Editor’s Note: A couple weeks ago we posted a piece by Alex Aylett reporting on Portugal’s impressive percentage of renewable electricity supply. Below, we revisit Portugal’s renewable energy success and explore how their planning policies helped them make such impressive gains in renewable energy production with a repost from Worldwatch…

by Alexander Ochs and Camille Serre

Typically, the Scandinavian countries and Germany have set the example in the European renewables field. Yet lately, a Southern country – Portugal – has attracted attention after delivering its National Renewable Energy Action Plan to the European Commission this June.

Portugal has made dramatic changes in its energy policy over the last five years under the government of Prime Minister José Sócrates. The country’s installed renewable energy capacity more than tripled between 2004 and 2009, from 1,220 megawatts (MW) to 4,307 MW, and renewables now represent roughly 36 percent of electricity consumed. Portugal currently ranks fourth in Europe in energy production from renewables.

Of course, Portugal benefits from favorable conditions for renewables: a strong wind resource, great hydropower, good tidal waves potential, and a high sunshine rate. After the country removed several dams in recent years, Sócrates’ government has focused instead on wind power development, under most conditions the cheapest renewable energy source after hydropower. With more than 600-percent growth in wind energy production between 2004 and 2009, Portugal now ranks sixth in Europe in total installed capacity and third in capacity per capita, behind only Denmark and Spain. Some even expect Portugal to overtake its neighbor Spain in per-capita wind energy production as early as this year.

Additionally, Portugal is starting to exploit its solar potential. A photovoltaic (PV) power station located in Moura, operative since 2008 and expected to be fully completed by the end of 2010, will count among the world’s largest solar farms. But despite a great progression of installed PV capacity in Portugal (from 1 MW in 2000 to 75 MW in 2009), solar power still lags far behind wind’s installed capacity of 3,353 MW. Portugal also deploys other renewable energies, albeit at a much smaller scale. Biomass and biogas represented 3.2 percent of total consumed electricity in 2009, and the world’s first shoreline wave power plant has been operating since 2005 on the island of Pico in the Azores, with 400 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of capacity.

How did Portugal assume such impressive leadership in the clean energy transition? The key, as usual, lies in ambitious supportive policies. Prior to 2000, Portugal’s transmission lines were owned by private power companies that had no interest in investing in renewables, as the deployment of these technologies would require radical changes in the grid infrastructure and therefore raise costs. To address this barrier, the government bought the lines and began adapting the grid to renewables requirements, including more flexibility and a better grid connection in remote areas to allow the production and distribution of electricity from small generators, such as domestic solar panels.

A combination of incentives was implemented to attract investors. Feed-in tariffs (FIT) – which guarantee producers of renewable energy a specified price for every megawatt-hour of power fed into the grid – were first introduced in Portugal in 1988 and have increasingly evolved into a highly sophisticated system with individual prices for each renewable energy source. The latest tariff stipulations, issued in 2005 and 2007, take into account environmental considerations, the level of technology development, and the inflation rate. The government also integrated new technologies such as Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) and tidal power into the system.

Today, all renewable energy sources in Portugal will benefit from the feed-in tariff for 15 years, and small hydro-power prices are guaranteed for 20 years. The tariffs vary from around 7.5 Euro cents (around 9.5 U.S. cents) per kWh for wind and hydro to more than 30 Euro cents (38 U.S. cents) per kWh for photovoltaic energy. Renewable heating and cooling is also supported under conditions by financial and fiscal incentives, largely for the benefit of small and medium-sized enterprises.

The European Commission plays a decisive role in setting targets for each Member State via its 2009 Renewable Energy Directive. Portugal is expected to reach a 31-percent share of renewable energy in its gross final energy consumption by 2020. Also, the European Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) encourages participating countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases and therefore move from fossil fuels to renewables, by requiring energy producers and energy-intensive companies to meet strict carbon dioxide emissions targets and to purchase additional permits for overshooting them.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Portugal became a net power exporter last year, delivering a small amount of electricity to Spain. Inspired by these good results, Portugal set more ambitious targets in its National Energy Strategy (ENE 2020), adopted by the Council of Ministers on April 15. The country now aims to reach a 45-percent renewables share in its electricity production by the end of the year, and a 60-percent share by 2020.

The main focus of Portugal’s renewable policy will remain on wind power, a dynamic industry that represents a source of revenue and creates green jobs. The electricity operator Energias de Portugal even invests in wind farms located in the U.S. Midwest.

Prime Minister Jose Socrates’ government wants to improve the reliability and efficiency of Portugal’s renewables supply. Renewable energy production is often challenged by natural flows-including the common criticism that the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow, even in Portugal. By the end of the year, the government will set up a system to monitor on-going energy demand and potential supply from various available renewable sources.

What is driving Portugal to undertake such changes? One factor, of course, is the fact that the country does not possess any noteworthy fossil fuel resources, as illustrated by 2007 IEA data. Yet in 2005, the bulk of Portugal’s gross electricity was generated by three fossil sources: coal (32.7%), natural gas (29.2%), and oil (18.9%). The country is therefore heavily dependent on imports that place a high toll on the national budget – amounting to 86 percent of spending in 2006, according to the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC). In its ENE 2020 strategy, Portugal aims to reduce fossil fuel imports 70 percent by 2020 and cut its energy import balance 25 percent, saving some US$2.55 billion.

In order to address initial local conflicts due to the financial costs of intense development of wind power plants, a unique mechanism has been set up. Under the current feed-in tariff legislation, municipalities that host wind farms benefit from additional financial support in the form of a 2.5-percent share of the monthly remuneration paid to local wind project operators.

Overall, the IEA’s Shinji Fujino tells the New York Times, “So far, the [renewable energy] program has placed no stress on the national budget.”

Alexander Ochs is director of the Climate and Energy program at the Worldwatch Institute and Camille Serre is a research intern with Worldwatch. They can be reached at aochs@worldwatch.org.

Photo courtesy Richard Gillespie: Portugal’s countryside has been dotted with new wind farms, increasing wind energy production by 600 percent from 2004-2009.

This article originally appeared on Worldwatch’s ReVolt blog.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Energy at 11:30 AM)

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Heather Blanchard, Noel Dickover and Andrew Turner from Crisis Commons visited the Berkman Center Tuesday to discuss the rapidly growing technology and crisis response space. Crisis Commons, Andrew tells us, came in part from the recognition that the volunteers who respond to crises aren’t necessarily amateurs. They include first responders, doctors, CEOs…and lately, they include a lot of software developers.

Recent technology “camps” – Transparency Camp, Government 2.0 Camp – sparked discussion about whether there should be a crisis response camp. Crisis Camp was born in May, 2009 with a two-day event in Washington DC which brought together a variety of civic hackers who wanted to share knowledge around crisis technology and response. The World Bank took notice and ended up hosting the Ignite sessions associated with the camp, giving developers a chance to put ideas for crisis response in front of people who often end up providing funds to rebuild after crises.

The World Bank wasn’t the only large group interested in working with crisis hackers. Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft came together to found the Random Hacks of Kindness event, designed to let programmers “hack for humanity” in marathon sessions around the world.

While these events preceded the earthquake earlier this year in Haiti, that crisis was the seminal event in increasing interest in participating in technology for crisis relief efforts. A crisis camp to respond to the Haitian earthquake involved 400 participants in five cities and pioneered 13 projects. Over time, the crisis camp model spread to Argentina, Chile and New Zealand, with developers focused on building tools for use in Haiti, Chile and Pakistan. Blanchard explained that the events provided space for people who “didn’t want to contribute money – they wanted to do something.”

The camps had some tangible outcomes:

• I’m Okay, a simple application that allows people to easily tell friends and family that they’re okay, in an emergency situation, was developed at Random Hacks of Kindness
  
• Tradui, an English/Kreyol dictionary for the Android was developed during the Crisis camps
  
• Crisis camps also developed a better routing protocol to enable point to point wireless between camps in Haiti, writing new drivers in 48 hours that were optimized for the long ping times associated with using WiFi over multi-kilometer distances

Perhaps the most impressive collaboration to come from the Crisis Camps was work on OpenStreetMap for Port au Prince. Using satellite imagery released by the UN, a team created a highly detailed map, leveraging the work of non-programmers to trace roads on the satellite images and diasporans to identify and name landmarks and streets. As the map improved in quality, the volunteers were eventually able to offer routing information for relief trucks, based on road damage that was visible on the satellite imagery. A convoy would request a route for a 4-ton water truck, and volunteers would use their bird’s eye view of the situation – from half a continent away – to suggest the safest route. Ultimately, the government of Haiti requested access to the information, and Crisis Camps provided not only the data, but training in using it.

The conversation turned to the challenges Crisis Camps have faced in making their model work:

• About 1/3rd of the participants are programmers. The others range from the “internet savvy” to those with complementary skill.
  
• Problems and requirements are often poorly defined
  
• It’s challenging to match volunteers to projects
  
• There’s a shortage of sustainable project management and leadership
  
• Projects often suffer from undocumented requirements and code, few updates on project status.
  
• Little work focuses on usability, privacy and security.
  
• Code licensing often isn’t carefully considered, and issues can arise about reusability of code on a licensing basis.
  
• Projects can be disconnected from what’s needed on the ground
  
• Disconnection happens in part because relief organizations don’t know what they want and need and are too busy to work with an untested, unproven community
  
• Volunteer fatigue – the surge of interest after a disaster tends to dissipate within four weeks
  
• There’s a lack of metrics and performance standards to evaluate project success.

The goal is to move from a Bar Camp/Hackathon model to a model that’s able to build sustainable projects. This means bringing project management into the mix, and asking hard questions like, “Does this project have a customer? Is it filling a well-defined need?” It also means building trust with crisis response organizations and groups like the World Bank and FEMA, who can help bring volunteer technology groups and crisis response groups together.

Crisis Commons see themselves as mediating between three groups: crisis response organizations like the Red Cross; volunteer technology organizations like OpenStreetMap; and private sector companies willing to donate resources. Each group has a set of challenges they face in engaging with these sorts of projects.

Crisis response organizations have a difficult time incorporating informal, ad-hoc citizen organizations into their emergency response plans. There’s a notion in the crisis response space of “operating rogue” if you’re not formally affiliated with an established relief organization… which further marginalizes volunteer tech communities. Many CROs have little tech understanding, which means they aren’t able to make informed decisions about collaboration with technical volunteers. In a very real way, crises are economic opportunities for relief organizations – that reality doesn’t breed resource sharing, which in turn, gets in the way of sharing best practices and lessons learned.

Volunteer tech communities frequently don’t understand the processes used by CROs, and frequently fail to understand that there’s often a good reason for those processes. While VTCs provide tremendous surge capacity that could help CROs, if there’s no good way for CROs to use this surge capacity, it’s a waste of effort on all sides. At the same time, tech communities inevitably suffer from the “CNN effect” – when crises are out of sight, they’re out of mind, and participation slumps. This is particularly challenging for managing long-term projects… and tech communities have massive project management and resource needs. Finally, successful VTCs can find themselves in a situation where they have a conflict of interest – they’re seeking paid work from relief organizations and may choose to cooperate only with those who can support them in the long term.

Private sector partners are usually participating in these projects led by their business development or corporate social responsibility divisions… while cooperation with the other entities often requires technical staff. Response organizations are often the clients of private sector players – the Red Cross is a major customer for information systems – which can create financial conflicts of interest. And working with large technology companies often raises intellectual property challenges, especially around joint development of software.

Meeting with a subset of crisis response organizations, Crisis Commons understands that there’s a need for long term relationships between tech volunteers and relief organizations, tapping the innovation power of these charitably minded geeks. But this requires relief organizations to know what solutions are already out there and what are reasonable requests to make of volunteers. And volunteer organizations need to understand the processes CROs have and how to work within them.

The hope for Crisis Commons is to become an “independent, nonpartisan honest broker” that can “bridge the ecosystem and matrix the resources.” This means “translating requirements of the CRO to the crisis crowd, helping the public understand CRO requirements,” and the reasons behind them. This could lead towards being able to set up a service like “Crisis Turk”, which could allow internet savvy non-programmers to engage in data entry tasks during a crisis.

In the long term, Crisis Commons might emerge as an international forum for standards development and data sharing around crises. Building capacity that could be active between crises, not just during them, they could direct research projects on lessons learned from prior disaster relief, could build a data library and begin preparing operations centers and emergency response teams for future crises. Some scenarios could involve managing physical spaces to encourage cooperation within and between volunteer tech teams and providing support for future innovation through a technology incubation program.

—

Starting from the shared premise the Crisis Commons founders presented us with – “Anyone can help in a crisis” – the discussion at Berkman focused on the structure Crisis Commons might take. The goal behind a “commons” structure is to be able to be an independent and trusted actor in the long term, to be able to be objective source of tech requirements, and to be able to bring non-market solutions to the table. But the founders realize that this is an inherently competitive space, and that volunteer organizations might find themselves in conflict with professional software developers in providing support to relief organizations, or with relief organizations if volunteer organizations began providing direct support.

It’s also possible that another player in the space could compete with Crisis Commons in this matchmaking role. Red Cross could develop an in-house technology team focused on collaborating with technology volunteers. Google could use the power of their tech resources to provide services directly to relief organizations. A partnership like Random Hacks of Kindness could emerge as the powerful leader in the space. Other volunteer technology organizations – Crisis Mappers, Strong Angel – might see themselves providing this bridging function. FEMA could start a private-public partnership under the NET Guard program. What’s the sweet spot for Crisis Commons?

One of our participants suggested that Crisis Commons could be valuable as a developer of standards, working to train the broader community about the importance of standards, and on the challenge of defining problems where solutions would benefit a broad community.

Another participant, who’d been involved with several Crisis Camp events worried that “the apps, while neat, never really made it into the field,” suggesting that the problems raised are real, not theoretical. It’s genuinely very difficult for tech volunteers to know what problems to work on… and hard for relief organizations under tremendous pressure to learn how to use these new tools.

This, I pointed out, is the problem that could prove most challenging for Crisis Commons in the long term. When crises arise, people want to help… but it’s critical that their help actually be… helpful. Clay Shirky told the story of his student, Jorge Just, who’s worked closely with UNICEF to develop RapidFTR, a family tracking and reunification tool. It’s been a long, engaged process with enormous amounts of time needed for the parties to understand each other’s needs and working methods… and it’s easy to understand why it might be difficult to convince volunteers to participate to this depth in a project.

I offered an observation from my time working on Geekcorps – I meet a lot of geeks who are convinced that the tech they’re most interested in – XML microformats, mesh wireless, cryptographic voting protocols – are precisely what the world needs to solve some pressing crisis. Occasionally, they’re right. Often, they’re more attached to their tech of choice than to addressing the crisis in question.

As such, the toughest job is defining problems and matching geeks to problems. At Geekcorps, it often took six months to design a volunteer assignment, and a talented tech person needed to meet several times with a tech firm to understand needs, brainstorm projects and create a scope of work, so we could recruit the right volunteer. While that model was expensive – and ultimately, made Geekcorps unsustainable – I think aspects of it could help Crisis Commons find a place in the world.

I ended up suggesting that Crisis Commons act as:

• a consultant to relief organizations, helping them define their technical needs, understand what was already available commercially and non-commercially and to frame needs to volunteer communities who could assist them
  
• a matchmaking service that connected volunteer orgs to short term and long term tech needs, preferably ones that had been clearly defined through a collaborative process
  
• a repository for best practices, collective knowledge about what works in this collaboration.

Unclear that this is the right solution for Crisis Commons or the road they’ll follow, but I came away with a strong sense that they are wrestling with the right questions in figuring out how to be most effective in this space. Very much looking forward to discovering what they come up with.

This post originally appeared on Ethan’s blog My hearts in Accra.

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(Posted by Ethan Zuckerman in Communications and Networking at 11:00 AM)

Technorati Tags: Global Warming Blog, Global Warming Statistics

Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:

2009
Solar Panels To Boost Property Prices
Joe Romm argues that “as peak oil kicks in and the reality of human-caused climate change becomes painfully clear, energy efficiency, geothermal heat pumps, solar panels and the like will increasingly be seen as a desirable if not essential elements of a home, like an up-to-date kitchen, rather than just a cost…”

2009
If It Makes Money, It’s Not a ‘Cost’!
A vintage Worldchanging essay where Alan AtKisson writes that when it comes to spending money on the environment, it’s not a cost — it’s an investment…

2005
XAccess
Jamais Cascio reports on the non-profit XAccess, which makes a cargo-bike add-on available at low or no cost to in the developing world…

Other recent “look backs”:
August 31
September 1
September 2

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Energy at 10:30 AM)

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Our planet’s resources are very finite; through overpopulation and exploitation, our species has done an excellent job of burning through them at a devastating rate. Clean water is increasingly scarce, our atmosphere is quickly degrading, and our oceans are turning into acid. Many scientists now believe that our species, as well as thousands of others, may be teetering on the precipice of another global mass extinction. Is the collapse of life as we know it now inevitable?

A recent article in Live Science speculates that we may already be en route to another mass extinction:

“Some scientists have speculated that effects of humans — from hunting to climate change — are fueling another great mass extinction. A few go so far as to say we are entering a new geologic epoch, leaving the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch behind and entering the Anthropocene Epoch, marked by major changes to global temperatures and ocean chemistry, increased sediment erosion, and changes in biology that range from altered flowering times to shifts in migration patterns of birds and mammals and potential die-offs of tiny organisms that support the entire marine food chain.

How today’s extinction crisis — species today go extinct at a rate that may range from 10 to 100 times the so-called background extinction rate — may change the face of the planet and its species goes beyond what humans can predict.”

You can read the article by Jeremy Hsu in its entirety here.

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I have survived Southern California’s horrendous traffic jams, though just barely. How anybody could stand to sit in traffic for hours on end, day in and day out, is beyond me. People do it though, and it seems to have bred a special kind of patience in the residents of Southern California. California also is a bastion of green living, and there are many advantages to owning a hybrid car in the state, like use of their HOV lanes.

While California recently announced that the Nissan LEAF would have access to HOV lanes immediately, the Chevy Volt was shunned. That has changed though, as Governor Schwarzenegger signed a bill allowing the Volt to use HOV lanes… starting in mid-2012.

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This new-found popularity and BBC visibility has breathed new life into the Peel concept, and new investment dollars mean that Peel is back in business!

More, including the hilarious TopGear sketch, after the jump.

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When it was introduced several years ago, Mercedes’ ultra-luxury Maybach line was originally intended to compete with offerings from BMW’s Rolls-Royce and Volkswagen’s Bentley. To put it mildly: Maybach flopped, selling only a fraction of the cars Rolls and Bentley did year after year. Maybach was such a spectacular failure that many industry analysts predicted Mercedes would discontinue the brand altogether.

They were wrong, and Mercedes has confirmed that green is the new fast, committing to a series of new Maybachs that tick all the right green boxes.

Read more about the whys and hows of Mercedes’ greenwashing of Maybach, after the jump.

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It is all about fuel economy right now, and the automakers are pulling out all the stops to ensure they might weather the stiffening CAFE standards in the coming years. Electric cars, hybrids, plug-in hybrids, diesels… all are about to become a lot more commonplace. Yet, still, there remains a seat at the table for fuel-efficient combustion engines, and there is plenty of room for improvement in the old standby.

Forgoing much of the hybrid craze, Mazda is focusing on clean petrol and diesel engines. And their work has not gone unrewarded. Comments from spokesmen suggest that the compact Mazda3 with a SKY-G engine got around 40 mpg on the highway. Not too shabby!

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Key to the initiative’s approach has been the electrification of small villages in remote areas and over 44% of the money has been spent on building transmission and distribution infrastructure.  The largest type of generation deployed has been hydroelectric, with 15% of expenditure going on these projects, some of which have been large scale but many of which have been small and localised.

Other forms of generation considered include wind, geothermal and biomass, each depending upon the particular needs of the country and neighbourhood within which the initiative is operating.  Rather pointedly, the report states that it spent 0% of its money on power generation from non-renewable sources.

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Whether you want to learn more about Dirty Energy Prop 23 or you already know why it needs to be defeated and want to get more involved, there are two upcoming events in the East Bay.

1)Rally to Stop Texas Oil

Where: Valero gas station at University Ave. & MLK — 1894 University Ave (Map),Berkeley

When: Saturday, September 4, 11:00am

Protest Valero — The largest donor to the Prop 23 campaign to effectively repeal one of the world’s most aggressive laws to cap carbon and grow green jobs.

Host: Angela Boag
Status: Public, open for RSVP, 15 Guests (Max 50)

2)Democracy for America Meetup on Prop 23

When: Wednesday, September 8, 6:30pm

Where: Rockridge Branch of the Oakland Public Library

The Ella Baker Center is spearheading Communities United Against Prop 23, a coalition of community-based organizations and businesses from all over California organizing to defeat Proposition 23.  Ian Kim, Director of the Ella Baker Center’s Green-Collar Jobs Campaign and leader of the No on 23 effort will be the featured speaker.

Other resources:

Ballotpedia

Stop the Dirty Energy Proposition

Passing Prop. 23 in California Would Send ‘Terrible and False’ Message

Stop Texas Oil

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Michael Eliason and Aaron Yankauskas, of Brute Force Collaborative, have a great case-study up on a recently completed ‘Passivhaus‘ housing project in the Lodenareal complex in Innsbruck, Austria

Developed by Neue Heimat Tirol and designed by architekturwerkstatt din a4 with team k2 architekten, the new building will provide well designed and highly energy efficient homes for low-income residents:

Pushing for low-tech solutions, low operation and heating costs, and energy independence – Neue Heimat Tirol sounds like an incredible organization to work with. These strategies allow them to work with some stellar architects, producing quality buildings for those that might not otherwise be able to afford it. The Lodenareal complex is expected to save an astonishing 680 tons of CO2 per year. This is an area where Passivhaus really shines – nearly achieving 2030 Challenge now, at costs slightly more than code minimum buildings. We predict that larger housing estates meeting passivhaus will become the norm, as cities and developers realize significant cost savings can be achieved through these schemes.

Those are some impressive stats! Click here to see the full case-study and learn more about the construction assemblies and heating systems, as well as find more images and links to further information on the project.

For another good case study by Michael Eliason and Aaron Yankauskas, see: “Freiburg: A Model of Sustainability“

Photos by Christoph Lackner; via Brute Force Collaborative

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(Posted by Amanda Reed in Green Building at 1:30 PM)

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Grist has a new series of interviews up on people who are working to change America’s food system in inspiring ways. Yesterday they posted an interview with Gene Fredericks that is worth a read; it introduces Fredericks’s new venture: Big Green Boxes.

Big Green Boxes aims to bring a new, high-tech, and sustainable approach to feeding the city. The main idea is to re-use vacant warehouse spaces and fill them with fish ponds, waterfalls, and edible greens and herbs to provide year-round fresh and affordable produce in a closed-loop nutrient cycle. As Fredericks describes it:

It’s a new business that will transform unused warehouse space into year-round indoor growing centers. We’ll use hydroponics and aquaponics, along with advanced low-energy lighting techniques and vertical growing methods, to produce the very freshest leafy greens for local consumption regardless of climate.

Our goal is to be a sustainable and profitable business that provides tasty, preservative- and pesticide-free fresh food, grown in the community for the community; that creates new jobs; revives some neglected real estate; and offers some pretty interesting educational exposure to green technologies.

What makes Big Green Boxes different from many other urban agriculture projects is its high-tech business approach:

Well, I look at Big Green Boxes as a high-tech business. But it’s a very different one from large-scale farming, which has turned into a high-tech business by growing produce in huge volumes far from the end consumer, and which uses technology to modify, preserve, package, transport, and store their produce. BGB could change that. By using a combination of very new and very old technologies, local communities can grow their own fresh produce year round.

Additionally, BGB will take advantage of innovations in lighting, daylighting, alternative energy generation, water collection, and composting to make their growing spaces more energy efficient than greenhouses….with even more efficiencies expected to develop over time:

Ten years ago, Big Green Boxes was not economically or technologically feasible. Now it is. And, as the price of the equipment goes down, the price of oil and water go up it becomes more and more desirable. I know we are creating a somewhat artificial growing environment, and I don’t ever expect that we’ll replace outdoor seasonal growing, that’s not our intention. But in the dead of winter and height of summer we can offer an alternative to sending fresh produce on a 1,500-mile pilgrimage from the fields to the table. Which has to be a good thing!

Read the full interview for more on BGB, including a description of their ‘aquaponics’ growing system.

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(Posted by Amanda Reed in Food and Farming at 12:00 PM)

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I’m going to go out on a limb and assume most of our dear readers are fans of fuel efficient cars. I too, like my gas-sipping 4-cylinder Mustang, mostly because it saves me a lot of money compared with the rest of my gas-guzzling fleet. Other people are just trying to lessen their carbon footprint, and common sense suggests that an electric car would have a smaller footprint than any fossil fuel-powered car, right?

Not according to one Swiss study. Compared to diesel-powered cars that get over 60 mpg, electric vehicles may have a larger environmental impact… especially if the electricity comes from non-renewable sources.

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New Zealand imports most of its oil, but nearly half of the emissions are agricultural, due to the volume of exports from the isolated nation, and they have increased by 25 percent over the last 20 years.

Its nearest neighbor is Australia, but much of its trading is much further away, with the EU. New Zealand has long been a land of sheep farmers, and with an economy of only 4 some million people, has a very high carbon footprint in shipping its products to customers far overseas. When you factor in the carbon footprint of ocean transport, not just exporting, but also, importing, New Zealand is actually not as green as its reputation.

And now, with oil giants like Petrobras nosing around the island nation for an off-shore killing, the announcement is timely.
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Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:

2009
The Cruel Cost of Clunkers
Suzie Boss reports on the hidden social cost of maintaining clunker cars and how one innovative non-profit, Bonnie CLAC, is working to improve the lives of low-income families by getting them reliable, fuel-efficient vehicles…

2009
Free Data. Big Picture. Very Cool.
Which countries are healthiest, wealthiest and most educated? The Gapminder knows…

2005
The Human Storm
Jon Lebkowsky reflects on the social chaos of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath and the painful lessons the storm and the human response to it, can teach us about the kinds of planning and preparation needed to respond to future catastrophic 21st century weather events…

Other recent “look backs”:
August 30
August 31
September 1

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 10:00 AM)

Technorati Tags: Global Warming Blog, Global Warming Statistics