By: DAVID BRANCACCIO

The Danes have an enduring relationship with wind. This is symbolized by the big, honking wind turbine that looms like a bird of prey over the parking lot outside the Bella Center, the venue for the U.N. Climate Change Conference Denmark is hosting in December.

It was a Dane, physicist H.C. Oersted, who discovered electrical induction, the principle at work inside wind and other electric generators. Danish farmers brag they were the first in the world to generate electricity from wind.

The Danes are now hard at work cracking one of the great challenges of wind power: the fact that the wind blows when it darn well pleases. Sometimes it blows hard when there isn’t much need for the resulting electricity. Sometimes the air is becalmed when electricity is needed the most.

Wouldn’t it be nice if households in Denmark had nice batteries to store the wind power coming off the country’s wind farms?
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Electric cars output one fifth the carbon dioxide and cost about one twentieth in energy compared to their gas counterparts. I was interested in discovering whether or not electric cars offered any cut in CO2 output in our current-day infrastructure. According to their site, the Tesla Roadster uses 110 watt hours of electricity per mile. For the purpose of a theoretical comparison, let us assume that the gas powered counterpart of the Tesla would get 20 miles per gallon. Now lets zoom out.

One kilogram of coal has 24 mega joules of energy and outputs 1.83 kilograms of CO2 when burned. America is 54% coal-powered, the average plant is 31% efficient, and transmission losses of electricity are about 10%. Moving over to gas, one gallon of gas becomes about twenty pounds of CO2 when burned. A gallon of gas costs around $4.00, and a kilowatt hour of electricity is around 9.86 cents. After all of the calculations, this results in 1¢ per mile electric versus 20¢ per mile gas, 3.2 ounces of CO2 per mile versus one pound per mile.

Considering that the legacy left behind by American car companies has little to do with being clean, there seems to be an increased sense of urgency by some U.S. states to replace the older fleet of vehicles with newer, and therefore cleaner, vehicles. The states with the two largest vehicle fleets, Texas and California, have both implemented new programs which offer cash-based incentives to owners of older vehicles which fail current emissions testing. In Texas, up to $3,500 is offered towards a vehicle three-years old or newer, though income restrictions do apply. In California, there is no maximum income number, though the far-left state is a bit less generous, offering $1,500 towards the purchase of a replacement vehicle.

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/06/30/states-pay-drivers-to-replace-their-older-cars/

There is a growing realisation that climate change is a reality and not a myth. Air travel is now the fastest-growing contributor to global warming, and avoiding a flight when there are easy alternatives is probably the biggest single thing that any individual can do to cut their carbon footprint and limit their own impact on the environment. No wonder many people are now looking for less environmentally-hostile ways to travel.

It’s not an exact science, and I’m certainly no expert, but Eurostar has done its homework and commissioned independent research to assess the CO2 per passenger produced by a London-Paris Eurostar journey versus that emitted by a passenger on a London-Paris flight. The research looked at actual Eurostar passenger loadings, actual Eurostar power consumption, the way Eurostar’s electricity is generated, actual aircraft loadings, actual aircraft fuel consumption, and so on. The conclusion was remarkable: Taking the train to Paris instead of flying cuts CO2 emissions per passenger not just by 10% or 20% or even 50%, but by a staggering 90%…

http://www.seat61.com/CO2flights.htm

Top speed of 96 miles per hour, 848-mile range, 106 miles per gallon, and only $17,000!Read the details here now.