Innovation that excites

I was pretty excited to see Nissan advertising their electric car - the Leaf. I took this photo at the bus station. The slogan "innovation that excites" appears to be Nissan's overall slogan, but i think it's most appropriate for the electric car.

The main feature of the ad was the feature of being able to activate the charging of the car from your phone. Granted that's fairly cool, but there are many other great features.

Carbon Emissions Make Us Sick

I've mentioned before the health effects of climate change (see the poster). But now someone's put some numbers to it - in the report Our Uncashed Dividend.

It turns out that coal burning costs Australia $2.6 billion dollars in health effects, and that transport emissions damage our health to the tune of $3.3 billion dollars (with air pollution accounting for more deaths than the road toll.)

Additionally, increases walking and cycling would reduce the instances of heart and lung disease, obesity, cancer, depression and dementia.

On a similar theme, an international study estimates a health benefit of $46 for each tonne of carbon dioxide emission avoided. By comparison, it seems to me that Australia's carbon price of $23 per tonne, rather undervalues our health.

Double double

Last year i showed how in 2010 Australia doubled its solar PV capacity. Now we've doubled it again in 2011.

Clearly the total amount of solar (the red dots) has more than doubled the last two years, while the amount installed each year (the red bars) keeps on growing.

The PV in Australia 2011 report calculates solar power to be 36% of new electricity generation last year. Sounds like good news to me.

1917, 2012, Same message

A friend shared this photo of a 1917 poster with me.

Obviously there are different reasons now (compared to wartime) but it's still a very valid message.

"Go Get" Car Share

One of the barriers to better transport choices is the money we tie up in our car. After paying for the car, the registration, insurance etc, we figure "I've paid all this money, I might as well use it". We kind of trick ourselves into driving more than we otherwise would.

One way around this barrier is car sharing. Instead of all the costs of ownership, users pay a monthly fee, and a per-hour charge. That's an incentive to use the car a bit less - and maybe public and active transport a bit more.

One of the businesses that run these is GoGet - which has just opened up in my city of Brisbane. There's just a few cars so far (much more in Melbourne and Sydney) but it will increase over time. As a special offer they're giving $50 credit to Queenslanders signing up during August - just use the promo code QLD 2012.

The above pic is from one of the electric cars in their fleet.

Supporting a Winner

It seems that investing heavily in certain sports can bring Olympic success. But perhaps there are other areas where we could also invest for future success. AYCC shows how well Australia does in sports we invest in, but how far behind we are in the renewable energy race.

Perhaps we could invest in our energy future like we do for sports - and have similar success.

[Related link: Australia v Germany]

Are You Better Than Average?

We all like to think we're better than average. Now Energy Made Easy allows us to find out. Enter your postcode and household size to find out what average electricity usage is. Compare your bill to see if you're ahead of pack.

If you turn out to be not as good as you thought, there are energy saving tips to help you save.

P.S. It seems to be fairly localised. While postcodes in the same town give the same results, postcodes from Brisbane (4006) and Gold Coast (4214) give different averages. I think that's pretty good.

5 Hot Facts

The people at Climate Reality compiled these facts/stats as a bit of a reality check that global warming just keeps going on.

What's more, the 'hottest 12 month period' (July 2011-June 2012) was followed by the hottest month on record - July 2012.

[Related link: USA's Dry July]

Solar Spill

Got a quick giggle out of this one. I guess it's no surprise that people prefer solar energy.

It also reminded me of the Canadian poster ;)

Postcard from Hazelwood

Postcards normally claim great things about the location they are from. This satirical postcard does the opposite. Having Australia's dirtiest power plant (and possibly also the world's worst) is not such a big drawcard.

This pretend postcard is promoting a campaign to close down this very old power station. Sign it here. (I was the 8,000th signature - the goal is 10,000).

Green Ninja

This video recently won the Greenscreen "Climate Fix Flicks" competition. If there's anything better than a friendly cartoon ninja, it's a friendly cartoon ninja who is energy efficient. :)


A clip i've shown before, This is George, also won a prize in the competition.

Aussies' Favourite

In the recent study Climate of the Nation, I was pleased to see this table of opinion about energy - with solar, wind and hydro being clearly the 3 most popular energy sources.

[full report]

Unbelieving :)

After my post earlier in the week about Greenland, ice melt, and sea level rise - this clever piece of graffiti seemed appropriate.

Nissan Leaf - Interactive Digital Brochure

Nissan have put out a great little brochure for the Nissan Leaf. With videos, interactive infoboxes, and clickable controls, it's a great way to get an idea of what the Leaf is like.

This particular page of the brochure illustrates how you can interact with the Leaf from your phone - and even operate some of the car's functions.

97% Melt

Greenland is one of the areas that scientists are monitoring - to observe the effects of a warming planet on large ice areas and sea level rise.

In an ordinary summer, some melting will occur on the surface of Greenland's ice. This ice melt will occur over about 50% of the surface. This summer it went from 40% melt to 97% melt - in just 4 days. The two NASA images below are from the 8th and 12 July, with the pink indicating melt area.

In 2007, James Hansen of NASA said (about permanent melting) that "we cannot rule out large changes on decadal time-scales once wide-scale surface melt is underway."

I suspect that 97% would come under the definition of 'wide-scale'.

[Full NASA article]
[See the video]
[More info on the Greenland Ice Sheet]