companies every time rates change. Consumer awareness of home energy performance should be the new normal, especially considering that a house is most consumers’ biggest investment. Panelist Andy Karsner, former Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, praised the Department of Energy for its research and development efforts, but criticized its implementation.

Throughout the discussions, the new stimulus package being signed by Obama that day was mentioned many times. Carol Browner, assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change in the Obama Administration, made a brief appearance before the second panel discussion and spoke about using the stimulus package to invest in bigger, better, and smarter energy technologies.

Let’s hope that this new Smart Grid venture turns out to be just that.

Related link:

Tendril Residential Energy Ecosystem (TREE) article on CNET.com

.