Carbon Offset Providers

I have been interested in some time in the idea of purchasing carbon offsets, a way for individuals and organizations to fund projects to reduce the world's greenhouse gas emissions or "carbon footprint."

This report, published in December 2006, provides detailed information about carbon offsets and finds eight "Tier 1" organizations that satisfy a number of criteria to increase the probability that the carbon offsets purchased will have a real effect reducing carbon emissions. These eight organizations (in alphabetical order) are:

1. AgCert/DrivingGreen (Ireland) www.drivinggreen.com
2. atmosfair (Germany) www.atmosfair.de
3. Carbon Neutral Co. (England) www.carbonneutral.com
4. Climate Care (England) www.climatecare.org
5. Climate Trust (U.S.) www.climatetrust.org
6. co2balance (England) www.co2balance.com
7. Native Energy (U.S.) www.nativeenergy.com
8. Sustainable Travel Int'l (U.S.) www.sustainabletravelinternational.org

Over the holiday season, environmentally conscious travellers might consider offsetting the carbon emissions of their travel. And some of these organizations make it possible to provide carbon offset gifts.

The report is careful to emphasize, however, that individual's efforts to reduce one's carbon emissions through lifestyle and consuming choices are most important.

Brompton Meets Twike

A new pedalling experience for me this evening!

I finally got a ride in a Twike, a double-recumbent, three-wheeled, enclosed pedal-electric hybrid vehicle designed and manufactured in Switzerland (now made in Germany) that gets the equivalent of between 350 and 600 miles per gallon using a combination of batteries/motor and human pedal power.

It is owned by Mark Childress and more info about the vehicle can be found at
http://www.uiuc.edu/goto/twike

Matt works on the Illinois campus. So at the end of the work day today I pedaled over to his part of campus on my Brompton folding bike, folded up the Brompton, put it in the Twike and away we went.

It was quite an experience pedaling and moving at close to 40 mph (top speed in the country is up to 55 mph). At city speeds the motor is used to get you up to speed and two strong pedalers can keep it going on mainly pedal power on the flat at city driving speeds. We zoomed over to Champaign where he lives, and I pedaled back to Urbana on my Brompton.

This may be the first time that the world's most compact folding bicycle (bicycles being the most energy-efficient vehicles on the planet) was combined with what is likley the world's most efficient pedal-electric vehicle on the planet!

You can see more photos at:
http://flickr.com/photos/gcziko/sets/72157603339069620/

Passive House Conference: Moving Toward Zero-Energy Homes

I attended the Second Annual North American Passive House Conference last weekend in Urbana, Illinois and my head is still spinning from all the presentations, demonstrations and conversations about ways of reducing and even eliminating carbon emissions from homes that stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

The essential component of these super-efficient homes is a structural envelope that is superinsulated (with up to 15 inches of insulation in exterior walls) and super airtight. Passive solar energy from large south-facing windows is used as the main form of heat. And an energy recovery ventilator (such as the RecoupAerator) is used to provide fresh air from the outside without cooling (in winter) or heating (in summer) the house.

Passive Houses are quite common in Germany and Austria where energy costs are very high. But they are not yet well known in North America. The conference drew together builders, architects, engineers and other sustainability-minded folks from all over the United States and Canada together with a number of Germans and Austrians living either in Europe or the U.S. who are involved in some fascinating projects in the U.S. and Europe.

Urbana's own Katrin Klingenberg, an architect who learned about Passive House concepts in Germany (where it is known as Passivhaus) organized the conference and showed attendees the two Passive Houses that she has built in Urbana and another under construction. Katrin is the director of the Ecological Construction Laboratory (e-co lab) in Urbana and also heads Passive House Institute US (PHIUS).

A Passive House can be built for 10 to 20% more than a conventional house of the same size with typical energy savings of 80 to 90%. Some speakers at the conference showed how adding other renewable energy sources such as solar electricity, solar hot water, wind and geothermal energy could reduce energy consumption to zero.

Some interesting technology that I learned about at the conference include research at the Univeristy of Illinois by Ty Newell on using CO2 as a refrigerant, vacuum insulating panels that provide an insulation value of R-30 per inch (such as Vacupor), and indirect evaporative coolers that can cool air down to its dew point (instead of just to its wet-bulb temperature), making these practical for more humid locations such as parts of the midwest and northeast U.S. (see products made by Coolerado). Other technology exhibited at the conference can be found here.

Passive House technology looks like an obvious move in a world where housing and buildings consume vast amounts of non-renewable, greenhouse-gas-producing energy.

Introduction: Maybe Not So Obvious

My daughter, Anne-Marie (who recently started a blog Core and Rind with her husband, Kevin), has been bugging me recently to start my own blog. If I send an e-mail to her and other family members (often with an attached photo or two), she will reply with something like "blog, blog, blog, blog!". I suppose that is because she believes that what I have to say should have a much larger audience and she wants to share the wisdom of her father with the rest of the world! So I'll give it a try, although at this point it remains to be discovered how much time I will have for regular blog entries.

I have lots of interests and concerns. Among those at the top of my list are environmental issues, especially sustainable transportation and housing. Other interests that will no doubt eventually show up here are bicycling, music, travel, swimming, running, skating, foreign languages and technology (especially technology for education and language learning). The blog's name, Obvious Moves, was originally motivated by my transportation interests, although the meaning of Moves is larger than that. The Obvious part has to do with searching for, discussing and finding solutions to problems that will eventually appear obvious (such as facilitating bicycle transportation in the world's towns and cities) but are not yet generally considered obvious by all or most individuals.

I also have lots of questions about many issues, and so I am planning to use this blog as a way of soliciting answers to my questions (and readers' related questions, too).

Now on to figuring out what my first real post will be about.