EnvironmentLA - The City's official site for information about projects and programs that are making Los Angeles more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power - LADWP offers environmental Green LA programs, including Trees for a Green LA, Energy Efficiency for a Green LA, Solar Energy for a Green LA, Electric Vehicles for a Green LA, Green Power for a Green LA, Recycling for a Green LA and Educational Services for a Green LA.
Green LA Action Plan - The City's official plan to improve energy conservation, transition to renewable power sources, and change the ways citizens commute to work and school.
US Green Building Council-LA - A resource for agencies, municipalities, professionals and companies interested in sustainable, green buildings.
Remember those Hummers your neighbors drove heedlessly around town, burning through barrels of gasoline but rarely finding those off-road challenges for which these vehicles were created?
With the downturn in the economy and the uptick in carbon emissions, they became a symbol of SUV excess.
But don’t count them out.
Raser Technologies, Inc. has been testing electric Hummer H3Es and reported this week that they recently ran a successful all-electric 50-mile drive. That’s significant because battery-operated vehicles have been curtailed by short ranges of around 40 miles. New models under development are aiming for more than that in hopes of alleviating anticipated consumer concerns over EV range.
Americans may be dopes about a lot of things, but they recognize a good shopping deal when it comes their way.
Given the opportunity to receive thousands of dollars to jettison their rusted out, gas-hog cars, they said yes. In fact, they googled the nearest dealership and ran off to trade in those pick-ups and sport vehicles, apparently sucking up nearly all of the $1 billion set aside for the Cash for Clunkers program in a mere two weeks.
If you like to keep things simple, you’ll like the 2009 Nissan Versa 1.6 sedan. This is a thrifty commuter car for those who have embraced voluntary simplicity.
Nissan introduced a bare-bones edition of the subcompact Versa last fall to bring to market a new car with a starting sticker price of less than $10,000. To hit that price point, Nissan replaced the 1.8-liter engine with a smaller 1.6-liter four-cylinder engine. The company also stripped away the gadgets and do-dads many drivers have come to expect.
There’s a chart on fueleconomy.gov that’s a graphic illustration of what happened to GM. The chart is a compilation of 2009 hybrid vehicles. It lists 27 hybrid vehicles in descending order from the highest mileage cars to the lowest.
At the top of the chart, perch some of the highest mileage vehicles available on the market, the Toyota Prius, the Honda Civic and the Nissan Altima. The top two clock in at 40 mpg and up. The Altima at 33-35 mpg.
The lowest mileage vehicles reside at the bottom of the chart. And the bottom five are all GM products: The GMC Yukon, Chevy Tahoe, GMC Sierra, Chevrolet Silverado and Cadillac Escalade.
Denver drivers have seen the light. It’s on the driving dashboard that shows them their CO2 emissions.
As part of a pilot program called Driving Change, city-employed and selected citizen drivers were given feedback from their dashboards about their driving habits, which in turn, told them about their carbon emissions.
What they learned was that how they drove really did make a difference.
Remember when Congress passed legislation one year ago raising the bar on gas mileage? The law they passed required automakers to have a fleet average of 35 mpg by 2020.
Automakers, not just the U.S. Big Three, but Toyota as well, opposed it. They spent millions lobbying against the law, and to find out just how much they spent and whose wheels they tried to grease, see the Huffington Post story Big Three Promise Green Future But Spent Almost $50 Million Since 2007 Lobbying Against It
which dug out the actual dollar figures. (Just as good as the story are some of the bloggers responding, who have some interesting ideas for how to rescue the car industry.)
Driving in cold weather? Skip the “warm up.” As Ecomodder.com points out, an idling engine gets “zero miles per gallon.” (And it’s environmentally uncool.) Also recheck your tire inflation as the season cools; air temperature affects tire inflation and you may be in need of a “fill up.”
