Generation ZE: Teaching us how to live in a green world

Consider this: the baby-boomers and early Gen X’ers had to learn, sometimes with great effort, how to use personal computers and surf the Internet, while their kids and grandkids who were born in a digital world just “know.” Today, the same thing is happening in the green world. While adults have to learn and adapt to tremendous changes—new ways of thinking, technologies and lifestyles—Generation Zero Emission, born post-Kyoto Protocol, is growing up in a world where “green,” “sustainable” and “energy-efficient” are, well, normal, du’h.

 As part of this generational shift, many public and private initiatives are being designed and implemented worldwide. Generation ZE’s ABCs are, of course, the green 3Rs: Reduce, Recycle, Reuse. Beyond them, children are taught a new way of seeing the world, with a sense of personal responsibility, the understanding of global ecological actions/reactions, and a healthy respect for our planet’s resources.

 Eco Kids is an initiative of Earth Day Canada (EDC) that offers a free, environmental education program for elementary schools. It’s centered on the award-winning EcoKids website designed for children, families and educators in Canada and around the world. Through interactive games and activities, children are encouraged to form their own opinions, get involved and understand the impact their actions have on the environment.

The Four Green Steps School program is another non-profit initiative that teaches eco-awareness and sustainability to the next generation. From introducing kids to environmental issues through art to having them keep a daily "eco-journal," the program is designed to get students thinking about the environment and of creative ways to take action.

Generation ZE is here to help, and teach us one thing or two about zero emission and how to live in a green, glorious world.

 

 

 

 

 

NY Event: Celebrate Zero Emission with Nissan this week

It takes a lot to impress New Yorkers, but car seats “parked” on the roads without a car might attract a few glances. Especially if they’re surrounded by a host of friendly young people talking about zero emission mobility and handing out flowers to passers-by.
So, if you’re in New York this week, stop by one of the Nissan Zero Emission events mentioned below, and have your questions answered.

What: Nissan Zero Emission Event

When: Wednesday, March 31 & Saturday, April 3, 7:30am – 6:30pm

Where: Four locations in Manhattan: Union Square: Union Square West between 15th & 16th street; Soho: Broadway between Prince & Spring; Tribeca: Whole Foods Greenwich between Murray & Warren; Lower East Side: Whole Foods Houston between Bowery & Chrystie.

 

Powerful Roads

Two stories this month hold promise for the idea that cars (or other types of vehicles) could gain energy from the roads they travel on. Both represent technologies that are not only exciting but also feasible at a larger scale.

In Seoul, South Korea, an amusement park is now using a train that runs off magnetic energy from cables buried beneath the roads surface. Called an Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV), the train is charged via magnetic strips buried below the roadway, and that energy is then used to either power the train or charge its battery. Either way, there’s no need to plug into anything and the magnetic energy is clean and emissions-free. The train now in use at Seoul Grand Park is the first real-world implementation of the technology, developed last year by Korea’s Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).  Provided this test-run goes well, KAIST has other projects in the works to install its magnetic strips underneath roads throughout Seoul. Were cars to eventually run off such energy, the range limitations inherent in electric cars could be a thing of the past.

The other idea gaining steam this month comes from the United States, where Solar Roadways hopes to replace asphalt US highways with solar-powered roadways. The solar panels could help heat roadways to melt ice and snow, light highways, carry phone and internet cables, and, eventually, help provide energy for plug-in charging stations. As an added bonus, it could also create hundreds to thousands of green jobs. Solar Roadways has completed its first prototype and unveiled it to the public … now it just needs to find funding for a major rollout.

 

Turning Emissions into Energy

A technology that turns exhaust into fuel sounds too good to be true, but that is the promise of a recent nanotechnology breakthrough coming out of the University of Texas at Dallas. A research team there recently discovered that, by using carbon nanotubes to create cuffs around exhaust pipes, the energy and heat from exhaust could be captured and, theoretically, used.

            “You could harvest energy from the tailpipe of a car,” lead scientist Ray Baughman told New Scientist of the team’s discovery.

            So far they haven’t figured out how you would get that harvested energy back into the car, or out to other applications, but that part should be relatively easy. There are already wireless sensors, switches and transmitters on the market that run off harvested energy.

            While harvested energy would not likely be able to power a car’s engine, it could feasibly power up things like the radio or the air-conditioning, which would in turn boost the fuel efficiency of the vehicle. The fact that there’s potential to make use of tailpipe emissions is probably the best news we’ve heard so far this year.

 

Official Cab-Sharing in New York City

One of the best, simple ideas we’ve come across in the last few months is New York City’s new cab-sharing scheme. It’s one of those “why did no one think of that before?” ideas. Earlier this month, the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission launched its Group Rides program. The program’s first year will be run as a pilot project; if the idea takes off, which everyone hopes it will, the program will be expanded throughout the city.

    To facilitate the Group Rides program, the Taxi & Limousine Commission will install six stands in Manhattan (three were installed at the launch of the program on February 26th and the other three are currently being installed at the US Air and Marine Air terminals at La Guardia Airport). The program will allow for two to four passengers to share rides for a low flat rate of $3 to $4 per person. The Group Rides cabs will operate along specified routes and passengers can get out anywhere along the way. 

    For the pilot phase, the stands will be in operation during morning rush hour (6am to 10am) on weekdays. Routes from the three Manhattan-based Group Rides taxi stands will run from W 57th St / 8th Avenue to 57th/Park Ave, E 72nd St / 3rd Avenue to Park Ave/42nd St, and West 72nd/Columbus Ave. to Park Ave./42nd St. The stands will be in operation on weekdays during morning rush hours between
6 a.m. and 10 a.m. It seems as though the first phase of the program will be focused more on the environmental benefits of ride-sharing than the economic benefits, per se. The initial routes serve some of the city’s tonier neighborhoods, where people can typically afford their own cab fare, no problem. In advance of any complaints about access to the stands, the TLC announced that the locations were chosen following a careful review of GPS “electronic trip sheet” data, which were combed for locations with high volumes of pickups, and the location of corresponding drop-offs. Future stand locations and routes are planned for Grand Central Terminal to 59th Street/6th Avenue ($3.00 fare); Penn Station to 59th Street/6th Avenue ($4.00 fare); and the Port Authority Bus Terminal to 59th Street/6th Avenue ($3.00 fare).

    The program grew out of Mayor Bloomberg’s 2009 State of the City address in which he encouraged the TLC to experiment with this and other facilitated ride-sharing programs. 

Could FedEx Logistics Deliver Low-Emissions Transportation to Mexico City?

FedEx is bringing its logistical expertise to the development of more sustainable transportation systems. The company announced last month that it’s joining forces with EMBARQ, The World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport, and will spend $500,000 over the next two years to help support the program’s efforts in Mexico.

“FedEx is one of the global leaders in logistics — they know how to move things around with the least amount of time, cost and fuel,” says Nancy Kete, director of EMBARQ. “So they might be able to help advise bus-company operators on that — and that would probably be a big breakthrough because that kind of expertise is very expensive and it’s not used in bus operations now.

“They’re also pretty experienced with different vehicle technologies, so they’ll be able to bring in experts on that to talk with some of our public sector and private sector partners, and that always helps — having people who have done it talk with people who want to do it.”

Provided things go well in Mexico, the two may extend their partnership into India, where FedEx is already very active and EMBARQ is working on a number of fledgling sustainable transport projects and hoping to ramp up its efforts quickly.

FedEx has been working diligently over the past few years to reduce the emissions of its massive global fleet. It expanded the number of hybrid-electric vehicles in its fleet by 50% last year. The company reported in 2008 that optimizing routes and choosing the smallest possible aircraft or vehicle for any given delivery route had saved it 45 million gallons of gas over the course of three years. And by better coordinating the timing of its truck and air deliveries, the company has further reduced emissions.

The hope is that with the help of some logistical expertise and the addition of various transit options, Mexico City could chip away at its cloud of smog and constant traffic and provide lower-emission transportation options to its residents.

Flywheel Storage and the Art of Efficiency

This is one of those great projects where a long-standing technology is used in a new way to increase efficiency and reduce emissions. Pentadyne, a company with a patented flywheel energy storage technology, was tapped last year by New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority to conduct a pilot of its technology on the agency’s trains.

    Flywheel storage units are most commonly used as energy storage devices for an Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS). Any operation that relies heavily on a steady stream of power—for example, telecommunications and data centers—can’t rely on just back-up generators, because the delay between an outage and the start-up of a generator is too long. The UPS is an electrical unit that stores energy and seamlessly supplies it as an emergency power source when there’s an outage. A good portion of UPS systems are attached to batteries or diesel generators, but the flywheel option is catching on as a low-emission option that also reduces the end-of-life disposal problems associated with batteries and generators.

   Flywheels work by taking energy, usually from a generator, and using it to rapidly accelerate a wheel, which essentially stores the energy in perpetuity, sending it out when it’s needed. Now, transit agencies around the world are increasingly looking at flywheel technology as a way to make their rolling cars more efficient. Today’s electric rail cars are faster, but they require 50% to 100% more input power than the circa 1970s/1980s railcars they replaced, according to Pentadyne. In order to reduce energy usage while meeting the demands of increased ridership, transit agencies have been looking for ways to capture, store and generate energy trackside. Flywheels increasingly seem like a great option.

    In the case of Pentadyne and New York’s MTA, for example, the flywheel storage units capture the energy generated by trains braking, and uses that energy to accelerate the trains. This is resulting in reduced energy needs, but it’s also allowing the trains to go faster for longer, without slowing down, and to power more cars on each train, which means more riders can ride a train without increasing its power requirements.

    Flywheels are also impervious to heat and cold and typically last 20 years or more with little maintenance needs. Perhaps most importantly, unlike other energy storage options out there, if one in a group of flywheels breaks for any reason, the rest just keep operating as usual.

    It’s easy to forget sometimes that electric-powered transit comes with the emissions created by whatever power plant its drawing energy from. In this case, by reducing the energy requirements of trains, flywheels could bring a lower-emission transit option even closer to a zero-emissions option.

Collect. Crunch. Optimize. 3 steps to Zero Emissions

Given that they have influence over the zoning, design, and building of everything from housing to roads to transit systems, in the race toward zero-emissions mobility, cities are often leading the charge.  Increasingly, city officials are looking to the same technologies that make companies operate seamlessly to make cities smarter. It’s a point IBM has been hammering home over the last several months: Just like multiple systems within a company, city systems need to be connected to one another in order to optimize resources and operate more efficiently.

    Some cities have taken that idea and run with it. In a recent talk about smart transportation, Pat McCroy, the outgoing mayor of Charlotte, NC talked about his staff’s approach to smartening up systems and taking a long-term approach to improving mobility in and around the city.
   
“You can’t separate smart transit out from everything else,” he said. “And you can’t take smart transit as a project, but as a process that never ends. In our case, we integrated transit, roads, land-use plans, sidewalks and bikeways and then we integrated a housing plan, an economic development strategy and a public safety strategy to ensure that the area around each transit stop is safe.”
   
The result? A 60 percent increase in bus ridership and light rail ridership that already hits the city's 2020 ridership goals. But McCroy is quick to point out that making cities and systems smarter takes a lot of time and effort.
   
“One of the great mistakes people make is they will finish one part of the process — a new light rail route, for example — and treat it as the beginning and end of a single project,” he said. “That will fail in the long run. There will always be another part that should be implemented next, and it’s all part of an ongoing process.”
   
Mexico City, a much larger urban center, is also looking at ways to reduce emissions and congestion via better linking of transportation options and better communication between different city departments.

“The solution is much less about hard infrastructure changes and more about software that can boost awareness and give people the information they need to make intelligent choices,” says Adriana Lobo, director of Mexico’s Center for Sustainable Transport.

Jesus De La Rosa, government program executive for IBM Mexico, adds that such information needs to be available for multiple, interconnected systems:

“An intelligent world generates information and makes that information interconnected, meaning that all who work within a system can share information, and then analyzes that information to anticipate the future.”

It’s yet another example of what we’ve been seeing a lot lately: Looking at the emissions problem from a different angle can sometimes reveal innovative solutions that don’t necessarily require major investments. These changes in thinking and strategy, coupled with smart investments, will help create more sustainable mobility in the future.

Ask and you will be answered

The world is changing fast these days, with new technology, green initiatives, clean energy legislation, and jobs that did not exist in the last decade (green consultant, anyone?). Our collective journey toward a zero-emission future is exciting and inspiring, but also puzzling at times, even for those of us who try to stay up-to-date and read every piece of news about it. Sometimes you get lost in all the tidbits and micro-facts, and it’s hard to see the big picture and the meaningful, underlying shifts.

That’s why we decided we needed a guide. Someone with great experience, knowledge and humanity who would welcome our questions and enlighten us on the path to our zero emission future.

Richard Saul Wurman, the founder of the TED conferences, who wrote 81 books “on subjects that he personally had difficulty understanding,” is the ideal guide on this journey. Lucky for us, he accepted our request and he’s now waiting for your questions on zero emission mobility.

Submit your questions in the comments section of this blog, on Facebook, or on Twitter @journeyzero. Richard will select some of them and give you his answers in a video that we will post here next week.

So, what are you waiting for? Ask Richard, hopefully learn something new

And please share this with any friends you think would find it helpful

Dubai Gets a Metro

There had been plans to unveil the world’s tallest building in Dubai on the same day as the notoriously over-the-top city-state’s metro line, back in September, 2009. Since the building was behind schedule, September came and went in the city without much fanfare, but the metro was right on time to debut its first line. The system’s 32-mile Red Line, which will include 29 stations, will be completed by late April, with the entire system online by August 2011. 

Of course, this being Dubai, the metro is both cutting-edge and over-budget. Trains are WiFi-enabled and include a male-only Gold Class section for VIPs, all stations will have platform doors to make it easier to control the climate of the trains and provide safe and comfortable entry and exit paths for passengers, the trains are driverless and fully automated.

While the quirks of the system are interesting, what shouldn’t be overlooked are the speed with which the project got underway and its overwhelming success in terms of ridership. In a city better known for limousines, it’s pretty great that just the first segment of the metro has shuttled nearly 10 million passengers in just five months. That means tourists are using the system as well, and it has been built to serve high-traffic areas first. The trains’ WiFi system is now fully operational as well, which should make the metro attractive to a large swath of the Dubai business community. 

The metro is also the first public transit system to be built in the Gulf’s Arab states, and will hopefully serve as an inspiration and test case for other systems in the region. It’s pretty fantastic that an area rich with oil is looking at lower emission mobility, a fact that should inspire people far beyond the Emirates.

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