I know, I know, incandescent light bulbs are the devil. The fact that any of us still use this antiquated technology is a testament to our stupidity as a species…BUT!

It’s actually far more efficient than any other light source from Edison’s day. A 40 watt light bulb produces about as much light as 40 candles. If you burned 500 candles instead of using a 40 watt light bulb, you would be burning several gallons of paraffin (refined from crude oil) per day, resulting in about 10 times more CO2 emissions.

Of course, we don’t burn 40 candles. We burn one or two or three. So, yes, paraffin candles are not a significant polluter. When I switch off my lights this Earth Hour, and light my candles, I will be replacing 12 watt CFL with three candles. The result, honestly, will be about neutral. The candles will produce a little bit more CO2 than would be produced by the CFL. (thanks, by the way, to enochthered for doing all the math for me.)

The big difference is the amount of light I’ll have to work with. With just my candles burning, chances are my wife and I will have a hilarious dinner in which we can’t find the forks, and then we’ll try to read our books without enough light to actually read them and then, probably, we’ll find some darkness-related activity to entertain ourselves.

And yes, that sounds lovely, but the candle is not saving any energy, it’s just making the world a little softer for one evening. And, hopefully, it will remind us of the gifts that technology brings us, so maybe we can not take them for granted quite so much.

Driven an Aptera lately? No? Well, very few people actually have taken the wheel of that space-age, three-wheeled electric car, but a matched pair appeared in Manhattan this week and journalists were given a chance to bounce around in the potholes (check out this video of the Aptera).

The $25,000, two-seat Aptera 2E, with lithium batteries, has a 100-mile cruising range and a late 2009 delivery date. Nearly 4,000 people have signed up for the car, which will initially be available only in California. Series hybrid and 100-mpg gas versions will follow in 2010.

One of the most interesting things about the 2E is one with no obvious application right now. Among the screen views is one that reveals what the car can do if it’s connected to a “smart grid” that allows consumers to monitor their electrical consumption in real time — and even send it back into the wires, from solar panels or even electric cars.

The smart grid is a gleam in Barack Obama’s eye, but Xcel Energy and partners have made it a vivid reality as SmartGridCity in Boulder, Colorado. Some 35,000 customers are now connected, says Current Group CEO Tom Casey, whose company built the grid there and in Dallas.

So here’s how it would work: The Aptera takes eight to 12 hours to recharge on 110 current, so when the car is plugged in at night you can set it to interact with the local utility — recharging just between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., for example. Pushing buttons, you can also select a “threshold” of, say, 50% of charge. That enables the utility, in times of peak load, to access the electricity in your batteries and then recharge them later.

“The ‘vehicle-to-grid,’ or V2G, technology is for the future,” says Aptera CEO Paul Wilbur. “But a lot of people in Washington are talking about it. The point is that our generating system doesn’t store electricity well. Nuclear power plants, for instance, are steady state, which means they run around the clock to meet peak demand so a lot of electricity produced at night is just thrown away.”

According to the University of Delaware’s Center for Carbon-Free Power Integration, “Cars pack a lot of power. One typical electric-drive vehicle can put out more than 10 kilowatts, the average draw of 10 houses.” Delaware’s Willet Kempton is a pioneer of V2G and has converted a Scion to an “EBox” that can give power back to the grid (see video below).

Being a Green Cheapskate is about saving money while living lighter on the Earth, from frugal tricks to thrifty planning.

One of the things I love most about living in New York is being car-free. Nothing could be greener. Here is how I get to places, in order of frequency: I walk (and push a stroller) or I take subways and buses. Less than ten times a year I take a taxi. I grew up in New York so this is all I’ve ever known, though at various points in my pre-kid life, I rode more subways, walked less, and took more cabs. Although I did learn to drive in my late teens, and even have a license, I don’t drive. I used to but as I never did it with any frequency, I was (and am) terrible. Driving terrifies me. And I all around hate it – from being behind the wheel to the gasoline that makes the cars go.

Still, being a parent, cars are convenient, even for the urban dweller. From time to time over the years we have borrowed cars from friends and family for long haul errands, carting stuff around, or even for weekend trips. Our needs never seemed to be enough to warrant joining Zipcar, an eco-tastic business model I have long admired, until parenthood.

I was so excited when I filled out Zipcar’s online forms. It all felt just right. One of the first trips we took in a Zipcar, conveniently parked less than 5 blocks away, was to our organic Community Supported Agriculture farm. The new relationship was off to a great start.

But it quickly went downhill. It turns out …

We can make over 25,000 things with it. Farmers love it. Environmentalists love it. You can’t get high from it. So why is it still illegal?

Now that there’s a White House veggie garden, what’s next? Schoolyards, retirement homes, vacant urban lots, governors’ mansions …

It’s time to choose sides in the Tata Nano debate. The car has officially hit streets in India, and will likely be coming to the U.S. in 2011 or 2012. The price for the Indian market is under $2,000, making it the cheapest new car in history. It’s likely that you should have an opinion about it. Here are the camps where people have started setting up their tents, just in case you’re curious.

1. America, Europe and Japan have been working their butts off trying to get a high mileage car on the roads, and the only way they’ve done it is with magnificent technology that costs far more than traditional cars. India did it for $2,000. We should be ashamed
2. The Tata Nano is going to destroy the world. Suddenly two billion more people can afford cars! What we have is not people replacing their cars with a more efficient car, we have people buying cars who have never owned cars before. This will more than double the greenhouse gas inputs from the developing world. In the words of the chief scientist of the IPCC "I’m having nightmares” about this car.
3. The U.S. and Europe can’t hold back the developing world in ways they were never held back. Inexpensive microcars will usher in a new age of economic development in India and China.
4. The lack of good mass transit anywhere in the world is a disgrace and single-passenger vehicles are simply never going to be a solution for urban areas. We need to move forward with convenient, safe and comfortable mass transit. That’s where real economic development comes from.

I’m pretty much in the fourth camp here. There are good and obvious reasons why America has never produced this kind of cheap microcar. The obvious ones being that no one bought Geos when GM made them and that American / European emissions and safety regulations make cars much heavier and more expensive than the Nano.

The Nano won’t destroy the world, and we can’t deny the developing world what we’ve already granted ourselves (and oh so much more.) But I don’t think that the Nano will be much more than another small step towards India’s future economic strength. 

We’ve known forever that the growing world-wide middle class will be a strain on the environment. What we need are mass transit solutions and clean vehicle technologies for this coming boom, and we need them soon.

Perhaps robot fish make prime fodder for jokes, but humor aside, a team of British researchers is taking the idea of building robot fish very seriously.  Their goal is to release the robot fish in the waters north of Spain and use them to monitor pollution levels.

The fish are roughly the size and shape of a carp.  They mimic the movements of real fish to navigate the waters and they’re equipped with high-tech chemical sensorous, which detect hazardous pollutants like oil leaks from vessels or underwater pipelines or mercury dumped in the water.  The robots currently cost 20,000 pounds ($29,000 USD) a piece.

The fish transmit their collected data back to shore using a Wi-Fi link.
The really impressive feature of the 1.5 meter long fish (roughly the size of a seal) is that they can navigate autonomously.  Previous models required a human operator at the remote controls, making them less practical.

Rory Doyle, senior research scientist at engineering company BMT Group says that when it comes to exploring the water and collecting data, fish-shaped robots have significant advantages over submarine-shaped designs.  He states, "In using robotic fish we are building on a design created by hundreds of millions of years’ worth of evolution which is incredibly energy efficient.  This efficiency is something we need to ensure that our pollution detection sensors can navigate in the underwater environment for hours on end."

The scientists are deploying five of the fish in the northern Spanish port of Gijon next year.  If the fish hold up to the elements and prove their worth, they could soon be headed to rivers, lakes, and seas across the world, helping in the fight against pollution.

The fish do require a fair investment of money and resources, but ultimately they seem a good idea as they can help fight the accidental or intentional dumping of large quantities of chemicals into the sea, something that sadly occurs on a regular basis.

Check below for a video of the robofish in action.

Do not be misled by replacement window salesmen in Canada. Do not be mislead by Natural Resources Canada and the ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program.

Replacement window salemen will say that ENERGY STAR replacement windows are eligible for ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit grant of $30 (plus an additional $30 from most Provincial governments).

And they would be right. On one of the main pages on the ecoENERGY program’s website you will see the following:

“Replace windows and skylights with models that are ENERGY STAR^® qualified for your climate zone.”

True enough. What is a ‘window’?

There are 9 ‘Important Notes’ (footnotes to you and I) on this page, none of which defines for you the term ’window’.

How many windows do you see here? 

Not 3; not even 2; one. We had to pay for 3 windows, the large upper window and the two sliders in the lower area. However, per the ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program, this is one window seeing us receive $30 from Natural Resources Canada.

How about here; how many windows do you see?

We paid for six ENERGY STAR windows; the two large uppers and the 2 pairs of horizontal slider windows.

According to the ecoENERGY program, the above picture is considered one window. One. Even though this entire area is 5 feet high and 6 feet wide, these 2 ENERGY STAR windows will see us receive a whole $30 from Natural Resources Canada and a matching $30 grant from our Provincial government. This is supposed to be motivation to pay the premium pricing of an ENERGY STAR rated window? 

And, what about here? 

Surely, this bay window counts as more than 1 window within the ecoENERGY grant program, right? Wrong.

The Federal Government of Canada is incenting me, and other Canadian home owners with homes built prior to 2000 a whopping $30 to replace the windows in this bay window with ENERGY STAR rated windows.

Does that seem like a sufficient financial motivation?

I have to be honest; had I known this I would not have invested several thousands of dollars in ENERGY STAR replacement windows. Would you have?

Where is the term ‘window’ defined on the ecoENERGY web site or all the literature which it provides the energy auditors to leave with participating households?

Not on the home page.

Not on the page referenced above.

The term ‘window’ is defined as question #49 of the 50 questions on the Question and Answer page.

If you are looking for me to recommend the ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program, I do. If you are looking for me to recommend investing the thousands and thousands of dollars in ENERGY STAR windows, I’m not so sure; it’s definitely not for the $30 + $30.

So, taking hot showers during the winter is one of the most wonderful things in the world. And yes, I recognize that it takes a tremendous amount of energy to heat that water before it hits me, warms me, and makes me feel so extremely happy.

But then that water hits the tub, and runs down into the sewer, and you want to know something funny…that water is still very hot. All of the energy to heat ALL that water, and it’s only used for a few seconds before it’s washed (still nice and warm) down the drain.

The EcoDrain takes this previously wasted energy and captures it, taking the load off of your hot water heater. Indeed, when used optimally it can reduce hot water heater use 40%. That is a huge amount of your daily energy use, and a huge amount of America’s energy use.

The EcoDrain is simply a heat exchanger that plugs into your shower drain. Clean, cold water circulates around the hot water leaving the shower and by the time the cold water leaves the EcoDrain, it’s luke warm. That water is then what comes out when the "cold" knob is turned. By mixing that with the hot water from your hot water heater, suddenly you’re cranking the "hot" knob half as much as you used to.

The dirty water never comes in contact with the clean water, but the temperature of the clean water is increased significantly.

According to EcoDrain, installation is fairly simple. Though, as far as I can tell, plumbing is never really simple. Unfortunately, old building codes represent an obstacle for EcoDrain. Apparently these devices need to be approved in every new market they enter, and that has been something of a hurdle.

Nevertheless, if all of America was using EcoDrains, we’d be saving billions of dollars of energy…it seems like this device’s time has come.

via Inhabitat