Race with a Difference

A 2-day race to promote good driving habits started this morning, reports the BBC. The winner of the 'MPG Marathon' will be the entrant which gets the most miles per gallon, rather than necessarily arriving first. For a first-hand account of the 2006 race, check out this link. (The Aygo won, with 84pmg. Not bad.)

There are some basic fuel-saving driving tips on the MPG Marathon website. Or, you can read up on some more advanced/radical tips here (spotted on Sigrun's Facebook page a couple of months back - thanks!)

Recycling Energy at the Gym

A gym in America is claiming to be the US's first to use the energy of the people working out in the gym to help power it. In fact, the Beeb news site was looking at this issue a couple of years back, wondering if you could end up getting paid to go to the gym.

It sounds pretty inefficient, though - it would be far more efficient and green to close the gym and for the members to do alternative exercise such as cycling to work. (I say that as someone who doesn't even go to the gym!)

Far more interesting is the idea of energy harvesting, also reported by the BBC around the same time. This is all about capturing the everyday energy lost when, for example, commuters walk through a station. This could be used to light public spaces, power laptops, and reduce the size of battery packs needed in military applications.

Electric eel used to power Christmas lights

While we're still in the twelve days of Christmas, here's one last Christmas post (or perhaps it is simply the first of 2008), a story with admirable green credentials: from Japan comes details of an electric eel being used to power lights on a Christmas tree.

Offset your Holiday Carbon and Support Developing Countries

Summer is a time when we use less energy for heating and lighting but more for travel as we go on holiday, and increasingly perhaps more for cooling. Whilst avoiding and reducing the associated carbon emissions in various ways is the best approach, the unavoidable emissions can be cancelled out quickly by investing in zero carbon energy systems. Where such systems are implemented in developing countries there is a double benefit.

A range of companies and organisations now offer offset schemes. The most effective only invest in zero carbon energy systems, not tree planting. The Pure Clean Planet Trust is one of these. It is also attractive because it is a charity, and caps the proportion of offsetting donations it receives which it uses for its own costs. It therefore contrasts with commercial companies whose aim might be to maximise profits.

Pure is just beginning to invest in projects, and the first one is a large local power station in India using unused parts of crops such as coconuts and sugar cane. It supplies almost zero carbon electricity for about 10,000 people in 47 villages.

Average CO2 emissions for cars in the UK in 2006 were 274 grams per mile. A holiday involving say 1,000 miles in total would therefore emit 274 kg of carbon dioxide – probably a bit more if the car was fully loaded. The typical cost of offsetting this mileage is around £5 or less.

More information on Pure can be found at http://www.puretrust.org.uk/. There may be similar carbon offset organisations to Pure.