Sustainablog

St. Louis-based Enterprise Rent-a-Car announced last week they will add nearly 5000 gas/electric hybrid cars to it nationwide rental fleet and designate 80 locations as “hybrid branches” - centers with a high concentration of hybrid vehicles available. These branches will be located in 24 major markets across the country including 10 of the nation’s busiest airports.

This latest addition doubles the number of hybrid vehicles available in what is already the nation’s largest fleet of fuel efficient rental cars. Along with its sister companies Alamo and National, Enterprise fields nearly 450,000 cars in their combined fleet that achieve 28 mpg or better, 230,000 cars get 32 mpg or better, and 425,000 cars have earned the Environmental Protection Agency’s SmartWay certification.

For $1.25 per rental, customers can opt to offset their vehicle emissions for a charge of $1.25 per rental. The fee helps fund certified offset projects with TerraPass. Through their charitable fund, Enterprise will match customer donations dollar-for-dollar up to $1 million annually.

Enterprise also actively supports alternative fuel research through the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center (I had the opportunity last October to chat with Dr. Richard Sayre, the Institute’s newly-named director ). An overview of this and other environmental sustainability programs in which Enterprise is involved is explained on their website KeystoGreen.com.

So does all this make Enterprise green - or is it just greenwash?

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Last year, Americans drove 100 billion miles less than the year before. They also used public transit and participated in commute programs in record numbers. Regional transportation plans have the opportunity to accelerate these trends, help people cost-effectively meet their transportation needs, and be part of the global warming solutions now needed.

In 2035, 9 million people will be more efficient and less stressed in traveling the San Francisco Bay Area if all goes according to plan. Transportation 2035 is one of the nation’s first regional transportation plans to make reducing carbon emissions integral to such a plan. This regional plan will accommodate a 26 percent population increase compared to 1990, improve their transportation, while reducing CO2 emissions by 14 percent compared to 1990.

Most of the transportation budget will go to public transit which is forecasted to increase 75 percent over the 30 years.

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Figures released by the General Administration of Customs in China last week reveal a rise in LNG imports to 3.3 tons in 2008, up from 2.9m tons the year prior. Despite 15% growth over the course of the year, December figures were down 23% from November.

The economic downturn, widely credited for December’s sluggish demand, suggests that 2009 import levels will not surpass those of 2008. Indeed, 2009 figures may even fall short of last year’s, due to the unique conditions that spurred LNG imports in 2008. Precautionary preparation for the Beijing Olympics was a major driver of surging LNG demand in the summer of 2008. Plagued with domestic shortages of natural gas, the Chinese shored up their stockpiles of gas and oil in the lead up to the Olympics.

How could 4,000 LNG-powered buses and cabs Beijing installed on the road and the conversion of burners in several power plants from coal-fired to gas-fired require such an influx, you ask?  It did not, which is why China, having made excessive preparations for the Olympics, relaxed in October as the falling numbers suggest.

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By Lester R. Brown

Aside from the overriding need to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels to stabilize climate, there are several other compelling reasons for countries everywhere to restructure their transport systems, including the need to prepare for falling oil production, to alleviate traffic congestion, and to reduce air pollution. The U.S. car-centered transportation model, with three cars for every four people, that much of the world aspires to will not likely be viable over the long term even for the United States, much less for everywhere else.

The shape of future transportation systems centers around the changing role of the automobile. This in turn is being influenced by the transition from a predominantly rural global society to a largely urban one. By 2020 close to 55 percent of us will be living in cities, where the role of cars is diminishing. In Europe, where this process is well along, car sales in almost every country have peaked and are falling.

With world oil output close to peaking, there will not be enough economically recoverable oil to support a world fleet expansion along U.S. lines or, indeed, to sustain the U.S. fleet. Oil shocks are now a major security risk. The United States, where 88 percent of the 133 million working people travels to work by car, is dangerously vulnerable.

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GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily discusses the zero carbon car, high fuel efficiency vehicles, and alternative fuel technologies with William Kemp. Author of the The Zero Carbon Car and other books about alternative fuels and renewable energy.

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As is tradition, a new year brings extra cause for moments of introspection. It’s a time to plot goals for what’s ahead, partly based on self-assessment of how we handled the year that’s just passed.

For me, one aspect of the environment-minded life stands starkly clear from the rest: personal transportation.

From time to time, since joining the sustainablog team in August, I’ve written about my varied ways of getting ’round town. Now that winter has set in and I’ve made another recent adjustment or two, I realized I’ve built a list of wheels through the last 12 months. Each has had its distinctive impacts. Read the rest of this entry »

No doubt about it: the Chevy Volt looks like it will be one sweet ride (even the not-so-sporty production vehicle). But a group of electric vehicle enthusiasts here in the St. Louis area isn’t willing to wait for the hybrid Volt’s 2010 roll-out… so they’ve built their own fully electric vehicles.

Today’s Post-Dispatch features the Gateway Electric Vehicle Club, and a few of the EVs that members have built themselves. Retired college professor Charlton Jones (pictured above) bought a ‘74 Porsche 914 on Ebay, and with a little elbow grease and money (OK, a lot of money — $19,000) converted into a fully electric vehicle. On the Illinois side of the river, Ron Erb converted a ‘96 Ford Ranger to an EV (for a mere $7,500). Erb was able to offset some of his costs with a $4000 state tax rebate (unfortunately, we don’t have that in Missouri…).

Granted, neither of these vehicles are muscle cars: Jones’ Porsche takes a minute to get up to 60 mph, and Erb claims his Ranger can “go 80… but not very far.” And each requires significant charging time: 7 hours for the Ranger so it can go 35 miles. The cost for that recharge is hard to beat, though: 98 cents.

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By Jonathan G. Dorn

With the dramatic increase in oil prices earlier this year translating into higher prices at the gas pump in the United States, concerns over U.S. dependence on foreign oil are once again part of the national discussion on energy security. Combined with the growing understanding that carbon emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels are driving global climate change, the debate is now focused on how to restructure the U.S. transport system to solve these two problems.

While the idea of running U.S. vehicles on natural gas has lately received a great deal of attention, powering our cars with green electricity is a more sensible option on all fronts—national security, efficiency, climate stabilization, and economics.

Having a fleet of natural gas–powered vehicles (NGVs) would simply replace U.S. dependence on foreign oil with a dependence on natural gas, another fossil fuel. The United States has scarcely 3 percent of the world’s proved natural gas reserves, yet even without the increased demand that would result from a fleet of natural gas cars, the country already consumes nearly a quarter of the world’s natural gas. At current rates of consumption, U.S. proved reserves would only meet national demand for another nine years.

U.S. natural gas production has remained relatively constant over the last two decades and is unlikely to increase over the long run, despite growing consumption. Consequently, any rise in demand is likely to be met by increasing imports. Since the late 1980s, U.S. net imports of natural gas—primarily from Canada—have tripled. The U.S. Department of Energy projects that by 2016 the majority of U.S. natural gas imports will come from outside North America.

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Americans are driving less, spurred by steep gas prices for much of this year. We are also turning to transit like never before — especially for essential trips like going to work. Demand for public transit is at an all-time high, soaring to rates not seen since 1957. Across the country, places as diverse as New York City, Southern California, North Carolina and Wyoming are witnessing sharp rises.

EDF produced an interactive map (using data from the National Transit Database) showing the many places where transit ridership jumped along with gas prices.

Scroll over the map and see eye-popping jumps in people using public transit — not just in big cities but places like Terre Haute, Indiana, and Sherman, Texas, which saw huge leaps in ridership.

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My family and I awoke, greeted by a spectacular show of autumn colors while our Capitol Limited Amtrak train coasted alongside a meandering river somewhere outside Martinsburg, West Virginia. We headed to the glass enclosed lounge car to join a convivial community of train travelers, snapping photos of quaint mountain towns and even a wind farm perched atop a ridge.

Our destination was Washington D.C. and after careful consideration, we concluded that getting to the nation’s capitol by train was both the most energy efficient way (when compared to flying or driving) and a most enjoyable one. We stretched out on comfortable and spacious seats, had plenty of room to stretch our legs in the lounge or cafe car, avoided the hassles of airline check-in and security, and had ample free time to play games with our son, read a book, watch the world passing by out the windows, even sip a cup of Fair Trade Certified Green Mountain Coffee purchased at their cafe.

Hardly our first train trip on Amtrak (and no stranger to the European intercity rail system), we, as ecotravelers, found riding with Amtrak far more than an ecologically sound and more fuel efficient way to travel. We joined a community of fellow travelers eager to slow down more to enjoy the scenery, rather than flying thousands of feet overhead or speeding down boring Interstate Highways in a car.

Americans are riding the rails in a big way these days. From October 2006 to September 2007, about 25.8 million Americans took a trip on Amtrak. An average of more than 70,000 passengers ride on up to 300 Amtrak trains per day. Amtrak, officially called the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, was created by the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970. After a 150 years of passenger rail service by private freight companies largely disappeared due to the rapid growth (and, in hindsight, disasterous ecological and social impacts) of automobile and airline travel, the U.S. government stepped in to set up a public service passenger rail service so that intercity passenger train travel could still be continued. Fortunately for us.

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