London wants to allow cyclists to pick up one of 6,000 bikes at the 400 docking stations planned for the capital by 2010.Londoners will soon be able to hire bikes in the centre of town for short journeys, under plans announced this week by the mayor, Boris Johnson.
Picture: Soleckshaw: Solar Powered Rickshaw in Old Delhi
Soleckshaws are indeed a great step forward, but in this euphoric hype several important issues and questions are conveniently pushed under the rug: the soleckshaw is about three times as expensive as the cycle-rickshaw ($440 (Rs. 22000) as against $170 (Rs 8500)); secondhand ones or those remodelled from old bicycles are cheaper still. If the rickshaw-pullers could not afford their own rickshaw at $170 (Rs 8500), how are they more likely to become proud-owners by being able to afford the $440 (Rs 22000) one? How will the rickshaw-puller be able to handle the additional costs of electric-charging, batteries, solar-panels etc., on the soleckshaw if they could not look beyond the leasing-option on the no-such-additional-costs cycle-rickshaw? The dream of making the lessee rickshaw-pullers self-reliant, proud owners too needs greater planning and market research. If not, then the Center for Rural Development’s loans for soleckshaw may well turn-out to be as faulty and nearly as “toxic” as the US housing-market ones that are responsible for current economic woes globally.
Boris Johnson announces commitment to making electric cars ‘first choice for Londoners’, pledging £20m ($29m) of the GLA budget. Written by Alok Jha and shared over the Guardian Environment Network.London mayor Boris Johnson announced today his intent to make the city the electric car capital of Europe. He said he wanted to introduce 100,000 electric cars to the capital’s streets and to build an infrastructure of 25,000 charging points in public streets, car parks and shops.
Germany’s plan reflects a choice other countries face as well. As global car sales and exports plummet around the world each country has to decide on its own strategy to keep their auto manufacturers afloat. But this raises a question: is it better to support traditional car companies that produce cars based on fossil fuel sources or give support to up-and-coming electric and hydrogen powered car companies. Also, are these new incentives aimed to just keep the main German carmakers in business or will they stipulate that their main automakers BMW and Daimler begin producing electric cars to meet their goal of 1 million electric cars by 2020?
$2,000 Tata Nano gears up to revolutionise travel for millions. Written by south Asia correspondent Randeep Ramesh and shared with EcoWorldly as part of the Guardian Environmental Network.India’s Tata group has announced that the world’s cheapest car, the Nano, will roll out of its car plant with a price tag of just 100,000 rupees – £1,350 or $2,000 – and will be exported to richer nations, beginning with Europe, in two years.
Have you ever considered how your wine from abroad is transported? How much carbon does it take for one bottle of imported wine to reach your local grocery store, especially from a faraway vineyard in Australia? How can those bottles shipped from so far away be so cheap? Are we externalizing the cost to the environment for future generations to pick up the tab? What about all of those other products we buy from abroad? Could there be another way that doesn’t involve burning so much coal?
However this is not the first journey to be made across the Pacific using plastic waste. Last year a raft made of 15,000 bottles called the Junk successfully made a similar journey from California to Hawaii in 87 days in order to promote awareness of the global plastic waste problem.
Most electric cars will be powered by lithium batteries, and Bolivia has more lithium than any other nation worldwide. How this development will affect Bolivia is unknown, but will squarely place the South American country at an intriguing and crucial crossroads. Read the rest of this entry »
The remarkable crop, camelina, has been eyed for years as an affordable biofuel that can be grown easily in rotation with traditional food crops like wheat. Used as biodiesel, camelina could also potentially power cars and trucks cheaper than its petroleum counterpart. But for all of its use as a biofuel, it might be most exceptional as a cooking oil. Loaded with Omega-3 fatty acids, vegetable oils made from camelina are good for the heart and the brain, and could also be used as a cheap feed for fish and livestock.
In Oslo, air pollution from public and private transport has increased by approximately 10% since 2000, contributing to more than 50% of total CO2 emissions in the city. With Norway’s ambitious target of being carbon neutral by 2050 Oslo City Council began investigating alternatives to fossil fuel-powered public transport and decided on biomethane.
Biomethane is a by-product of treated sewage. Microbes break down the raw material and release the gas, which can then be used in slightly modified engines. Previously at one of the sewage plants in the city half of the gas was flared off, emitting 17,00 tonnes of CO2. From September 2009, this gas will be trapped and converted into biomethane to run 200 of the city’s public buses.
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