Energy Innovation: The Smart Grid

A major factor to consider with renewable energy is that they tend to be located in specific geographic regions in the US. As laid out in this BW article on improving the grid, solar has the strongest concentration in the southwestern deserts while wind has the strongest concentration in the northern plains. Of course, spending $3.4 billion of federal money on the grid in order to create an open playing field for all types of energy sources threatens the business model of existing suppliers.

Scientific American: Should Thursday Be the New Friday?

Over the summer Scientific American made its case for the work week consisting of four ten-hour days - or, from the perspective of employees, the weekly three-day weekend. I vote yes to this. Then again at my work I have ten hour days regularly anyway, so I think my company would lose more time than it would gain from 4-day initiative. How would this affect your work?

Electric Car MPG

There is an interesting article in Business Week about the difficulty of measuring MPG of electric cars and other green cars like the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt and all electric Nissan Leaf

Civic emissions comparisons

Continuing our hybrid car discussion and using the Honda Civic as the key example, here is a comparison of emissions between styles.

Since there is no good way to link to these results, posted below are the results of the EPA Green Vehicle Guide's comparison of the 5-spd automatic Honda Civic, the Honda Civic hybrid, and the Toyota Prius.

Green Car Analysis - Honda Civic edition

After our last comments discussion of the green car market, I want to present a comparison of hybrid vs. non-hybrid vehicles using the Honda Civic as an example.

The "Green" Car Market

I am in the market for a new car in the next year or two. I want a cool, good-looking car, like an Audi A5, but I also want something that blends coolness with environmental consciousness, like the Tesla Model S. Neither of those are at a reasonable price point for me, so I've been browsing greencar.com to find a more practical "green" car.