Climate Cities

Britain’s gonna build some

Britain’s building five new "eco-towns": The towns, each with a minimum of 5,000 to 10,000 houses, will be built to meet zero carbon standards and will each showcase a specific project promoting energy preservation or green technology, the Communities and Local government office said. Projects to be showcased could include use of communal heat pump […]

Necessary

This op-ed from Rick Cole, city manager of Ventura, Calif., will be music to the ears of all you Gristians: The feel-good stage of California’s leadership on global warming is unsustainable. Kudos to the pop stars with their calls to switch lightbulbs and unplug cellphone chargers when not in use. But we can’t pretend that […]

Go Get ‘Em, Plugger

Plug-in hybrids would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, says new study Plug-in hybrid vehicles, long extolled here at Grist HQ, seem always to elicit one question from doubters: Wouldn’t running cars on electricity just mean more emissions from power plants? Answer: No! According to a new study from the Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources […]

Thames Fugit

England walloped by historic floods It’s a “summer of suffering” in England, as severe flooding wreaks havoc across the country. This weekend, floods in the central and southern part of the country left more than 350,000 people without drinking water and forced the evacuation of hundreds from their homes. The worst part, observers say, is […]

Cars are more expensive than you think

Everyone knows that cars are expensive, right? Still, it may come as a surprise to find out just how much money we spend getting from place to place.

The cost of the car itself -- typically the second biggest purchase many families make in their lives -- is just the start. When you start adding in the cost of gasoline, and car insurance, and maintenance and repairs, and parking, and taxes to build new roads and maintain old ones, and license fees, and the medical costs of traffic accidents ... boy, I could go on all day ... suffice it to say, the zeros start adding up.

Renewable energy is good for them

Renewable energy is good for rural communities — at least in the UK: A study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, of community renewable energy projects in Britain has found that so far, projects are largely based in the countryside, some quite remote. From wind turbines to shared heating systems, small-scale renewable energy […]

Really

If you haven’t already heard, yesterday saw the release of an important new report: In the most comprehensive environmental assessment of electric transportation to date, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) are examining the greenhouse gas emissions and air quality impacts of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV). The […]

15 Green Cities

These metropolises aren’t literally the greenest places on earth — they’re not necessarily dense with foliage, for one, and some still have a long way to go down the path to sustainability. But all of the cities on this list deserve recognition for making impressive strides toward eco-friendliness, helping their many millions of residents live […]

Why bicycling is 25 percent better than you thought

Your car's greenhouse-gas emissions are about 25 percent worse than you think.

How so? Well, for each gallon of gas you burn in your engine, there's the climate equivalent of another quarter-gallon or so embedded in your consumption. What that means is this: the gasoline you use didn't just magically appear in your tank -- it was extracted, refined, and transported to your local station. And all that activity released emissions.

It's a curiosity of our energy system (and other systems too, such as our food system), but it's a curiosity that bears closely on our thinking about how to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Stay with me for a moment.

It's usually assumed that each gallon of gas releases about 19.5 pounds of CO2 into the sky. (Some quibble, and argue that it's 19.4 or 19.6. But whatever.) Basic physics dictates that a gallon of gasoline combusted will release a more-or-less fixed amount of CO2. But from a public policy perspective, physics isn't the whole story.

Jam Plan Is Toast

NYC mayor’s traffic-reducing proposal shot down, for now New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s congestion-fee proposal, reportedly down to the wire on Monday, is now just down, period. The plan would have charged a fee for Manhattan-bound vehicles during peak hours, but the state Senate adjourned without voting on the measure after Democrats made it […]