Current Savers Blog

I wish I could report that “environmental reasons” were behind my decision to start commuting by bike. But the real motivation was much simpler: I’m a cheapskate and biking saves money.

Yet three years and some 24,000 kilometres after switching from the train to the bike, I’ve discovered a number of useful fringe benefits beyond being frugal and reducing greenhouse gas: the daily exercise from the 40-km round trip each day puts me in a good mood, makes me healthier, liberates me from the hassles of semi-reliable train timetables and makes me a bit lighter as well.

No matter how lousy or stressful or full of irritations the work day might have been, by the time I’ve arrived home on the western fringe of Berlin from the city centre after an almost always enjoyable 50-minute bike ride, I feel transformed back into a happy human being. It’s magic.

Rain is a pain. And strong headwinds can be annoying. But even if I get soaked I still usually arrive home with a smile on my face — unperturbed even if some @&%?”$! motorist nearly ran me off the road. In the morning on the way to work, the bike ride often transforms my sleepy head into one spinning with ideas.

I got the idea, for instance, for this feature (click here) on the way to work one morning while backed up behind more than 40 other bikers at a traffic light. Peter Kupisz, the friendly lawyer quoted in the story, told me he thrives on the feeling of the wind blowing in his face. “On some days it feels sort of like I’m galloping on a horse through the middle of the city,” he said. I know exactly what he means.

The only drawback to my cycling habit is that I usually have to switch to the train when roads and bike lanes turn icy or are covered with snow in January and February. Being locked up in packed train carriages is not exactly conducive to being in a good mood by dinner time — so my family looks forward to March even more than I do. “Why don’t you ride your bike to work?” is a comment I sometimes get from my wife during those winter months. What she actually means is: “You’re in a rotten mood, go away!”

What I’ve noticed over the last two years is that the number of bike commuters has been growing steadily, and not just during the summer months. The main boulevard through the centre of Berlin is sometimes packed, seriously packed, with hundreds of cyclists on their way to work. It’s an amazing sight and reminds me of scenes from the 1979 movie Americathon when everyone in Los Angeles is riding bikes on the freeways instead of cars because the world has run out of oil.

Admittedly, what makes this bike commuting in Berlin all a bit easier is the good fortune that we have a shower in our building. It would certainly be a bit more difficult without that.

This being the environmental blog, I decided to figure out how much CO2 saved by riding the bike about a total of 8,000 km per year. If I drove the car that distance instead it would be about 1,280 kg of CO2, according to this online carbon footprint calculator . If I took the train, it would be about 320 kg of CO2 per year. On bike, the calculator says it’s 0 kgs of CO2. But I’m not sure how to quantify any accidental emissions of methane.

Reducing CO2 is obviously a noble aim, but the more important saving is to my bottom line. If I were to drive the 8,000 km to and from work in a car each year, it would cost about 730 euros and use 560 litres of fuel. If I were to buy an annual pass on the train, it would cost 670 euros. Aside from the occasional flat tyre, biking doesn’t cost anything after the initial investment.

If any further arguments on behalf of bike commuting were need, I could mention the calories burned. This calculator estimates 880 calories burned per journey — or about 1,500 calories per day. One final advantage: in Germany, the tax laws allow you to write the distance of your commute off your taxes. So, incredible as it may seem, I actually get paid by the government, or more accurately by other taxpayers, for biking to work. It doesn’t matter if you drive, bike, walk or hitchhike to work. The annual tax writeoff for a 40-km commute is about 1,400 euros.

More and more people in many places around the world seem to agree that biking is the way to go, as my colleague Chang-Ran Kim noted in her blog (click here). As much as I liked the film Americathon, I just hope the bike lanes don’t get too crowded too soon. Getting stuck in a bike traffic jam might just wipe that smile off my face by the time I got home.

PHOTO: Erik Kirschbaum on his bike to work REUTERS/Claudia Roszak

After nearly 25 years in the computer science and aerospace industries, including a stint at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Doug Caldwell decided to pursue a career-long dream of putting his engineering skills to use for the environment. So the Southern California native left his own start-up, a company that builds cameras for spacecraft launch systems, to explore his options.

He didn’t have to look far, or for very long. Within months Caldwell had landed work on a solar power development project, recruited by an old buddy from his days launching model rockets in the desert. Perhaps more ironic is the company he ended up working for — Boeing Co.

Two years later, Caldwell, 47, is chief engineer of the project, which employs about 60 people in a $45 million endeavor to design a new type of photovoltaic solar technology for what would be a 20-megawatt power plant.

One thing he has learned from the experience is that renewable energy development is more of a dollars-and-cents proposition than building rockets. “It’s not about engineering. It’s about business and finance,” Caldwell says.

While space science is largely mission-driven, albeit within the confines of a budget, the paramount concern for clean energy is making it cost-effective and achieving a reasonable return on one’s investment. Moreover, he says, the history of U.S. energy development, and how closely it’s tied to the economy, will make the nation’s transition to cleaner energy especially tough.

Americans, he says, are “spoiled” by cheap energy prices that fail to account for the true costs of environmental damage wrought by extracting and burning fossil fuels, or the national security implications of maintaining access to foreign oil.

“Everybody wants to be green, but no one wants to pay for it,” he says. With sizable investments required to transform the energy sector, the development of low-carbon alternatives is going to be “very dependent on public sector incentives.”

Boeing’s solar project is a case in point; the aerospace giant dipped its toe into energy with the help of a matching grant from the U.S. Energy Department. But Caldwell says the company already is looking for an exit, deciding when the economy faltered to concentrate on its core business. He says Boeing executives now see little point investing in a power plant that will take a year or two to build, then generate in one year the amount of revenue, about $100 million, that an aircraft product line can churn out in less than a day.

That means Caldwell will soon be looking for another job. But that’s OK with him. He’s more interested in “smart” power grid technology and developing small-scale photovoltaic cells for urban rooftops, rather than sprawling solar farms that “require despoilment of large tracts of the desert.”

“I have a real problem with the idea that we’re going to save the planet by scraping large tracts of pristine land. I see that as fundamentally no different than lopping off a mountaintop for extracting coal.”

Caldwell also says the nation stands to gain more bang for its buck by investing in greater energy conservation, such as home weatherization and retrofits. But he acknowledges that solar power, while costly to produce and install, still has a special appeal.

“It’s very visible. If I put solar on my rooftop, I get to point at it and say, ‘Look what I did.’ And solar panels have that patina of being high tech,” he said. “If I insulate the roof or the attic, I don’t get to point to it, and it looks dreadfully low tech… It’s nothing more than a guy with a big hose blowing stuff in your attic.”

Spoken like a true rocket man.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Ho New ( An array of solar panels at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada)

    Nearly 500 years ago, Ferdinand Magellan led the first expedition to sail around the world. With wind and sails, the journey was certainly a green one.

    Now a Swiss engineer wants to match the feat — with a catamaran called “Planet Solar,” powered entirely on the sun’s energy.

    It’s a clean-tech adventure designed by Raphael Domjan to promote solar power, energy efficiency and sustainable mobility. Domjan calls it “the path towards a lasting world.”

    “(I) want to show that we can change, that solutions exist and that it isn’t too late,” Domjan writes on his Web site. “Future generations are looking to us; our choices will mark the future of humanity.”

    Domjan — who has been an ambulance driver, mountain guide and rescue specialist — will skipper the boat with Gerard d’Aboville, who was the first person to row across the Atlantic Ocean.

    Called “Planet Solar,” the futuristic-looking no-sails catamaran is being built in Germany. Domjan and d’Aboville will launch the round-the-world attempt in 2011.

    Domjan told CNN that he hopes the $11.5 million project will prove that boats can travel at high speed without emitting any carbon dioxide.

    The boat’s deck will be covered in 470 square meters of solar panels. Its skippers hope to average a speed of eight knots but can push the vessel to 14 knots (15 km/hour and 25 km/hour, respectively).

    The boat, in photos available online, appears to have two propellers at its stern for propulsion.

    To take advantage of the most sunlight possible, the tentative route is largely around the equator. In case of bad weather, batteries on board will be able to store solar energy to power the boat for three days, according to CNN.

    But if cloudy weather blocks the sun for longer, the boat will have trouble. Do you have any thoughts on a green back-up plan for the ambitious sailors?

    (Writing and reporting by Laura Isensee)

    Photo Credit: A 3-dimensional model of the futuristic-looking boat. Courtesy of PlanetSolar.com

In Germany, where many consider their cars sacred and most politicians on both the left and right refuse to consider tampering with the unlimited speed on the Autobahn for fear of hurting the car industry, the leader of the Greens party said it is high time for the country to join the rest of the civilised world and put an upper limit on Autobahn speeds — if for no other reason than to cut CO2 emissions

“The speed limit on German motorways will happen because it has to happen,” Cem Oezdemir, co-chair of the environmental Greens, said in an interview (click here for full story). “There will be an Autobahn speed limit as soon as the Greens are in power. We simply can’t afford it any longer to ignore any chance to reduce CO2 emissions. The interesting thing about a speed limit is that it would have an immediate impact on emissions. It would also save money, save lives and reduce the number of horrible injuries resulting from high-speed accidents. When you think about, it all the arguments speak in favour of a speed limit.”

Oezdemir, 43, said that aside from the powerful car lobby — which opposes a speed limit for fears it would damage the marketing mystique of carmakers like Porsche, BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen — there are precious few reasons for letting cars continue drive at speeds of up to 200 kph and more: “The only argument against it is the pre-modern masculine dream of racing their cars at high speed.”

A study by Germany’s environmental protection office (Bundesumweltamt) found that a speed limit of 120 kph would lead to a 9 percent reduction in Germany’s CO2 emissions — practically overnight. It would also cut emissions of other pollutants by up to 28 percent. Greenpeace estimates that Germany could cut its CO2 emissions by some 40 million tonnes by 2020. There are speed limits of 130 kph on about half of Germany’s 12,000 km of motorway network. On unlimited sections cars often travel at speeds of up to 200 kph and some even reach 290 kph.

Some environmentalists reckon that CO2 reductions from cars worldwide could be even more substantial over the longer term. If consumers around the world were to stop buying the heavy, powerful cars built to race on German motorways and instead buy smaller, lighter and more fuel-efficient cars that aren’t built for such high speeds, emissions would not only be cut in Germany but in many other countries as well.

Germany, the world’s sixth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, likes to think of itself as a leader in the fight against climate change. But is that just hot air? Chancellor Angela Merkel, herself a former environment minister, has ruled out a speed limit: “It will not happen under me,” she said

As a number of foreign leaders have pointed out how can a country that refuses to introduce a speed limit to make a significant cut in its greenhouse gas emissions be taken seriously?

PHOTO: Cem Oezdemir, co-leader of Germany’s Greens party. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

OK, solar panels are getting cheaper, but can it be possible to get back the $1,000 you invested in home solar in 45 days?

It couldn’t happen where I live, and maybe not where you do, but the owners of a solar electric company say the arithmetic worked for one of their customers. He is a chief executive with a six-bedroom, five-and-a-half bath Spanish-style hillside home in Fremont, California. Fremont is a stone’s throw from Silicon Valley, and home to many high tech firms.

This executive was paying a monthly electric bill of $3,492 on average, according to solar electric firm SunRun. The company was started by two finance experts who came up with their business model while still students at the Stanford Business School.

SunRun charges a relatively small price to install panels, then owns and services them for the life of the contract — 18 years.  SunRun said the Fremont executive paid $1,000 to have the $375,000, 55-kilowatt system installed. So far, it has cut his monthly electric bill to an average of $2,808.  SunRun collects $2,163 of that for electricity generated by the sun, while utility Pacific Gas & Electric collects $645 for electricity from its grid, on average.  At moments when there is surplus solar electricity, SunRun’s equipment automatically sends it to Pacific Gas & Electric for credit.

“You turn your home into a hybrid,” said Lynn Jurich, president of SunRun, and co-founder with chief executive  Edward Fenster. The occasion for her interview was to announce  $18 million of additional funds from two big Silicon Valley venture capital firms,  Accel Partners and Foundation Capital. They say because SunRun uses independent contractors it can quickly expand its business in California, Arizona and Massachuestts.

It’s not the only game in town.  SolarCity does something strikingly similar, working in California, Arizona, and Oregon. Its business model is a bit different. For example, it does all installation with its own employees. Its fee structure is also different.

The United States has lots of houses with roofs that catch rays, so it’s not clear yet if one company will drive the other out of business, or if there is room for both. U.S. Bancorp seems to be betting on both, because it has set up financing — sweetened by government tax breaks — to help each of the companies buy the solar equipment that they install.

Photo Credit: SunRun (A SunRun installation in central California)

   Solar power may bring us cleaner air and clearer skies. Nice, yes. But it’s money — not saving Mother Earth — that will catapult solar energy past dirty coal-fueled power plants.

That’s the theory of Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and inventor. At a technology conference on Friday, Kurzweil said billions are being invested into solar power and new advances in the technology are driving down the cost of powering by the sun. 
    “As a result, the amount of solar energy is doubling every year two years,” Kurzweil said. “But ultimately it will be very inexpensive. So what’s motivating (its adoption) is economics.
    “It has the side effect that it’s environmentally much friendlier,” Kurzweil said at the Fortune Brainstorm: TECH conference in Pasadena, California.
    The inventor is far from the first to predict the success of solar power. Some may give more weight to his words: Kurzweil has predicted the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of wireless technology.
    He has his critics as well. Kurzweil, who wrote “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology,” envisions a future where we can download memory and reverse-engineer the brain.
    (Reporting and writing by Laura Isensee)

      (Picture: Inventor Raymond Kurzweil speaks at the Fortune Brainstorm TECH conference in Pasadena, California July 24, 2009. REUTERS/Fred Prouser)

It takes the equivalent of a massive chunk of ice of 390 cubic kms (150 cubic miles) to raise world sea levels by one millimetre, according to David Carlson, director of the International Programme Office of the International Polar Year.

As an example, he says that works out as a lump 39 kms long, 10 wide and 1 km thick. Or I reckon it could be a blockbuster ice cube with sides 7.3 kms long — that would smother most of  a large city such as Paris (top left — you can see the Eiffel Tower in the middle).

David’s numbers give an idea of the scale of the thaw under way — seas have been rising at about 3 millimetres a year in recent years in a trend that almost all climate scientists blame on global warming caused by human activities. That’s equivalent to a rate of 30 cms a century.

And it’s also a lot faster than a rise of 1.8 mm a year from the 1960s, according to the U.N. Climate Panel. The thaw is one of the spurs to action under plans for a new U.N. treaty to fight global warming due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.

Some scientists reckon seas could rise by one metre this century. Most of the rise projected by 2100, however, is likely because water expands as it gets warmer, rather than because of a thaw of glaciers or of ice sheets smothering Greenland or Antarctica.

One bit of good news on the ice front is that it looks as if sea ice in the Arctic will not shrink to a new record low this summer, after 2007 marked the smallest since satellite records began in the 1970s (and probably a lot longer than that).

Ice shrinks to its annual low in September before freezing out again: so far the ice is still far bigger than in 2007 at the same time although it is also far smaller than the 1979-2000 average, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. And ice floating on the sea doesn’t really contribute to raising sea levels — it’s effectively part of the water already.

(Picture: undated satellite image of the Eiffel Tower and the surrounding area in Paris, France. REUTERS/DigitalGlobe TZ)

For those keeping track, there are five months left before the December meeting in Copenhagen where the world is supposed to agree on how to tackle climate change after crucial aspects of the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol expire. Before they can agree on anything, they have to have a document to work from, and that’s where people like Michael Zammit Cutajar come in.

He and other diplomats at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will get together next month in Bonn to whittle down a 200-page text to something more manageable. On a visit to Washington, he said he didn’t expect any big breakthroughs at that meeting because “people don’t like to work much in August.” So far, he himself hasn’t read through the whole draft and admits it’s likely to be a tough thing to read: “You pick it up, you look at it, you see three pages, you say ‘interesting,’ you put it down again. It’s not meant to be read top to bottom.”

Zammit Cutajar figures the “crunch issues” are more likely to emerge at a meeting in Bangkok over 10 days in September and October, and at another gathering in Barcelona in November, before the main event in Copenhagen.

But the world negotiations aren’t the only games to watch on climate change. The U.S. Senate is expected to take up a bill to curb greenhouse emissions in September; the House has already narrowly approved one. That doesn’t mean there will be a U.S. law in place by December, and that may not even be necessary, Zammit Cutajar says.

“It would be great if there were a Senate outcome that was strong … a signal from both chambers (of Congress) that they’re on the same track,” he said, recognizing that the House and Senate versions of the legislation would have to be reconciled before any law could go to President Barack Obama’s desk.

Zammit Cutajar uses a cosmic metaphor to describe how a world deal on climate change could develop. “The process of negotiation is sort of creation in reverse, with the big bang coming at the end.”

Stay tuned.

Click here for more Reuters political coverage.

Photo credits: REUTERS/Sukree Sukplang (Grandma Nak Shrine in Bangkok, June 30, 2009)
REUTERS/Albert Gea (Athlete Veronica Campbell-Brown of Jamaica in front of Sagrada Familia church, Barcelona July 22, 2009)

Who was president when U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rose most sharply since 1990, the U.N. benchmark year for action to fight climate change?
– George W. Bush (2001-2007)
– Bill Clinton (1993-2000)
– George H.W. Bush (1990-1992)
(I’m giving presidents responsibility for the full calendar year of their inauguration in January; official U.S. data are only available until 2007)

Answer — Bill Clinton (by a long way).

Many people might have thought the worst scorecard was by George W. Bush, who gave up plans to implement the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, signed by the Clinton administration but never submitted to a hostile Senate for ratification.

But emissions rose by more than twice as much in the Clinton years, when climate campaigner Al Gore was vice president, as during the combined years when two Bush presidents, father and son, were in the White House since 1990.

So is that legacy a problem for President Barack Obama, a Democrat like Clinton?

At U.N. negotiations on a new climate treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December, many nations welcome promises by Obama of far tougher action than Bush for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But there are nagging memories of unkept promises — Clinton’s administration agreed to cut U.S. emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 as part of the Kyoto Protocol. In 2000, Clinton’s last full year, U.S. emissions were 15 percent above 1990 levels.

Of course there are excuses — the economy grew strongly during the Clinton years, bringing pressure for higher emissions, and the Senate opposed action. In 1997, the Senate voted 95-0 against key principles later built into the Kyoto Protocol.

The Bush administrations failed to keep U.S. commitments too — in 1992, George H.W. Bush agreed the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (the parent treaty of Kyoto which was ratified by the Senate) which set a non-binding goal of returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2000.

U.S. GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS (millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent)
PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH
1992: 6,140
1990: 6,084
rise 56
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON
2000: 6,975
1993: 6,275
rise 700
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
2007: 7,107
2001: 6,872
rise 235

* A rise of 700 million tonnes is about as much as the annual emissions of a country such as Britain, France or Canada. Under the combined Bush presidencies, emissions rose by 291 million tonnes.

(Source; official U.S. submissions to U.N. Climate Change Secretariat)

George W. Bush has suffered years of criticism by U.S. allies for failing to do more to combat global warming. But maybe Obama can’t just blame Bush?

(Photos: TOP: U.S. President George W. Bush, flanked by former Presidents Bill Clinton (L) and George H. Bush, speaks about relief efforts from hurricane Katrina in the Oval Office of the White House, September 1, 2005. RIGHT: A protester holds up a sign at a demonstration at the State Department in Washington September 27, 2007 during a  meeting of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters — including the United States and China. Both pictures by REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)

With a highest point 4.5 metres above sea level, the Pacific island state of Tuvalu plans to shift to generate all electricity from renewable energies by 2020, hoping to push other countries to follow suit to fight global warming.

These solar panels (left) on the main soccer stadium in Funafuti, the capital, are the first step in the plan to end dependence on fossil fuels and slow climate change blamed for pushing up world sea levels. Tuvalu’s goal is to generate all electricity from wind, solar and other green sources.

By contrast, European Union nations have among the most ambitious goals among developed countries, aiming to get 20 percent of all energy from renewable sources by 2020.

Tuvalu’s plan - story here - will cost more than $20 million and will require a lot depend heavily on aid from abroad. That’s a big cost for each of the atolls’ 12,000 citizens - $1,666 - but can have other benefits such as avoiding tanker spills from imported oil.

And the plan sounds to me exactly the sort of ”measureable, reportable and verifiable” actions to offset climate change that are being demanded of developing nations in U.N. negotiations on a new climate treaty due to be agreed in December.

The Maldives in the Indian Ocean have set an even more ambitious goal of becoming the first “carbon neutral” nation over the next decade. The archipelago plans to shift to wind and solar power and buy carbon credits to offset emissions from tourists flying to visit its luxury vacation resorts.

So if Tuvalu or the Maldives can go green, so can others?

(Photo credits: e8 group of 10 utilities from the Group of Eight industrialised nations who backed the installation of the solar panels)