A new hydrogen-powered car, whose designs will be “open source” and posted for free use on the web, was unveiled today in London. The company behind the Riversimple urban car claim the new model proves hydrogen automotive technology is ready for roll-out now rather than in 10 years’ time.
The open-source approach means entrepreneurs around the world could download the designs and manufacture the two-seater prototype locally for free.
The car, which drove in to the launch event, is capable of a 50mph top speed, 0-30mph acceleration in 5.5 seconds, and has a 240 mile range. The car’s backers say it has greenhouse gas emissions of 30g/km CO2, less than a third of the latest hybrid petrol cars such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight.
The lightweight Smart car-size vehicle uses hydrogen in a modest 6kW fuel cell, and – in the case of this prototype – uses hydrogen converted from natural gas. Hydrogen can also be created from water using electrolysis and potentially even from bio-fuels.
London wants to allow cyclists to pick up one of 6,000 bikes at the 400 docking stations planned for the capital by 2010.
Londoners will soon be able to hire bikes in the centre of town for short journeys, under plans announced this week by the mayor, Boris Johnson.
The world’s first retrofit of a power plant with
carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology will begin operating this month in the south of France.
By Alok Jha of the Guardian.
At a power plant at Lacq,
energy company Total has upgraded an existing gas-fired boiler with CCS technology – a crucial step towards reducing
carbon emissions from fossil-fuel power plants worldwide.
With renewable energy sources a long way from covering the world’s increasing demand for energy, many experts believe that developing reliable technology to allow countries to burn fossil fuels without releasing dangerous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere is essential to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Boris Johnson announces commitment to making
electric cars ‘first choice for Londoners’, pledging £20m ($29m) of the GLA budget.
Written by Alok Jha and shared over the Guardian Environment Network.
London mayor
Boris Johnson announced today his intent to make the city the electric car capital of Europe. He said he wanted to introduce 100,000 electric cars to the capital’s streets and to build an infrastructure of 25,000 charging points in public streets, car parks and shops.
The Rio state government will build concrete walls around some of the city’s biggest slums (pictured on the hillside above) in an attempt to halt
deforestation of the surrounding jungle, officials said.
Seven miles of walls, reaching a height of three metres (10ft) will be built around sections of at least 11 slums this year, Icaro Moreno, the president of the state’s public works department, said.
Under recommendations from the UK Green Building Council, otters could return to urban rivers, bats could roost under bridges, swifts could flock to office blocks and peregrine falcons soar above cathedrals.
Written by Felicity Carus and shared via the Guardian Environment Network.
What do the Westfield shopping centre, Canary Wharf and a Victorian museum have in common? They are all at the vanguard of a move to encourage
biodiversity in buildings that could take on an unprecedented scale if guidelines published today are adopted.
The pika, a relation of the rabbit, is blamed for desertification.
China’s authorities have scattered 200kg of rodent contraceptive pellets across the Tibetan plateau to control what they describe as a “plague of desert rats”.
$2,000 Tata Nano gears up to revolutionise travel for millions.
Written by south Asia correspondent Randeep Ramesh and shared with EcoWorldly as part of the Guardian Environmental Network.
India’s
Tata group has announced that the world’s cheapest car, the Nano, will roll out of its car plant with a price tag of just 100,000 rupees - £1,350 or $2,000 - and will be exported to richer nations, beginning with Europe, in two years.
Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power because they are not economic, the Anglo-Dutch oil company said. It plans to invest more in biofuels which environmental groups blame for driving up food prices and deforestation. Written by Tim Webb and shared with EcoWorldly as part of the Guardian Environment Network.
Executives at its annual strategy presentation said Shell, already the world’s largest buyer and blender of crop-based biofuels, would also invest an unspecified amount in developing a new generation of biofuels which do not use food-based crops and are less harmful to the environment.
The pioneering new president of the Indian Ocean nation announces plans for his country - under grave threat from climate change - to go carbon-neutral in a decade. Written by Duncan Clark and shared with EcoWorldly as part of the Guardian Environment Network.
