One Geek, One Earth

Air Powered Cars (via Yahoo)

The company that is producing cars running on compressed air is going to bring them to the U.S.. Of course, to give them a range useful enough to work in the U.S., they’re adding a small gasoline engine to heat the air and allow the car to go up to 95mph. It takes an hour to fill the compressed tank, but if you can do that in your home at night, it doesn’t seem like it would be a big deal.

Seems like green technologies are starting to gain some ground. I could see myself driving one of these cars, although I wish they would change the look a little…

As a former Duke student and Cameron crazy and now current Duke employee, I only have one word for this: awesome.

Some quick thoughts about some of the interesting articles I’ve read in the last week or so…

A Solar Grand Plan (Scientific American)

This is from the January 2008 issue - I get it free at work from one of my colleagues, so I was reading the hard copy - the online edition of the mag has already moved on to February. But I digress. This is a really neat article detailing how the U.S. could be on a completely renewable energy source plan by 2050 - having 69% of its electricity and 35% of its total energy provided by a massive solar energy farm in the Southwest in those desert areas where the sun shines a lot and contractors aren’t rushing to build residential living. The downside is that it would cost $420 billion to build the infrastructure (including the way to get all this electricity where it belongs) and make the technology cost competitive. Of course, when you realize the U.S. has spent more than twice that amount in the Iraq war, then suddenly it seems doable if you get the right people in power.

Israel Gives the Electric Car a Big ‘Ol Hug (New York Times)

With the blessing of the Israeli government, an American-Israeli entrepreneur teams up with Renault and Nissan to start promoting the heavy use of electric cars in Israel, including checking out the practicality of changing the infrastructure (recharging stations, easy battery recycling, etc). Israel, then,, in some respects becomes a use case for the U.S. that will answer some of the questions about getting the electric car here:

What works well? What are the flawed portions of the plan? What kind of level of adoption will you get from the citizens?

and from local news…

Raleigh moves towards becoming a green city. . .slowly (Raleigh News & Observer)

Raleigh’s City Council has pledged to reduce Raleigh’s fossil fuel consumption by 20 percent over the next five years. Wooo? The story points out that nearby Asheville is doing a lot more, including requiring all new municipal buildings over 5,000 square feet to be certified green by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, rating system. To be fair, Asheville is a much smaller city and isn’t growing at the rate that Raleigh is. But then again, perhaps that is all the more reason for Raleigh to get off its butt and get green before the city is too big to effectively change.