Corn on the 8th floor, turnips on level 23…

“Pie in the sky” takes on new meaning in a half-baked concept for urban farms.

Image: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The Times has a slideshow of artists’ conceptions of possible designs for “vertical farms,” stacked, self-contained urban biosystems capable of producing food for tens of thousands of city residents. Amazingly, this futuristic concept, born of academia, seems to be getting at least a little bit of traction in the real world.

Let’s not pull any punches here: how is this not the dumbest idea ever?

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A blender that runs on milk and bananas

Hand-cranked blender satisfies our afternoon milkshake craving without plugging in.

All products in the TerraPass store get tested by our staff. I was lucky enough to grab the Vortex hand crank blender as soon as it hit our shelves.

I’ll be honest. Before my review, I had low expectations. After testing, I was pleasantly surprised to find a well-made and intelligently designed hand-cranked blender that does a great job, and reduces carbon emissions. In the age of gas-powered blenders (don’t believe me? watch this, or read this), it’s exciting to see a well-made device that’s inexpensive and doesn’t require fossil fuels.

Our office is fond of — if not clinically addicted to — afternoon milkshakes from our local sandwich shop. After a quick run out for a quart of ice cream, cookies, bananas and milk, I set out to see whether I could satisfy our cravings without plugging in. The blender is nicely made with stainless steel finish, Lexan cup, and metal-to-metal interface between the crank arms and the blender. Yes, it’s made in China, but designed in the USA by the folks at GSI Outdoors in Seattle.

Set up was easy. A C-style clamp holds the blender to a table. Be sure to give it a good twist — you want the blender to be secure when you start cranking on it. Then I loaded my ingredients and cranked for 20 seconds to deliver a perfect milkshake. I used the more powerful setting, but a lower-geared setting is available for ice crushing.

My one gripe: the pour spout is not the best in the world. We ended up gently tapping the milkshakes into glasses. Here’s a quick video of our test:

The blender is, of course, educational and energy-saving in your home, but will really shine outdoors. Perhaps camping, sailing, or at the next tailgate? If you’re seriously gourmet, the Vortex hand crank blender is powerful enough to make soup or a sauce at your next four-course fireside meal.

How walkable is your neighborhood?

Web site ranks the most (and least) walkable cities in America.

Unbelievably, I’ve somehow managed not to blog about Walkscore, the site that scores any neighborhood in the U.S. according to its walkability. So, for example, plug in my home address in Brooklyn and watch the little slider march to the right as the system calculates my proximity to shops, schools, and other amenities. Walkscore grades my neighborhood as a 95 out of 100: “Walkers’ paradise.”

And it’s true! I live within an easy walk of all manner of grocery stores — conventional, yuppie, and ethnic — as well as bookstores, coffee shops, parks, pharmacies, churches, synagogues, libraries, fish stores, butchers, hardware stores, bars, restaurants (some with Michelin stars, others that turn out a damned good slice), laundromats, dry cleaners — you name it. I can easily walk to two different movie theaters, and two more are a short bike ride.

Oh, and one of the world’s best public transportation systems is only a few blocks away. Unsurprisingly, I don’t own a car.

Meanwhile, the suburban home in which I grew up gets a 40 out of 100: car-dependent. Certainly I did a lot of walking and biking as a kid, but by necessity we were a two-car family.

Recently Walkscore released a ranking of the 40 largest U.S. cities by walkability. The fun thing about lists, of course, is that you get to quibble with the results. San Francisco is more walkable than New York? I don’t think so. In San Francisco you can get away with not having a car, but it’s kind of a pain. In much of New York, this equation is flipped — it’s possible to own a car if you’re determined, but why bother?

Walkscore uses an automated formula for ranking neighborhoods, with some known gaps and issues. The biggest blind spot for New York and San Francisco, I suspect, is the inability of the system to take the quality of public transportation into account. Some of the gaps in the algorithm also explain weird minor fluctuations in the rankings. (Tribeca is the most walkable neighborhood in America? Dupont Circle is more walkable than the West Village?)

But the system, in my estimation, works surprisingly well, and succeeds spectacularly in raising questions about how we design our cities. Much attention is paid to the environmental and health benefits of walkable neighborhoods, but for a moment, forget all that: walkable neighborhoods are just much more appealing to live in, a fact that tends to be reflected in their high real estate value (although there’s a bit of a feedback loop going on here, so it would be an oversimplification to say that walkability directly causes home prices to rise). Whether you’re a kid, a senior, or somewhere in the middle, walkable neighborhoods offer myriad benefits.

Unfortunately, walkers’ paradises are also pretty rare. So while you’re checking out the Walkscore web site, you may want to take a moment to sign their transportation petition.

TerraPass customers ditch their cars

Congratulations to the TerraPass customers who haven’t renewed because they’ve gone car-free.

Since starting TerraPass, the most frequent question from budding social entrepreneurs has been some variant of “Won’t your success damage your business?” That is, won’t the need for TerraPass diminish as the world lowers its carbon footprint?

Well, I am pleased to say that, yes, we’re starting to see the impact.

In a recent survey of our customers, we found that 10% opt not to renew because they’ve gotten rid of their cars. Many of them report how happy they are to go car-free, including several that had moved their home so they could use public transportation.

We think this is great news. Our mission is to help everyday folks fight climate change, and nothing says success like TerraPass members getting rid of their cars.

As you know, we just crossed a billion pounds of carbon reduced and soon our 12th project of the year will be up for public comment, so we are still very busy balancing the carbon footprints of those of you who drive, fly, heat your homes, have weddings or run a small business. Nevertheless, we’d be very happy to put a cool energy monitor, or ScanGauge, or even a standby-slaying Smart Strip in your hands instead, to reduce your footprint and carbon offset bill even more.

What kinds of things have you done to reduce your carbon footprint since getting a TerraPass? Let us know in the comments.

Image by Flickr user David Spigolon.

New Project: LP Gill Landfill gas-to-energy Project

Our project reviews continue with the lucky 13th project this year.

The TerraPass project team is excited to bring you yet another project for public comment.

The L.P. Gill Landfill project is a beneficial use project that captures methane gas from the L.P. Gill Landfill and pipes it to a nearby ethanol plant. The project reduces the amount of methane that would have been released from a rural landfill serving a large part of northeast Nebraska and neighboring states. The methane is destroyed in a thermal oxidizer at the ethanol plant or in a backup flare at the landfill. We’re excited to support a positive use of waste gas, especially since the project directly uses the gas, a much more efficient process than electricity generation.

Please check out the project details and send any comments or questions to projects@terrapass.com.

And don’t forget: the comment period on the Hilarides anaerobic digester project ends August 8th.

Image by DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Google.

When volcanoes attack

Some nice pics reveal the dynamism of forces at play in the earth’s atmosphere.

Surely by now you’ve seen The Big Picture, The Boston Globe’s large-format photo blog. Pretty much every entry is worth a peek. Here’s one on recent volcanic activity.

Photo by Cyrus Read/AVO/USGS

What does this have to do with climate change? Hm. Well, volcanoes release a lot of CO2, although the amounts are insignificant in comparison to human activities. Or how about this: the climate system and atmosphere have been memorably described as a “great ocean of air,” and plumes of smoke rising from volcanoes help to reveal, in microcosm, the forces and currents at work. How’s that for relevance? Look, pretty pictures!

Photo by Image Science and Analysis Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center

The series has 15 photos total. Hint: go to the page and press F11 (if you use Windows) to put the browser in full screen mode.

San Francisco goes wireless and real-time to reduce traffic

Check your smartphone to find a parking meter.

When I last wrote about San Francisco’s innovative plan to reduce congestion through market-based pricing of parking spots, I assumed some of the more futuristic features of the system were still a long way off. Well, turns out I was wrong.

The city is already installing a network of wireless sensors in the asphalt based on the “smart dust” technology to come out of UC Berkeley. Once in place, battery-operated “bumps” will not only relay information about open parking spots to drivers via street signs and smart phones, they’ll also convey real-time information about congestion and traffic and flow to city planners.

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Image by Peter DaSilva for The New York Times.

Crunching some numbers on Paris bike-sharing program

Bike-sharing offers modest emissions reductions, and no reason to complain.

On the first anniversary of Vélib, the Times dishes up some stats on Paris’ popular bike-sharing program:

• Riders took 27.5 million trips in the first year.
• The current pace is about 120,000 trips per day.
• The program includes 20,600 bikes.
• The 1,450 self-service rental stations are available every 300 yards.
• The bikes are heavy and expensive — $3,460 and 50 lbs — built to withstand theft, mistreatment, and heavy riding.
• Nevertheless, 3,000 bikes have gone missing, about 15% of the total.

Such programs, done right, do a fantastic job of boosting bicycle ridership. One thing they don’t necessarily do, however, is reduce a lot of carbon emissions. I built a simple model using the cited figures, and added in assumptions about average trip length, the number of displaced car miles, average fuel efficiency, etc. The results are necessarily rough, but I estimate the program is currently reducing maybe 40,000 metric tons of CO2 per year, about the amount saved by removing 5,700 cars from the road. (This suggests that it takes about 3.6 shared bicycles to replace a car.)

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Image by Ed Alcock for The New York Times.

NYC government plans 30% carbon cuts by 2017

Energy efficiency is cornerstone of ambitious plan.

Everyone’s favorite McKinsey report states that America can reduce a huge percentage of its carbon emissions through measures that pay for themselves, primarily in the realm of energy efficiency. But it’s never entirely clear how well an analyst’s report is going to translate into reality. For New York City, the answer appears to be: really well.

Mayor Bloomberg’s office recently released a plan to drop the carbon emissions of the municipal government 30% from 2006 levels by 2017. The plan will cost about $2.3 billion, but the city expects to recoup these costs by 2015 — an average payback of less than eight years across a large portfolio of projects.

A full 57% of the savings come from projects related to building retrofits and improved maintenance — utterly boring stuff like boiler replacements, upgraded heating and cooling systems, better steam trap maintenance, etc.

A further 17% comes from wastewater treatment. Wastewater presently is a huge source of methane. Capturing that methane not only creates a direct reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but also provides a source of renewable energy.

Another 11% will come from a new rail and barge network to replace long-haul garbage trucking.

The remaining 15% is divided up among a large number of piecemeal initiatives. The sexy, cutting-edge stuff — solar photovoltaic, daylight harvesting, green walls, etc. — make up a tiny sliver of the planned reductions. No breakthroughs required.

The city’s plan calculates the cost per metric ton of carbon dioxide reduced across all the different project types. This metric provides a handy benchmark for any future climate legislation, allowing a direct comparison of financial incentives to costs, as well as a gauge of the economic impact of any carbon reduction effort.

Except that there almost aren’t any costs in the city’s plan. The average abatement cost across all project types is negative $52 per metric ton, meaning that every ton reduced offers $52 in savings. Even when costs are analyzed by project type, almost all projects pay for themselves. Improved street lighting, for example, yields an amazing $149 of savings per ton (almost enough to balance out solar PV’s fairly painful price of $157 per ton).

And the plan offers further benefits beyond direct emissions reductions. In particular, by shaving 220 megawatts off peak power demand, the city will significantly reduce strain on the grid and pressure for new power plants.

The only real rub is the aggressive pace required to meet the plan’s goals. Implementation of roughly 2,200 projects over the next decade will require a roughly eight-fold increase in the present pace of efficiency improvements.

Another consideration, of course, is the fact that the municipal government only accounts for 6.5% of total emissions in New York. This is a big chunk, to be sure, but it hints at the huge potential savings if the private sector follows suit.

TerraPass member wins race with 124 mpg

Jack Martin teaches sustainable transportation. And boy, does he practice what he preaches.

Hypermiling is all about making the gallon of gas go further… a lot further in some cases. All of us at TerraPass offer our congratulations to hypermiler Jack Martin. On June 7, Jack won the 21st Century Automotive Challenge competition by achieving a driving efficiency of 124 miles per gallon over a 143 mile course in his Honda Insight. Yep, 143 miles with just over gallon of gas. (Notice the TerraPass on his prize-winning vehicle.)

Adam has in the past wondered if hypermilers are in fact clinically insane. This was a comment on reports of a man who wore an ice vest rather than turn on the A/C. Suddenly with today’s gas prices it doesn’t seem all that bad an idea.

And there’s plenty to learn from these practitioners of 100+ mpg. A visit to hypermiling.com reminds us that the first step to reducing energy use is to measure it. Sound familiar? That’s because we’ve been trying to get you to the buy the Scangauge these last few months! But if you don’t want to spend the $159.95 on this handy tool, instead simply note down your mileage every time you fill up with gas. It’s an easy way to understand your average mpg.

One you’re measuring, start reducing. I asked Jack for his top three tips. He tells me:

1. We can take control. We are the ones who require transport. We can eliminate/reduce/consolidate/share trips. Plan with better efficiency in mind. THINK!
2. We can change our behavior. The most fertile ground lies between our ears — hyperconsiousness connecting our values with driving => 30% increase in mpg NOW!
3. We can make a difference — in our pocketbook, in business, in our relationships with others, our security, the environment- you only need one (we do not need to completely agree) whatever motivates you, the results are widespread. DO!

Have some more suggestions? Add them in the comments section below.

TerraPass members reach 1 billion pounds offset

I’m happy to announce that TerraPass members have balanced out a total of 1 billion pounds of CO2 emissions!

As of June 30, we’re now recording total purchases of just over the 1,000,000,000-pound mark. This includes purchases made directly on the TerraPass web site, as well as purchases made through partnerships with Expedia, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Sam’s Club, and our newest partner, Climate Change Chocolate (yum!).

Since Roman times, milestones have been used to assure travelers they were on the right route and provide a gauge of progress. While mindful of the length and challenge of our journey, we’re happy to see this signpost along the way.

We’re on a path that matters. TerraPass is unique among offset providers in that our business is overwhelmingly from individuals, rather than business clients. Some climate change pundits claim that “the consumer” doesn’t matter. We disagree. Well over 100,000 TerraPass members have bought carbon offsets, supporting 25 great carbon-reduction projects here in the U.S. and engaging everyday folks in a conversation about how to lower their impact. And we know that the type of individual purchasing a TerraPass carbon offset reduces emissions in other ways. In addition, the TerraPass community’s reaction to our selection of energy-saving products is amazing. Over 1,200 of you have the Smart Strip, and we can barely keep the Scan Gauge in stock.

We’re making good progress. A billion pounds is a small bite out of the total U.S. output of over seven gigatons of carbon per year. But it is something. Some comparisons:

• It is roughly the amount of carbon from 1 billion miles of driving, or 40,000 trips around the earth.
• To save an equivalent amount of carbon, you’d have to swap almost 10 million regular light bulbs for CFLs.
• Alternatively, you could install 4 million low-flow showerheads.
• Or you could air dry 177 million loads of laundry.

Which is all to say, in a roundabout way, that we think a billion pounds is progress, and cool progress at that. The next stop is 10 billion, and the pounds are piling up more quickly than ever. Care to join us for the journey?

Image by Flickr user Jule_Berlin.

McCain response to the gas tax holiday petition

Form letter sticks up for gas tax holiday, plugs renewables and drilling.

You may recall that earlier this summer we asked TerraPass newsletter subscribers and their friends to join a petition against the “gas tax holiday” proposed by Senators McCain and Clinton. The holiday never came to pass, good news for both the federal agencies supported by the revenue from the tax and for the environment, given that now is pretty much exactly the wrong time to offer incentives that lead to more driving.

This week I received an email from Senator McCain’s office, presumably in response to the various times I went up to his website to upload our petition and signatories (over 3,000 people signed on by Memorial Day weekend). It’s a form letter response, which I’ve included below. Much of it I disagree with, starting of course with his campaign’s ongoing defense of the gas tax holiday, and continuing through the suggestion that the solution to our energy woes is to drill for more oil.

But at least his office is taking the issue seriously enough to respond to those of us writing in with concerns about the environment, energy policy and gas prices (well, mostly gas prices). And surely there is something encouraging about reading a call for increased energy from renewable sources in this kind of form letter. This sentiment is clearly in the mainstream now.

It ain’t much, but any time I get an indication that our presidential aspirants care about the climate change vote, I’m at least encouraged to keep up my political outreach. I hope you are too.

Dear Mr. Blachford:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the high price of gasoline and our nation’s oil reserves. I understand and share your concerns about the hardships that increasing energy costs are placing on consumers and all sectors of the economy.

Given the multiple factors contributing to high gasoline prices, I do not believe that there is a “quick fix” to effectively reverse the current trend. The key determinants of gasoline price are crude oil price, supply availability, refining capacity, and demand. Increasing supply or reducing demand are the only means of reducing crude oil prices over the long-term.

However, to provide even a small amount of relief during the summer months, I proposed spending the federal gas tax from Memorial Day until Labor Day. This gas tax “holiday” would have reduced prices for unleaded gas by 18 cents a gallon and 24 cents for a gallon of diesel fuel over the summer months when gas prices are historically at their highest. Unfortunately, the majority party was not willing to allow this proposal to receive a vote, despite the fact that gas prices continue to climb.

For the immediate future, we must break with the energy policies of the past and assure affordable fuel for America. This will require more domestic production, especially in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). As you may know, a board federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production of another 18 billion barrels of oil from the OCS. It is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions and put more of our own reserves to use, provided that such development is supported by local stakeholders and costal state governments and adhere to sensible standards of environmental protection.

Some believe that the U.S. should also pursue drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a controversial approach that’s promoted as a means of increasing supply and reducing our demand for foreign oil. There are several reasons that cause me to oppose ANWR development at this time. First, even the most reliable estimates conclude that the refuge could only meet about 2 to 5 percent of the nation’s oil needs at best. Additionally, most scientific analyses conclude that ANWR’s land and wildlife, which support approximately 270 different types of mammals, birds, and fresh water fish, would be impacted adversely by development.

Other actions, such as investing in transportation infrastructure that runs on better, more efficient forms of renewable, non-polluting fuels sources would substantially decrease our nation’s dependence on foreign oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and we should aggressively pursue them. I believe it’s possible to maintain a balance to ensure adequate energy supplies meet the growing demand of the American people.

Finally, reform of the oil futures market is necessary. We must purge the market of the reckless speculation, unrelated to any kind of productive commerce that has inflated the price of gasoline — at the expense of working men and women across our country. With new regulations, we can better ensure integrity in oil-futures trading and protect the public interest.

Again, thank you for sharing your views with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future on issues of concern

Sincerely,

John McCain

United States Senator

Does the “water-powered car” really work?

Yes, but the water has to come from unicorn tears.

Unsurprisingly, inevitably, rising gas prices have brought increased interest in the water-powered car. Is there really a simple technology that can dramatically boost the efficiency of conventional cars or, better yet, allow you to run your car entirely on tap water?

No. No, there is not.

I don’t want to belabor this topic,¹ and as it happens, the available information about various water-powered car schemes is scant enough that they’re generally hard to debunk fully. A couple of points do bear mentioning, though:

• Water is not a fuel.² And not just because we aren’t clever enough to turn it into one. Water simply doesn’t carry chemical energy in the way that gasoline does. Consider: when you touch a match to water, it fails to explode. You can drink all the water you want without gaining weight.³ This isn’t a technology issue, it’s just a fundamental property of water.⁴
• Some of the so-called “water-powered” cars are simply cheating: they use another fuel that releases energy upon contact with water. Or they use a charged battery as an energy input. It is accurate to say that such cars do not run on gasoline. It is inaccurate to say that such cars are “powered” by water. Invariably, whatever it is they are really running on is expensive and/or hard to come by. (If you’re interested in learning more about the role that water can play in the energy cycle, check out our toy fuel cell cars.)
• The water-powered car kits commonly advertised on the internet claim to use water to boost the efficiency of a conventional gasoline engine. This isn’t an inherently crackpot notion, and in fact a quick search turns up some non-crazy people who have done research suggesting that electrolyzed water can improve the performance of internal combustion engines. The problem is that the web sites selling the car kits generally are completely crackpot, offering up a stew of conspiracy theory, outlandish claims, and typographical errors that fairly screams scam.

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Free GPS

Clever gizmos can point the way to gas savings.

An unexpected benefit of high energy prices? That GPS for your car could be free.

Consider the case of my Dad, a daily car commuter (with a TerraPass of course — thanks, Pops!). He installed the Garmin Nuvi 760 for Father’s Day (retail $385) and immediately found the “shortest route” feature.

The result? Two miles shaved off his commute. Turns out the earlier exit, although a bit slower, is actually a shorter way to go.

The savings? Well, at his..ahem..poor mileage of 20 mpg, and 250 working days, and gas at $4.50, this little number saves him $225, giving a two year payback and leaving him with a cool new toy. The savings go up even more if he can avoid traffic jams, and use it for weekend travel as well.

Guess mom is pretty smart after all, eh? Follow her lead, try and shorten that commute by grabbing a GPS.

Daily shopping: an unexpected reversal

Green shoppers love warehouse stores…maybe a little too much.

A recent study concluded that lots of green consumers shop at warehouse stores. I believe it. About a year ago, my husband bought a bottle of shampoo so large that it’s still half full in the shower, its plastic degraded and cracking. Last week, he came home with a 3-year supply of Q-tips. This has got me thinking, can we improve both our quality of life and our footprint by changing our shopping habits?

I used to shake my head at people and cultures who cling to daily shopping routines. What a hassle, to shop every day for the things you need to fix a meal. Women in those societies will never make it outside the home, I’d think, and thank God for household refrigeration which lets us buy enough food for a week, all at once.

A recent self-examination paints a different picture. When warehouse stores first emerged, we went about once a quarter. We’d pick up enormous quantities of things we used a lot, like toilet paper; the low prices would seduce us into buying large quantities of things we only needed in small quantities; and we’d buy a few weird things we’d never seen before but were so cheap we couldn’t resist. Now, we follow about that same pattern but we visit almost weekly.

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Image by The Simpsons.