Drive to the library? Yeah right.

Careful towns of the world out there… before you spend lots of money on new or revamped libraries. Unless you are in a city, or near a walkable and vibrant town center, they are a tough sell, even with cheap $3.50/gasoline. And how long will that last?

Here’s the math for me in suburban MA:
- Distance to library: 5.2 miles. 10.4 miles round trip
- Our minivan — let’s say I get 20.8 MPG to make the math simple.

So that’s:

10.4 miles * 1/20.8 MPG * $3.50 $/gallon = $1.75 per trip assuming there is no overlap with other errands, which is likely given the route.

And that’s just the cost of the gas of course. If you use the ~$0.50/mi that the US government uses for taxes for business mileage (accounting for the full cost of ownership) then that’s 10.4 miles * $0.50/mi = $5.20 per trip.

And then add in the cost of the time. Let’s say 20 minutes of driving.

It’s a tough sell. Not just the library. All of suburbia. It’s ultimately kinda in serious doo-doo, ain’t it? James Howard Kunstler is probably on to something.

Counter-points and followups:

1) I say all the above as someone who has LOVED libraries in the past. But I guess the difference was: 1) that was pre-interweb and 2) that was libraries I walked to or rode my bike to (the Amherst Jones Library, and the UMass/Amherst Dubois library)

2) I am fond of the idea of the library being a “town center” that is more about ideas and people than being about media (paper or digital). Related concepts are Sudbury Schools, the Transition Town movement (tool sharing, etc), Cohousing.

3) The article linked below talks about “Library as Platform” which to me is basically acknowledging that there are increasing numbers of private services we use which “out do” libraries in terms of connecting us with media. Amazon. Google Books. Goodreads. “The Library” *could* do all of that. But how?
LINK

4) PS. And what about all those duplicate public school libraries! What a shame! What if all the schools in town were clustered around the town’s libraries and they all shared! I know, I know… one can’t turn back the clock on sprawling suburban development. It’s just sorta a shame.

5) Speaking of poorly designed public resources… I’ll talk about the placement and design of playgrounds sometime soon. Ugh. Almost always another huge missed opportunity. But there are some good ones!

On driving and turning left in MA…

You’d think I would have learned this by now, but alas, I have lived a sheltered life recently…

Dear car GPS companies, Please step it up and add an “avoid left-hand turns from side-streets in MA” checkbox option in your software! (I mainly care about living and not crashing trying to get onto that busy main road, but UPS says it also saves gas.) Dear Erik, take some responsibility and use the map sitting there and ignore the GPS if you want to. It won’t kill you (actually… that’s the whole point!!!) to turn right and drive an extra mile to avoid that insane left turn into crazy traffic. RECALCULATING… LINK

The 100-year-old electric car

“One hundred years ago there were electric cars that went 30 mph and had a range of 100 miles. They also had swappable battery packs and features that we pine for today.

So what happened?

Well, we like to drive faster than 30 mph.
…
The 100-year-old electric car is another story. It is simple. It is reliable. It is repairable by anyone. No wonder it did not succeed.”

– Tom Gocze

FULL ARTICLE LINK

Nissan Leaf / EV calcs

NISSAN LEAF CALCS
100 miles for full charge of battery (24KWh)
sudval.org commute for one year:
7200 miles/year (10 miles one way x 4 a day)
so that’s 7200 / 100 * 24KWh = 1728 KWh / 12 = 144 KWh per month
$28/month (at $0.20/KWh) vs $66/month for gasoline (at 26MPG and $3/gallon)
And no oil spill guilt (just solar. and/or mountain top removal type guilt)

I doubt we’d buy a LEAF. Probably a plug-in hybrid instead. But who knows.

Electric Car Future? Fix the Grid First

“If the latest estimates by the WWF and Allianz SE are correct, the US, the UK, Japan and Germany will take several decades to provide grid-sourced electricity which will result in significantly less carbon dioxide per mile being produced by an electric car than the equivalent new EU (or Japanese) car running on gasoline or diesel.”

Interesting Article

Hypermiling

Our car (a 2001 Saab 9-5 wagon) gets pretty good gas mileage without thinking about it much. Seems like we average around 26 MPG in our typical around-town driving, and on the highway (without racks or roof-top boxes) about 31 MPG. That’s partly why we chose it… most minivans and SUVs get considerably worse gas mileage. But where was I… when I am driving to and from school, if I reset the car’s little computer readout which shows AVG gas-mileage, so I am then looking at just the current trip, I can get around 40 MPG. Nice. So just now I got to wondering… is there anyway to get a readout like the Priuses apparently have showing real-time MPG to aid in my hypermiling on a regular basis — without having to constantly reset the Saab’s computer (a bit of a pain)? Yes! Here it is! SCANGAUGE II

Oh, and I just am reminding myself to check my tire air-pressure and to screw in those little cheap thingies that show you GREEN when your pressure is ok for a given tire — apparently tire pressure matters quite a bit too. Sure there will be some time to pay off the expense, but my guess is the breakeven point wrt fossil fuel use, emissions, etc (vs $$) is incredible quick even if one is able to dial back ones fuel use by even a small amount like 5%. For us, driving 12k a year at an average of ~26MPG, that’s 462 gallons of gas. Visualize 462 gallons of gas. (Google tells me that 462 gallons is 61.76 ft^3. So that’s a cube of almost 4 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet.) Yikes!

Where is my electric car?

I’m waiting for an electric car I can buy. I don’t think any of the ones in the works fit the bill… so sorry Prius plug in hybrid, Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf, Mini E, Tesla S, etc, etc… my problems?

1) They are too small! That’s a problem because of a) carpooling… I need to be able to haul at LEAST 5 kids to and from school. We’re talking mini-van or SUV I guess. b) safety. Check the numbers at IIHS.org/HLDI.org. A prius is still about twice as dangerous in terms of injury and death rates as our Saab 9-5. I want to save the planet, but I’m not will to risk my family. This is no joke… as I’m sure you know… the chances of dying in a car crash are in the neighborhood of 1/8000 a year or 1/5244 in 2 years

2) They are too quiet! I am hoping this gets resolved somehow, but I am just not willing to risk killing a pedestrian because they didn’t hear my car coming. Apparently folks will be figuring out what to do about this at some point, but until then, I am seriously considering sitting on the sidelines.

OK, so what other problems did I forget? There are other (non?) issues, … There are probably answers to these…

1) Effective MPG hurts a bit (maybe only a bit?) because there is no waste heat to heat the car in the winter. And it’s cold here.

2) Cradle-to-cradle environmental impact / full-life-cycle of the cars: Are the batteries a concern or not? I heard that there are some crazy rare earth metals that are needed for them that is decimating china, etc. NYTIMES My guess here is that it pulls down the green-ness a bit, but maybe overall still worth it vs internal combustion engines.

3) Is this is a solution for everybody? Can the electric-grid handle it? My answer here is that it seems like if people install several kW solar arrays on their roofs, they might do quite well for covering their commuter miles at least.

4) We are already a 1-car family. So it’s a little odd to buy a second car. Would we then sell our other one? But then what about long trips that are outside the range of an electric car? Rent?

5) Bang for the buck. Is buying a brand new car to cut our fossil fuel use in half a good use of money vs other ways of “saving the planet”? (we already average 26MPG in our Saab 9-5… closer to 30+ on the highway or local carpool if I hypermile…)

our plant-based diet

I haven’t kept close track, but I would say that we have reduced our intake of animal products by about 90% in the last few weeks.  Still the occasional egg and fish.  Inspired by the books: The China Study and Eat to Live.  Veggie madness.   The kids are still eating pretty much what they did before, though soy dogs instead of normal hot dogs, and maybe more veggies too, since they are everywhere.

Gotta get holistic on this earth-friendly living — our eating habits really need to take a shift to keep up with the low/no energy/solar house we are building.  Still eating the typical stuff at holidays, etc.  And too much chocolate, I suppose.

Next on the list:  an all-electric car minivan I hope.

And growing some (hopefully substantial) amount of food on our property!  Check back in a year or so on that.

net zero vs passive house

There is a lot here that is similar. The main difference is that passive-house uses more insulation and might not have on-site wind or solar PVs to offset heating, cooling and electricity usage. But the house that gets built might otherwise be similar. Though as noted, passive-house will likely have more expensive insulation and energy detailing since the house is trying to meet a certain heating load for certification, whereas the net-zero house is probably trying to keep initial costs low (meaning $ sooner gets spent on PVs rather than insulation). Which house is cheaper in a cash-flow sense with a 30-year mortgage? Which house will be cheaper over an even longer time frame? hard to say. Both PV arrays (net zero) and expensive very-insulated windows (passive house) will need to be replaced eventually.

I’d use BeOpt if one can to figure out where to spend limited dollars to save the planet and the pocketbook.

It might be on a “used” house, and/or a hybrid or electric car, not on PVs or insulation or windows!

Passive House. A good idea?

I still think Passive House (PH) is a good idea because it doesn’t need replacing in 30 years
(like the PVs), but I kinda dislike the following…

1. It is hyper-concerned with hitting the heating/cooling loads 4.75 kBTU/(ft²yr)
which is impossible without quite a lot of solar in our climate. (more on solar in a sec)
But then has what I consider relatively easy to hit targets for appliance usage,
and solar hot water. And maybe one should have saved some of their money
on insulation to buy an electric car or a personal vegan chef or something?

An aside:
You could say that being very strict on heating/cooling makes a lot of sense, because
“what if energy prices double or triple?” Well… the answer is… my energy will not
double or triple in cost. It’s on my roof!!! (PVs) The same essentially goes for anyone.
People will start converting to solar heating rather than pay thru the roof for oil or natural
gas for heating and electricity produced from the same sources.

And at the same time, the prices of solar PV panels keeps coming down.

OK, more on PH…

2. It’s a shame it can only model “passive” solar (more windows on S. Fewer on other orientations).
So it really impacts the design. I personally don’t want to live “inside the heat battery”.

3. It penalizes smaller homes because a small house has more shell per space inside.
So a house that is smaller than another could use less energy overall, but not qualify
for PH.

4. There is no factoring of number of occupants in the house.

5. The excel files are pretty crazy. Well.. it’s very nice actually that they are transparent, but annoying
that:
5.1. the Imperial Unit pages refer to the SI pages rather than do calculations in Imperial Units.
5.2. there are areas that are in all german with no references to the literature. Maybe
if I were certified I would have access to someone who could give more info.
5.3. I find “bugs” but no official way to report them

6. Diminishing returns. In that… one can maybe get pretty close to PH without much extra money
spent, but to get ALL THE WAY there starts getting ridiculous. So where is the point that you should
stop and use PVs and air-source heat pumps (or active solar heating/cooling) instead. Assume all
the mechanical stuff needs replacing in 30 years. Maybe use BEOpt (ask NREL if you can try it?)

7. You can say that the insulation doesn’t need to be replaced in 30 years, but the PVs do, but
7.1 PVs will be cheaper and better in 30 years when you buy new ones
7.2 The fancier windows WILL need to be replaced!

And from my calculations, the marginal difference in 30 year spending on PV electricity to power extra
heat pumps (superinsulated vs full-on PH) is about the price of the fancier windows vs the very good windows.

So you are maybe just choosing whether to spend money on human ingenuity in the form of
air-source heat pumps and PVs, or fancier windows. Perhaps the more insulation can be justified, but
from what I can tell… one needs to really get into R-113 levels in walls/roof to meet PH without increasing windows
on the S and reducing elsewhere.

Please let me know where there is fuzzy thinking.