By Zachary Shahan •
January 28, 2010
Well, it has been a long time coming, but the US is finally putting some money into high-speed rail (HSR)!
Obama put a strong focus on this in his State of the Union speech last night — “From the first railroads to the interstate highway system, our nation has always been built to compete. There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains…. Tomorrow, I’ll visit Tampa, Florida, where workers will soon break ground on a new high-speed railroad funded by the Recovery Act. There are projects like that all across this country that will create jobs and help our nation move goods, services, and information.”
Now, the White House has just announced the 12 rail lines that will receive billions of dollars for HSR in the very near future. If these HSR projects come to fruition, the US may finally be level with Europe and China.
Will this be the start we need to transform our transportation system in the US?
No doubt many of you have read or heard about David Nichol’s woodgas F-150. I came across it during a media hailstorm a few months ago (which has since petered out). But while I was doing research on the One-Gallon Challenge, I saw that David’s truck was going to be participating. I gathered up my camera and notepad and my best friend (who I sort of tricked into coming) and took the drive to Greenfield Mass. last Wednesday night to get a look at this truck, and other fuel-sippers in person.
I learned a whole lot more than I bargained for.
By Jerry James Stone •
August 24, 2009
Hand-built, eco-modified, and wood-powered cars raced across the Bay State this weekend driving 100 miles on just a single gallon of fuel. Aptly named the One Gallon Challenge, the event was part of a four-day long festival in Boston that celebrated clean technologies. Welcome to GreenFest 2009!
Frustrated with the price of filling up his Toyota, Jory Squibb built the Moonbeam. It has [...]
Global warming. Climate change. The greatest threat to continued human survival. The rhetoric these days can be awfully scary regarding new energy and oil. Sometimes it feels like we’ve all been doomed already by a hyper-active media always looking for the “next big story” to terrify us with. But I don’t really take anything seriously, so I am always on the lookout for a fun twist on a real problem.
What could be fun about climate change, you ask? Well, besides the fact that my home might end up as beach front property one day if we don’t mend our sins, how about a race? One that challenges contestants to go 100 miles on a single gallon of gas? That is the goal of the One-Gallon Challenge, where six contestants and their very different vehicles have to make the journey from Greenfield, MA to Boston in three hours using as little fuel as possible.
Oh! The weather outside [can be] frightful, which is why Stephen Chu of the U.S. Department of Energy announced Monday that 7 states (Arkansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire) will be the recipients of more than $288 million dollars, which will be put toward weatherization projects.
By Dave Tyler •
June 15, 2009
The state of Massachusetts is hunting for unusual places to put wind turbines as it looks to meet an ambitious goal of producing 2,000 megawatts of windpower by 2020.
The
Associated Press reports that state officials are encouraging municipal planners to look at using capped landfills as potential wind farm locations. Plans were also just announced for a military reservation on Cape Cod.
The state is hoping to jump start development, because right now, the AP reports, there are only 11 commercial scale turbines in the state. But, ther are dozens of smaller ones installed and nearly 200 other projects in various stages of planning.
Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management do more than study issues like carbon footprints and energy consumption … they’re ready to tackle such subjects hands-on.
That’s what a group of students, faculty and staff did last week when they put down their laptops and picked up some caulking guns.
Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have won one of six U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants for economically sustainable programs that protect the environment.
Launched by doctoral candidates Amy Mueller and Matt Orosz, the MIT project aims to bring cheap and eco-friendly energy to parts of the world that are now off the grid. The focus of their efforts: Lesotho, in southern Africa, where many people now get their energy from highly polluting diesel generators.
The students’ alternative comes in the form of solar energy. Not the expensive, photovoltaic-dependent kind, but the affordable and easy-to-harness concentrating solar kind. Their energy generator uses a parabolic trough to concentrate the sun’s energy to heat water to provide steam energy as well as hot water.
By Dave Tyler •
April 9, 2009
Hey, hold on a just a minute Chicago, San Francisco and Portland. Connecticut and Massachusetts want in on your race to be the country’s EV hotbed.
Northeast Utilities wants to build a 575-outlet EV charging system in the Nutmeg and Bay States, The Hartford Courant says. The pilot project would take two years to complete and the outlets would be built at private homes, businesses and public spots. Total cost: $1.4 million, helped out by a $694,000 federal grant.
By Jake Richardson •
March 29, 2009
There are only about 325 North Atlantic right whales left in the world, and approximately 80 of them have assembled in the waters near Cape Cod.
They have come together to feed on an unusually huge population of zooplankton. The whales normally follow zooplankton from Canada as they are moved with ocean currents down to the Massachusetts coast. This year the extra numbers of zooplankton are attracting a record congregation of North Atlantic rights, which are one of the most endangered species in the world.
By Tom Schueneman •
March 13, 2009
Changents provides the platform for Down2Earth and the City of Boston to promote the semi-finalists in the Pitch the City contest aimed at engaging the community to think up new ways to make Boston greener.
