Month: March 2016

India’s Solar Energy Plan a Shining Success

- Adam Clare

India consumes a lot energy and consumption keeps growing as their economy expands. They also rely heavily on coal. The government knows that their current form of energy production causes harm and it will only get worse. As a result they have made a huge push towards solar.

Their efforts are working with coal prices being comparable to solar and now India has a burgeoning solar industry. This will continue unless the WTO gets in the way. With luck the oppressive behaviour of the WTO will lessen when they see how profitable non-destructive energy polices can be.

Solar prices are now within 15% of coal, according to KPMG. If current trends hold, the consultancy predicts electricity from solar will actually be 10% cheaper than domestic coal by 2020.
And that could turn out to be a conservative forecast. At a recent government auction, the winning bidder offered to sell electricity generated by a project in sunny Rajasthan for 4.34 rupees (6 cents) per kilowatt hour, roughly the same price as some recent coal projects.
“Solar is very competitive,” said Vinay Rustagi of renewable energy consultancy Bridge to India. “It’s a huge relief for countries like India which want to get more and more solar power.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made access to electricity a top priority, and has set the goal of making 24-hour power available to all 1.3 billion Indians. Currently, even India’s biggest cities suffer from frequent power outages.

Read more (warning: annoying auto playing video).

The Century of the Car Was a Mistake, Let’s Move on

- Adam Clare

North America was built around the car instead of people and that was mistake that needs to be acknowledged. In some places it is. The insane support the automobile gets in urban centres is starting to change, we’re seeing more bike lanes and places for people to walk. In order to make changse last and make postive movement forward the first thing we must do is acknowledge the mistakes of the past.

Good public transport coupled with fast, safe, pleasant walking and bicycling can easily meet the need for movement within our cities. It is true that buses and streetcars do intrude on the main streets to an appreciable degree, but many streets will be entirely free of this annoyance. In the ideal case, public transport systems are constructed underground. (Ideally, transport systems should never be elevated, because of the ugliness, intrusion and noise that that causes.) This will not be practical in many existing cities because of the cost, and some burden of street traffic will have to be endured.

A more serious objection to the car-free city is the movement of freight. When building a city, it is a simple matter to arrange delivery of shipping containers to the places they are needed without impinging on streets. In existing cities, freight delivery systems will have to be arranged on a case-by-case basis. Amsterdam could, with little difficulty, deliver freight using its canal network. Cities that adopt streetcars for passenger service can use the same infrastructure to deliver freight at night.

Removing vehicles from our streets would make urban life cheaper, safer, quieter and more pleasant. Repurposed parking spaces and, in some cases, travel lanes would provide ample land for walking and cycling, plus any essential street-running public services, such as light rail, trash collection and emergency services. The surplus land can be devoted to public purposes — imagine Manhattan with sidewalks 15 feet wider and room for sidewalk cafes.

Read more.

A Plan for a Zero Waste Toronto

- Adam Clare

The Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA) has released a new report on how to get Toronto to be a zero waste city. The report covers a lot of material from food waste to hazardous waste, in total there are five sections with suggestions on how to improve Toronto’s waste management. Even if you’re not in Toronto you will be able to find ideas and suggestions for your own city’s waste issues.

Across the world, people, businesses and cities are adopting a vision of zero waste. A zero waste path for Toronto will protect the environment, benefit the community and support good green jobs and a strong local economy.

This report provides innovative ideas and concrete examples that can help as our city discusses what kind of future we want and what path we will choose to take on waste.

Read more.

Healthy People Don’t Diet, They Listen

- Adam Clare

Diet fads come and go, but there is one diet that will always work: listen to your body. If you feel like you’ve had enough then stop eating, and if you feel like you should have more lettuce then go get some!

New research confirms old knowledge that people with a healthy weight do monitor what they eat. They just monitor their food intake by acting on what their body is telling them.

But here’s the surprising thing: Nearly half—48 percent—said they don’t diet. Three-quarters of them “rarely” diet. These people are thin, and have been thin their entire lives, yet they have never so much as perused the Jenny Craig website.

One explanation could be good genes. The healthy-weight registrants might never diet because, being naturally thin, they never need to. Still, that wouldn’t explain why they do all those other things—the exercising, the salad lunches, all that poultry. Clearly, they are putting some effort into their figures.

Instead, Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab, chalks it up to the fact that many of the registrants used “non-restrictive” strategies, like listening to hunger cues, cooking at home rather than eating out, and eating quality, non-processed foods.

“Most slim people don’t employ restrictive diets or intense health regimes to stay at a healthy weight,” he said in a statement. “Instead, they practice easy habits like not skipping breakfast, and listening to inner cues.”

Read more.

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