Eco Living

Electric Car Rentals for the "Urban Eco-Curious"

Jul 10th, 2012 | By Nicole Rogers

Rental car companies are in a unique position to be able to introduce these new more efficient vehicles to the public slowly. If you're interested in an electric or hybrid car, but you are afraid of how far it will go on a charge, renting an electric car for an afternoon of errands might be a nice, safe introduction.
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Eco Living

New York City's Communal Bikes

Jul 9th, 2012 | By Aubrey Yee

Imagine 10,000 shared bicycles distributed across 600 stations throughout New York City, all available for just 26 cents a day by purchasing an annual membership. Utilizing a private-public partnership, the city of New York has enlisted Citi Bank and Mastercard to sponsor the bike sharing program.
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Innovation

Will Manmade Bugs Save Us?

Jul 8th, 2012 | By Aubrey Yee

Craig Venter is not your usual scientist. He's attractive and stylish, rides fast motorcycles and sails around the world. He's self diagnosed himself with ADHD, but this fact combined with his healthy ego may be the very reason he has gone so far in his field. He sets ambitious and seemingly impossible goals like mapping the human genome, which he did faster than anyone expected, and then he achieves them.
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Food System

What is a food mile?

Jul 7th, 2012 | By Aubrey Yee

Pineapples in Hawaii that were grown in Costa Rica, apples in New York City that came from California, the sushi on your plate in Las Vegas flown in from Japan. These days most of our food travels the world before it reaches a plate. Just like humans, who rack up a big carbon footprint when they travel anywhere, our food is racking up some mileage.
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Eco Living

Getaround

Jul 6th, 2012 | By Aubrey Yee

Car sharing hits hyperdrive with an innovative new company called Getaround. Just under a year old, the company has already signed over 10,000 people up for the car sharing service.
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Eco Living

Opower

Jul 5th, 2012 | By Aubrey Yee

Information-based energy efficiency (IBEE) is the new buzz in large scale energy savings, and Opower is one of the companies leading the pack. Utilitizing the power of social media and the information gleaned from massive amounts of data, Opower is helping Americans save incredible amounts of energy (and plenty of money) each month.
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Food System

When you can't trust a label

Jul 3rd, 2012 | By Aubrey Yee

Natural, organic, fair-trade, these are all labels on our food that we have come to trust, labels that we believe tell us our purchases are good for us, good for the environment, that the people who grew our food were treated well. But who sets the standards for the labeling and who keeps track of those standards if there are any?
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Food System

Food for all

Jul 2nd, 2012 | By Aubrey Yee

Raj Patel is an award winning writer, activist and academic concerned with how to feed the world. He saliently points out that more than 1.5 billion people worldwide are overweight and another 1 billion are going hungry. We are producing enough calories, but not nourishing the world. There is something clearly broken about our food system.
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Transportation

USDA Announces Funding to Help Rural American Businesses Go Green

Jul 2nd, 2012 | By Nicole Rogers

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack meeting Tom Vanwingerden, Abe Vanwingerden and Art Vanwingerden of Metrolina Greenhouses. Photo by Holly Hess, via USDA flickr stream, under CC BY 2.0.

On June 25, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced USDA funding for 450 projects that help agricultural producers and rural small businesses use renewable energy technologies, reduce energy consumption, and/or conduct feasibility studies for renewable energy projects. In all, the USDA announced nearly $7.4 million in energy grants.

Secretary Vilsack made the announcement while touring family-owned Metrolina Greenhouses in Huntersville, North Carolina. Metrolina has received a REAP guaranteed loan and three grants totaling over $1 million since 2007. In 2009, Metrolina received a REAP guaranteed loan and a grant to construct a wood boiler heating system to supplement and replace the natural gas and fuel used at their 120-acre facility. In addition to heating Metrolina’s greenhouses, using wood chips in the boiler provides an additional market for local lumber mills and logging operations.

Rick Alexander, a Tennessee small business owner, is using a Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) grant and investing another $325,000 to create the first solar powered business in his county. Electricity is the largest expense for his climate-controlled storage facility. The 260 panel, 60 kW solar photovoltaic system is expected to generate more than 71,000 kWh – enough electricity to meet over half of the energy needs of his business for the next two decades. By also participating in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Generation Partners program, Alexander earns a premium on each clean kW produced, which is more than enough to cover the average monthly cost of electricity for his businesses.

In Mount Hope, Wisconsin, Maurice Nichols was selected to receive a grant to purchase a fuel efficient grain dryer for his farm, saving his business over 42% in annual energy usage. Not only is the dryer fuel efficient, but the fact that it is on site saves in trucking costs as well.

This funding is made available through the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), which is authorized by the 2008 Farm Bill. (See our post on the 2012 Farm Bill.) REAP offers funds for farmers, ranchers and rural small businesses to purchase and install renewable energy systems and make energy-efficiency improvements. These federal funds leverage other funding sources for rural businesses, which hopefully leads to their sustained growth in the future, and an improved quality of life in rural America.

Just one more example of how the tide is turning toward alternative energy nationwide!

USDA Press Release