Author Archive
An Easy Way to Save Fuel and Money
Posted by: RJ in Green Living on November 20th, 2009
Unfortunately I did not have a lot of time to put into this post. My original plan was to discuss the enormous energy losses that are the direct result of poor traffic management. I have several colleagues who have spent a good deal of time researching this and the numbers are staggering. Improving traffic flow is one of the most cost effective ways to reduce oil use. I was unable to pull this data together for today’s post so I decided to write on another measure which is even more effective and costs absolutely nothing.
The approach does not require scientific breakthroughs, it does not require huge capital expenditures, and it is something most of us have probably done before.
It is…..carpooling.
Two people driving separately in 30-mpg cars use 33% more fuel than the two of them carpooling in a single 20-mpg car. The US could literally cut its vehicle fuel consumption in half if it simply doubled the occupancy of every vehicle on the road while holding total miles driven constant. There are several start-up companies that are working to make this closer to reality. One of the better known is GoLoco.org (this company was started by the same woman who founded Zipcar).
With the advancement of mobile technology lots of people are beginning to think seriously about forming “smart” carpooling groups. The basic idea is that a mobile-phone based program allows drivers to input your travel destination before driving anywhere. Other users (riders) of the system input their desired destination (their current location is already known). The drivers are notified of any riders that can be picked up and dropped off along the way. Some people are even exploring the idea of charging occupants small fees and automatically paying the driver for the distance traveled. This is essentially a distributed taxi cab model – where everyone that joins the organization can earn small amounts of money by allowing people to carpool with them. The rates would be substantially lower than a cab fare. There are obvious potential legal issues with this and cab drivers would strongly object however in theory it has strong promise.
Several people I know are considering several ways to begin implementing this. The most promising idea I have heard is to launch this carpooling system on college campuses where there are lots of people driving to the same places at a given time. Another benefit of use on college campuses is that it would provide students a great way to meet people. Of course launching this would require that all members of the group pass a background check and would require some form of feedback for drivers and riders. Obnoxious riders or dangerous drivers would get poor ratings that could lead to their removal from the system.
At any rate, my thought with this entry was to get you to start thinking about sharing a ride with someone on your commute. While there is certainly a convenience factor with driving your own car, there are likely opportunities for you to carpool that you are missing. As carpooling apps or phone groups further develop, the lack of freedom associated with carpooling may completely disappear – given the ever expanding capabilities of our mobile devices this may be a reality sooner than you think.
The US Food System
Posted by: RJ in Green Living on February 26th, 2009
This is a guest post from my brother-in-law, RJ. RJ is currently finishing up a PhD in mechanical engineering. He’sknowledgeable and passionate about all things energy. He also enjoys long walks on the beach. Hopefully, RJ will serve as the blog’s resident energy expert. I’ll direct any energy questions you may have to him. Look for more posts from him periodically.
The US uses significantly more food than it consumes. The USDA estimates that 3700 calories of food are supplied per person. Of these 3700 calories, approximately 2700 calories are consumed while the remaining 1000 calories (or 27%) are discarded (see here). This is appalling – how can so much food be wasted every day? Individual waste, such as tossing old bananas, pizza crusts and sour milk plays a major role. Additionally grocery stores discard blemished/damaged products and restaurants throw away anything that’s not sold the day it was prepared. Unfortunately this is only part of the story and the US food system is actually much worse.
The food industry is unique in that the available market size (calorie demand) scales almost linearly with population growth. I say almost linearly because US calorie consumption has been slowly rising, going from 2161 calories/day in 1970 to 2679 calories/day in 2006. For a food producer’s growth to sizably exceed that of population growth it traditionally had to displace competition. However over the past few decades a new approach has emerged, one that I feel is particularly interesting/bothersome. This new approach is the low calorie, chemically formulated “food product”. Daily calorie consumption is limited to an average of 2700 but by introducing calorie free foods the market size can quickly expand. Diet soda and Lay’s half-calorie potato chips are excellent examples. This is the industrialized food industry literally making “food products” that are less efficient – foods that intentionally have no/reduced energy value. This allows unlimited consumption with minimal weight gain consequences (i.e. 5 diet sodas per day). Notice I called them food products because many of them are not actually food.
Thus, that we waste 1000 calories per day is only part of the story. We also consume a vast amount of low calorie food product. This laboratory developed food product consists of a multitude of chemicals, many of them corn based. Due to the long supply chain and high degree of processing involved, these foods require enormous amounts of energy to “manufacture.”
And if this isn’t enough, the US food supply is becoming increasingly processed (this includes many organic foods as well). These energy intensive processed foods are being developed to utilize a very small number of input materials (primarily corn and soy) and are leading to single crop/monoculture farms. These single crop farms rely on petroleum based fertilizers (exception organic food) which are slowly destroying fertile land.
This all sounds crazy but unfortunately it is reality. While much of the world is without adequate food supply, the US is both wasting much of its food and spending significant money/energy on foods without calorie content. And all this is being done using farming practices that are destroying our valuable fertile land.
Will this change? Will the US stop wasting so much of its food supply? Will consumers abandon “high tech” food products and return to natural foods? Unfortunately the trends are currently in the wrong direction – per capita food use is growing, food products are quickly gaining market share and farmers are switching to single crop farms. What are your thoughts?
We as consumers must call for a change and ignore the plethora of sexy “get thin quick” food products. Furthermore US agriculture policy needs to change to promote ecologically friendly farming rather than petroleum supported mega corn and soy farms – this is quite difficult because of towering strength of the corn lobby.
