Carbon Emissions | May 09, 2007 |
Outdoor Companies Tout Carbon Offsets
The companies that sell us the gear to enjoy the great outdoors are doing their part to keep the air outside a bit cleaner. As reported by the Oregonian, Yakima, Nike, REI and KEEN Footwear are all buying carbon offsets to counter part of the CO2 that their businesses produce.
The effectiveness of planting trees or paying for wind projects is still being debated, but anything that costs a corporation money for no financial benefit cannot be viewed as an empty gesture. Not producing the CO2 in the first place by streamlining manufacturing and transportation systems is a better idea (and has a financial return), or companies can directly buy their electricity from renewable sources so a direct benefit can be calculated. Not using coal-fired electricity can only be helpful to reducing emissions.
One of the biggest job opportunities for the next decade will be working for the consultancies that perform carbon emission audits for businesses. Schools looking to get bigger should create a major in this arena.
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Comments By Readers
Fuel economy is deenndept upon driving conditions and the operation by the driver. Someone may drive a Prius in the City and get much better mileage than the same vehicle used for highway travel. Another car might get much better highway mileage. There are also hypermiling techniques that each driver can use to increase their fuel mileage.1 In general, a vehicle driven within its design parameters by a careful driver will give the best results. The EPA tries to level the playing field and give averages for the average driver.2 They also attempt to give some idea of the cost of fuel over the course of a year but this is subject to the price of fuel at the time of the ratings. Things have changed.The EPA sticker for the Nissan Leaf says that it will travel 73 miles on its 24 KW-hr battery.3 Since the sticker is saying that the car requires 34 KW-hr to go 100 miles this amounts to .34 KW-hr / mile. When we multiply this by the US average cost of electricity per KW-hr ( $ .1104 x .34 =) we come to a cost per mile of $ .0375 It is not clear if this is the amount of charge or battery usage. The difference is the slight inefficiency of the charging circuit (5%) that has to be added to the battery capacity for each full charge. If a full charge took (24 KW-hr x 1.05 =) 25.2 KW-hr at the national residential average this should amount to (25.2 x .1104 =) about $2.78 to go about 73 miles or $ .0381 / mile. How much this affects your electric bill depends upon how many miles you drive per day. The national US average is about 12500 miles per year. This amounts to (12500/365 =) 34.247 miles per day. A year of driving would cost you (12500 x .0381 =) 476.25 / year or (476.25 / 12 =) about $39.69 / month. The present national price of gasoline is $3.879 (4) To get this same fuel economy your petrol vehicle would have to get (3.879 / .0381 =) 101.81 miles/gallon An economical car that gets 35 miles to the gallon would use (12500 / 35 =) 357.14 gallons in a year or (357.14/12 =) 29.76 gallons a month that would cost (29.76 x $3.879) or about $ 115.45 / month. Chargers with a higher amperage and voltage will transmit this power more quickly to the battery than a lower amperage and voltage. Nissan advertises an 80% charge in 30 minutes. 5 Most battery chargers do not draw the same amperage for the entire time of charging. The initially amperage draw will be much higher then trickle off. Therefore energy transfer is a more accurate measure than charge times of the cost of the energy. Your numbers are no doubt not a perfect national average case. Big cities are likely to have higher electric and petrol rates. Mostly what the above numbers do is give you some basis for comparison. The method is clear but you might want to substitute your own numbers.
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