fidzu : green

From naps at the office to Christmas trees at home, a look at the most interesting stories on our sister site.

08 Dec 2013 2:26pm GMT

The dry and leaf-less branches of a tree is bursting with life of a different sort. These waxwings look like a smattering of winter fruit budding from the branches.

08 Dec 2013 12:00pm GMT

Add a few snowflakes and a sky full of garbage.

07 Dec 2013 12:15pm GMT

A few years back, the 'Copenhagen Wheel' was one of a few innovations in cycling that were being proposed to try to make bicycle commuting easier. While it was just a concept in 2010, it is now a real product, with pre-orders being offered by manufacturer Superpedestrian.

The Copenhagen Wheel is a combination battery and motor that is installed on a Single Speed or 9/10 Speed Free Hub bicycle, converting it into an electric bike with a range of up to 50 km (31 mi) and a top speed of 25 mph (in the US; 25 km/h in the EU). It also provides regenerative braking and Bluetooth connectivity and iOS and Android integration.

For now, Superpedestrian is only selling the Copenhagen Wheel alone, so you'll need to provide your own bike to mount it on. However, the company says that they will soon be selling bikes already equipped with the Copenhagen Wheel. The early-bird pricing for the Copenhagen Wheel is $699 (regular price will be $799 according to the website).

Also previously on EcoGeek: Rubbee Turns Regular Bicycles into Electric Vehicles

05 Dec 2013 9:41am GMT

Outside the world of law, environmental academics and professionals spend a ton of time analyzing data coded to specific geographic locations. Most environmental lawyers are at least somewhat aware of this phenomenon; most of us know, for example, that GISs...

04 Dec 2013 3:55pm GMT

We are excited to have Cinnamon Carlarne guest blogging with us today. Cinnamon is an associate professor at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. There's been some big and-at least for many-surprising news on the environmental front lately....

25 Nov 2013 7:59pm GMT

Over the past several months, I've spent a lot of time talking to environmental attorneys in my home state about the state of their practices. The reason for this effort is straightforward: I practiced what seems like a long time...

22 Nov 2013 1:01pm GMT

Sixty-eight percent of all goods in the United States spend some of their journey across the country stored on tractor trailers attached to a tractor. With the average semi-trailer truck getting about 5.6 miles per gallon of diesel, however, tractor trailers take an immense amount of fuel to transport. It's not simply the weight of the materials on board causing this low MPG, either--the boxy tractor trailer isn't exactly areodynamic.

Addressing this problem, Advanced Transit Dynamics (ATDynamics) produces TrailerTails, which are designed to make the bulky tractor trailer more areodynamic and thus more fuel efficient when pulled by the tractor. Attached to the back of a trailer, they fold out, almost like extensions of the trailer's walls. Saving about 3 cents profit per mile when deployed, most trucking companies make back their investment in under a year, according to the company. The environmental boon seems sizable, too: each TrailerTail, when used at highway speeds for 50,000 miles for a year, is effectively like removing an average passenger car from the road for a year.

With that much CO2 reduction possible, this statistic reveals more about the immense inefficiency of trailer trucks than the net environmental-boost TrailerTails provide. But given that tractor trailers are such a mainstay of goods transportation in the U.S., this technology seems a step in the right direction in an area that demands significant improvement.

image credit: ATDYNAMICS, INC.

21 Nov 2013 2:27am GMT

The additional costs associated with adopting renewable energy are frequently used to argue that it is too expensive to adopt renewables. However, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has taken a look at the costs and offsets from renewable energy use and finds "The answer: the cost is a tiny fraction of the ultimate savings."

Although the costs for the equipment needed to integrate renewables into the existing grid are not insignificant, the associated savings in reduced fuel costs are far greater. Cycling fossil power plants to generate power intermittently also increases wear on the equipment, which leads to increased maintenance costs. But overall, the savings are far more than the increases.

The other key finding is that, as renewables continue to be integrated into the grid, the continuing costs will become smaller. Making the systems able to work with renewables connected to the grid is something that gets easier and less expensive. So, in a way, the early adopters have made an even bigger contribution to improving the energy infrastructure.

via: Ars Technica

08 Nov 2013 3:54am GMT