Bicycle Sharing Beauty

Vélib’, short for vélo libre, free bike, is an unparalleled success in the industrialized world. According to the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy, more than 1,000,000 people joined the Parisian bicycle sharing program in its first three weeks of existence.

What does this tell us? Three key points emerge:

From Intolerable to Idyllic

Dr. Enrique Peñalosa was Mayor of Bogotá, Columbia from 1998 through 2001. He inherited a city in crisis. Entire sections of his 8-million-strong metropolis were considered off-limits by families because of smog and sky-high crime rates. Quality of life in Bogotá essentially had ground to a halt.

Mayor Peñalosa realized that a new approach was the only way to go. He knew that automobiles were facilitating suffocating rates of smog, drive-by shootings and kidnappings. Cars, while important, of course, had become the enemy of his once pedestrian-friendly city.

His solution? Dr. Enrique Peñalosa pondered the early success of Bogotá and other Latin American cities before the mass-production automobile. Then, he closed his eyes and envisioned Bogotá as a pedestrian paradise.

Today, this ancient city has reduced its crime rate significantly and added to its streets hundreds of thousands of cyclists and pedestrians who used to feel forced to choose between driving and self-imposed confinement. How was this accomplished? Mayor Peñalosa realized that he needed a grand vision, one of a car-free city. Even though such a position would be impractical and rejected by many citizens and members of the business community, Bogotá came close, banning all automobile traffic on Thursdays.

Initial Resistance becomes Enthusiastic Acceptance

The nose-bleed prices which motorists around the world saw during the first half of 2008 owe their heights to causes geological, psychological and political. However, no matter where we place the blame, the simple fact is this: with Iraq still producing a mere trickle of oil and the Saudi royal family struggling to perpetuate the myth that it can remain one of the largest oil producers in the world, demand will continue to outstrip supply for many years.

As you well know, dear reader, high fuel prices have broad impacts on the modern world and can drive us, pardon the pun, to desperate acts. One of them is a modern form of alchemy, the migration to water injection for gas engines.

In the United States, Mischief Night comes every October 30, a night when otherwise upstanding citizens do foolish things in the name of foolishness, such as adding sand, sugar or water to the fuel tank of a neighbor’s automobile. Such naughtiness generally causes more inconvenience than damage but the parallels to water injection for gas engines are most apt.

After all, if adding water to a fuel tank can lead to engine failure, water injection can’t be much better, can it? Could the solution to record fuel prices be that simple? If we approach the problem backwards, we may find the answer. After all, automobile tailpipes often drip water. So, there must be water in gasoline, right?

In order to help you understand all of the ramifications of water injection for gas engines, I will engage in a full explanation of the role of gasoline in the modern internal combustion engine in my next post.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

NOTE: audio and presentation file for this post are linked at the end

Life is dangerous. Driving an automobile is dangerous. Burning any type of fuel is dangerous. However, millions of people drive gasoline-powered automobiles every day because the risks are known and manageable.

Depending on the application, hydrogen is less dangerous than gasoline. That is a known, demonstrable fact. Converting a car to burn water and gas involves blending hydrogen with gasoline, adding one explosive compound to another. However, as my friend Adam Nehr of the Kennedy Space Center explains below, converting a car to burn water and gas involves the addition of hydrogen from water which has been reformulated from H2O into HHO, or oxyhydrogen, a useful but highly volatile substance.

Please read on for all the details or, better yet, scroll all the way to the bottom of this post to listen to my in-depth telephone conversation with Adam. It contains all of the information which appears below in a greatly expanded version along with a PowerPoint presentation (in Adobe format). As you will come to see, the idea of converting a car to burn water and gas is appealing but ultimately can’t work without violating entropy, not a good idea no matter how high fuel prices go.

Enough Danger To Make Even Will Robinson Tremble

CORBETT: Many of our readers have heard that conventional internal combustion gasoline engines convert to thrust only 40% of the kinetic potential of the fuel – and on a good day. Why is this?

ADAM: The mechanical conversion of combustion to linear and then rotary motion is inefficient. It’s really a mechanical problem due to the fact that as gases expand they become less dense relative to the square of expansion. As combustion happens the pressure builds and pushes the piston down but as the piston moves, the gas has a greater space to fill and soon it reaches the point where it is too weak to push further. It is still very hot, however, and that heat now has to go somewhere. That’s where the cooling system takes over but just like the alternator, it costs some horsepower to do its job. When you add it all up, the average engine only returns 30 – 40% of the energy potential of the gasoline in the form of power to move the car and the rest goes to heat dissipation and electrical generation.

CORBETT: Here on Keyboard Culture Global Warming, I have featured the fact that Ford currently makes a diesel version of the Fiesta and some owners report fuel economy of 60 miles per gallon. Back in the 1990’s, I knew a gentleman from Scotland who drove the diesel version of the Ford Escort and obtained upwards of 80 miles per gallon.

If it is possible for diesel automobiles to have such high efficiencies without exotic technologies such as regenerative braking, why don’t we have high-efficiency gasoline engines?

ADAM: Well first, the core problem is that we like BIG cars and, with big cars, come big energy needs. The more wind drag a car has, the more horsepower is required to push it against the invisible sea of air all around us. If you think about the root of my first answer, the engineering of today’s gasoline engine is pretty wasteful fuel -wise but it is about as good as a gasoline-burning mechanical engine can be made in a practical sense. We either have to drive smaller or think bigger when it comes to energy conversion for the size of cars we drive.

If we could find a low entropy means of using all of that heat the engine wastes to provide propulsion, it would be a start, but a better solution would be to get away from gasoline altogether. The diesel is more efficient than a gasoline engine because it compresses the air first – and because the fuel has a higher energy specific or energy content per liquid volume. The difference is around 15% more energy per gallon of diesel compared to regular gasoline. The hypermiling figures you stated are the result of many factors, all being optimized....including tire inflation. Good mileage has to be approached from a holistic system point of view.

CORBETT: We have heard prominent people, including George W. Bush, express enthusiasm about hydrogen in automobiles. If hydrogen is part of water, why won’t technologies which claim to allow us to run our car on water function?

ADAM: Well it’s a problem of entropy. If you made the hydrogen from solar energy at a station designed for high volume production and stored it in a high-pressure or nickel-metal-hydride tank onboard the car, like some of the H2 cars currently on the road, hydrogen is a good fuel but not a great one. The problem here is that the tanks are heavy plus the fuel cell is stuffed in and inaccessible to easy maintenance. Electric cars are ideal but that does not stop the use of hydrogen for energy storage – in fact, it encourages it! If you use hydrogen to store energy from solar production and then use the stored gas to create electricity when the sun is not shining, you are getting much closer to a viable and sustainable use of hydrogen for personal transportation, like the way the Interstate Traveler is designed. Batteries and super capacitors are making chemical propulsion look like it is in its last few decades and if we really put a push on the development of the new technologies, we can realize this dream quickly. Note that I talk only about hydrogen and not oxyhydrogen (or HHO) gas. That’s for safety reasons.

If you split water into its component parts, you get hydrogen AND oxygen at a ratio of 2:1. If you keep the gases together, you have oxyhydrogen (or HHO), which is very explosive. In fact, welders use this gas when they need to melt metals with melting points as high as 2700°F. In a car, this gas can be lethal in moderate quantities because it is so explosive. It is like running your car on acetylene and oxygen mixed together....not a good idea. Even more importantly, the systems for converting a car to burn water and gas take energy from the gasoline engine to make the HHO gas right in the engine compartment. That is not only dangerous but completely inefficient. In fact, it costs you a small amount of mileage which some of the systems for converting a car to burn water and gas cover up by convincing you to lean out the fuel mixture by reprogramming your engine computer. This decreases engine life but it does increase mileage right up to the point where the engine fails. The attached presentation tells the story...

CORBETT: If HHO technologies don’t function, what alternatives do automobile drivers have to improve fuel economy?

ADAM: Well, smaller cars for one – perhaps owning two cars, one for commuting and another for general hauling and errands. That’s what I am doing – I ordered a Smart for Two and will use it on my daily 45-minute commute instead of my mini pickup truck. There’s also tire inflation, good maintenance and using public transport when possible. As far as a miracle fix for fuel consumption, there isn’t one out there yet, but the electric car and the hydrogen storage of solar and wind energy is coming up fast! Right now, conserve, be smart and be patient.

Click here for written presentation (PDF)

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

New Approaches to Old Problems

Nearly a decade has passed since the Environmental Defense Fund, one of my favorite American charities, began its broad effort to reform the courier and freight industry. Contributing significantly to air pollution, smog and global warming, the hundreds of thousands of vehicles in use every day around the world to deliver goods on demand constitute a superb opportunity to engage the problem head on and collaborate with the courier and shipping services to help them improve their bottom lines and embrace sustainability at the same time.

While United Parcel Service, UPS, has engaged in its own laudable innovations with respect to hybrid-electric delivery vans, hydrogen fuel and enhanced route planning to reduce engine idling, Federal Express, FedEx, has been the true leader.

Roughly 5 years ago, FedEx agreed to a revolutionary partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund with a very simple goal: prove that hybrid-electric engines can work in the heavy-duty, stop-and-go daily operations of a typical FedEx delivery van just as well as dirty old diesel systems which FedEx uses every day. To call the initiative a success is an understatement!

Having surpassed the impressive milestone of 2 million miles traveled, the FedEx hybrid-electric operating model has proved itself day after day and the shipping leader is on track to have 170 of the rugged yet low-emission vehicles on the road by the end of this calendar year, operating in more than a dozen North American cities with a parallel program in western Europe ramping up.

I commend the leadership of FedEx for having an open mind about low-emission delivery vehicles at a time when petroleum diesel fuel cost less than $2 per gallon but this success story hardly ends with the impressive achievements of 2008. You see, the personnel structure of FedEx is tightly integrated. It is one of the reasons that the company consistently wins awards as one of the most admired employers in the world.

When delivery drivers who participated in the proving process for the hybrid-electric vans learned that they wouldn’t have to change their daily practices one iota yet would consume roughly half the volume of fuel per day that they had on the standard vehicle, they rejoiced and sent a clear message up through the management chain that they wanted to see FedEx embrace low-emission business practices wherever possible.

People Power Impresses Corporate Power Structure

The clamoring from the labor base of the company for a greater corporate posture toward environmental sustainability has led not only to the expansion of the hybrid-electric delivery van fleet but two other key innovations as well.

That’s right. FedEx is on track not only to have well over 100 diesel-electric delivery vans on the road but the shipping leader also has begun an important initiative to utilize hybrid-electric gasoline vehicles in North America. Long considered standard in Europe, the inclusion of a specially-designed hybrid gas model for the North American marketplace will give FedEx another distinction and competitive edge. For this reason, when I need to ship documents and parcels of high importance, FedEx is the only service I use.

Reducing fuel consumption, while vital, is only one side of the savings which FedEx has embraced. It also is a leader in covering the rooftop of no fewer than two of its freight sorting facilities with photovoltaic arrays. Oh yes, FedEx now has the largest corporate installation of solar generating capacity in the state of California with no plans to stop there.

Naturally, if we really wish to stave off the worst impacts of global warming, everyone must pitch in and do more. FedEx and its rivals have a long way to go. Nevertheless, the year 2008 has shown that it not only is possible but profitable for leading service providers from around the world to go green and as a consumer of such services, you can help commend companies such as FedEx for acting responsibly by voting with your wallet. I do and exhort you to follow my lead.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Newer does not always mean better. As a movie buff, I know this to be true. Still, there are other areas in which humanity’s progress truly improves upon the ways in which we used to do things. As regards personal transportation, especially in large cities, the first decade of the new millennium has produced mixed results. On the one hand, we have the Prius and Segway, both evolutionary leaps in the right direction. On the other hand, we’ve had the pervasion of sport utility vehicles (SUVs) on every continent.

As we seek to move ever more people and merchandise, we must find ways which consistently are better. No doubt you know by now that the Interstate Traveler is a great solution and I am pleased to inform you that it draws closer to breaking ground with each passing day. However, it cannot be everything to everyone. So, in order to solve all of the world’s ills in the realm of transportation, we need multiple solutions. Some, as above, will be modern; others will be retro.

Given the depth of the problem of air pollution and its march toward suffocating levels in most of our largest cities, urgency informs us that we should embrace whatever works so long as we keep our eye on the ultimate prize of 100% clean transportation. Luckily, by embracing assorted solutions in order to keep progress moving, we can solve problems of congestion at the same time.

Vehicles which are powered through the burning of fossil fuels operate at their dirtiest when idling and when first started. Congested roads cause thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dirty engines to run at their dirtiest for many hours a day every day. Naturally, this situation leads to smog and respiratory ailments for the people unfortunate enough to live in congested cities.

Traffic gridlock also places a large strain on municipal infrastructure due to fender benders and road surfaces which exceed their designed load factors. A vicious circle begins because cities with clogged streets spend too much money filling potholes and deploying traffic police and hence have inadequate funds to invest in mass transit systems.

The auto rickshaw may be an old solution to a very modern problem, however. In the second part of this thread, I will elaborate.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

The depth of the world’s air pollution and transportation problems is such that we need to embrace reasonable solutions wherever we find them, even if they are short-term remedies. It’s just that simple. The auto rickshaw, long a staple of urban transportation in many of our largest cities, has the potential to contribute greatly to our quest for permanent solutions.

Consider, it already is a popular means of metropolitan transport. Because its construction can be a combination of components both new and used from a variety of sources, there are fewer entrenched manufacturers to convince to build the machinery. Arguably best of all, since most of the vehicles have owner-operators who are interested in steady profits and cleaner air, engaging them to become part of the solution is relatively easy.

That’s why Tata Motors, one of the largest auto manufacturers in the world, is engaging the auto rickshaw marketplace with full force. Now with a voice just as loud as that of Ford and Chrysler, Tata Motors has realized that the future of its profit margins comes in affordable transportation. This also is the reason that local governments in India and elsewhere are awakening to the need to formalize an auto rickshaw-based transportation system, especially in those places where there is little or no funding for large infrastructure improvements such as bus rapid transit and light rail.

Where the auto rickshaw becomes really interesting is in the move away from fossil fuels. The first and arguably easiest step is toward clean-burning natural gas. Still a fossil fuel and thus a contributor to global warming, natural gas makes sense as a very short-term modification because it tends to be more plentiful than petroleum fuels and the engine modifications needed to use it in an auto rickshaw are relatively minor. Ethanol, hydrogen and/or ultra capacitors for running on electricity would be far better choices but also much more complex and expensive.

Naturally, this global warming expert knows that fossil fuels must become a thing of the past if we are to save the planet from ourselves but victory will not occur in one giant leap. It will be gradual. Our daily goal must be to accelerate the changes but perfect cannot be the enemy of good. The auto rickshaw is good because it is better than many alternatives but not perfect. For now, that suits me just fine.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

The concept of reducing food miles in order to fight global warming is a somewhat controversial topic within the environmental community. Measured globally, it makes sense that transporting food from one nation to another for consumption can help fight global warming if production and shipping methods are highly efficient in the exporting nation and grossly inefficient in the importing nation.

Of course, such an approach also provides the luxury of having many types of produce in season during all 12 months of the year. My point is this: importing food from another nation because we cannot reform the production methods in our own is a harmful concession not unlike the American practice of shipping electronic waste to China where it can be dumped in environmentally sensitive areas without repercussions.

Put another way, since we all must fight global warming together, we all must become locavores, people who take into account the distance our food traveled when making our retail purchases.

Nutritional science has evolved to the point that we all can feed ourselves adequately during all 12 months of the year consuming food which is grown or produced locally. The definition of local in this case is about 100 miles. I encourage you to adopt this mentality while at the supermarket or green grocer.

Of course, since many of us go so far as to drink bottled water which is shipped from the other side of the world, the move to 100% local food cannot occur overnight. I don’t expect immediate results from you and would like to recommend a very valuable tool to assist in the step-by-step process of going green by going local.

LocalHarvest.org is a wonderful website which assists consumers in calculating food miles and finding local vendors who offer the items they need which are grown or produced within a reasonable geographic distance. You can feel confident in using the free service as a key starting point in coming to grips with just how far your food travels. I maintain that local is better and I have a feeling that you will come around to my way of thinking after visiting LocalHarvest.org

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Despite important gains in energy efficiency through the Energy Star program, Americans cause more air pollution per capita than their counterparts in most every other nation. As consumption patterns shift, the lead position in this ignominious category may change but what is unlikely to alter anytime soon is the love of the personal automobile on the highways and byways of the United States.

Even after suffering through more than a year of record petroleum prices, much of American popular culture is steeped in the driving experience since Yankees invented the mass production automobile and because of our pioneering spirit. However, since Americans produce 25% of the world’s pollution and 40% of that comes from transportation, we will not tackle global warming in a meaningful way until we learn to harness sustainable locomotion.

Fortunately, government bodies, business groups and blocks of citizens are taking steps to help everyone drive in a manner which is economically and environmentally sound – or at least better than the old ways. A leader in the campaign to help Americans be more green is the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers with its EcoDriving USA campaign.

Comprised of 9 of the world’s largest automakers, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has gained significant traction, pun intended, in helping drivers understand that embracing sensible driving and maintenance practices is easier than they may think.

The EcoDriving USA website has several handy features which make it easy for drivers to go green, or at least clean up their act, including a flyer with more than a dozen tips in the categories of driving practices and maintenance practices.

My favorite part, though, is the endorsement of the campaign by high-profile individuals, including several governors. Greening the American roadway will be no easy task but the EcoDriving USA campaign from The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers represents a commendable first step which I am happy to recommend to you. Even if you do not live in the United States, you can benefit from much of the information contained at

EcoDrivingUSA.com

Point your web browser there today!

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Superconducting Cable Means Fewer Electrical Towers

This is it, my 100th podcast! Can you feel the excitement? I’d like to pause for a moment to thank the creators of Keyboard Culture and my fellow experts here in the community. Together, we form a powerhouse and make a real difference in sharing wisdom with our readers. After more than a year of posts and 100 podcasts, let’s circle back to the reason for the existence of my corner of Keyboard Culture, the quest to reverse global warming.

The simplest, fastest and arguably easiest way of reversing the growth of greenhouse gas emissions which cause global warming is a swift move toward energy efficiency. This means turning off the lights when we leave a room, setting the thermostat on our climate control systems a degree or two out of our comfort zone and maintaining our cars in proper working order with well inflated tires. However, those steps only will bring us part of the way. For real energy efficiency to happen, we need to overhaul the way we generate and transmit electricity.

If that weren’t enough, we must contend with a crumbling infrastructure which cannot keep pace with current demand – let alone provide reliable service for a growing population. The Interstate Traveler Hydrogen Superhighway can assist us with these challenges because it has at its core a very high capacity electrical transmission core and the Interstate Traveler Company does not want any money from taxpayers or the utility companies to build it.

So, not only will construction of the Interstate Traveler improve the capacity and reliability of America’s electrical grid but it will facilitate decentralized generation and lend itself both to heightened national security standards for energy and greater energy efficiency, thus helping to fight global warming at the same time.

Be sure to return here for the next installment when I provide you with my 22-minute telephone interview with Justin Sutton in which we cover energy efficiency and reforestation, the other exciting initiative which comes with a bonus from building the Interstate Traveler Hydrogen Superhighway.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler

Can a transportation system yield happier, more productive people? If it embraces the 3 pillars of sustainability, the answer is an unequivocal yes. The fundamental, fatal flaw of conventional mass transit is the consumption of fuel. Even in nations with vast carbon resources, the price paid per ton of fuel can fluctuate in a capricious market. Such variations make it difficult if not impossible for strained municipal budgets to plan from year to year.

Consumption of any type of fuel involves an expense, does it not? Yes, indeed. However, humanity possesses the technology to migrate to the least costly fuel which also happens to exist on every continent, solar radiation, in varying forms, direct sunlight being the most common.

If we adopt solar energy for mass transit system, the only ongoing cost lies in the method of harnessing and later tapping the power from the sun. Hydrogen, solar hydrogen to be specific, as advocated by noted scientists such as Dr. Roy McAlister, unlocks the potential to embrace all aspects of sustainability, not just environmental conservation, because the costs of using it are a mere fraction of the total cost and impact of fossil fuels.

How, specifically, does solar hydrogen achieve this important goal? The hydrogen is cracked from water during hours of sunshine or blowing winds and stored in large tanks from which the vehicles are fueled. If the hydrogen is compressed sufficiently, it can provide performance and range comparable to liquid fossil fuels.

People – The first pillar of sustainability is people. No successful policy for environmental sustainability can forget people. They are the ones inventing and adopting the green techniques and technologies of yesterday, today and tomorrow which can help preserve the planet for all living things.

People need reliable transportation. The freedom of movement is a basic human right but too many people suffer from poverty of locomotion. What is to be done?

Many mass transit systems operate with government subsidies, most of which are dedicated to purchasing fossil fuels for energy. With a system powered by solar hydrogen, the subsidies can be dedicated to the short-term project of acquiring the technology to produce, store and dispense the hydrogen as well as converting the vehicles to burn hydrogen. Once those steps are complete, the same fare box and advertising revenue which the system generated while burning fossil fuels should be adequate to buy the water to convert to hydrogen and maintenance of the hydrogen production equipment.

In short, the subsidies can end or they can be used to add new routes and increased service.

Planet – It is the unanimous conviction of properly informed government officials of every level in every nation that anthropogenic global warming is real. What is to be done? People still need to move from place to place and earn a living. Converting mass transit systems to solar hydrogen eliminates nearly all pollution from fuel and can reduce urban smog significantly as the tailpipe emissions consist of water and filtered air.

Profit – The effects of the global economic crisis continue to wreak havoc on municipal, provincial and national governments the world over. As commerce slows, the reliance on social obligations by disadvantaged, and even middle class, citizens rises with inverse proportionality. Further complicating matters is the slowing of revenue into government coffers from constricted commerce, leaving less for subsidies to the same mass transit systems upon which even more people rely.

Conventional for-profit mass transit solutions seldom offer permanent solutions as their stockholders demand a steady, positive trend in annual profits. What is to be done? A properly managed mass transit system which uses solar hydrogen for fuel not only can free its benefactors from the need to contribute ongoing subsidies but turn a profit as economies of scale begin to apply and operation of the system is optimized. By reducing the cost of fuel to bare minimum, a new paradigm of profitable mass transit systems with low fares emerges.

In closing, if you are skeptical as to the viability of embracing solar hydrogen for mass transit systems, I invite you to contact me. I will be delighted to connect you with peers of mine who can point you to proven, cost effective technologies which exist today.

Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line

Corbett Kroehler