Car Sharing Goes Solar

  • Chris Duffrin, Executive Director of the Neighborhood Energy Connection in St. Paul, plugs in the HourCar Prius parked at the Mississippi Market. It has a battery in the back, and now the electricity to recharge the battery comes from solar panels on the store. (MPR Photo/Stephanie Hemphill)

Car-sharing programs are more
popular now that gas is more expensive.
People like saving money as well as reducing
their carbon footprint. One car-sharing
project is going all the way in its mission
of reducing global-warming impacts. Members
can do errands without burning an ounce of
gas. Stephanie Hemphill reports
on a non-profit group that converted two Toyota
Priuses to run on battery power – and charges
the batteries with the sun:

Transcript

Car-sharing programs are more
popular now that gas is more expensive.
People like saving money as well as reducing
their carbon footprint. One car-sharing
project is going all the way in its mission
of reducing global-warming impacts. Members
can do errands without burning an ounce of
gas. Stephanie Hemphill reports
on a non-profit group that converted two Toyota
Priuses to run on battery power – and charges
the batteries with the sun:

At the Mississippi Market food co-op in St. Paul, there’s a brand-new
solar collector on the roof.

The electricity goes to a box attached to a lamppost in the parking lot.
A cord comes out of the box; at the other end of the cord is a normal
three-prong plug, and it’s plugged into the back end of a Prius.

“The battery is installed in the spare tire wheel hub.”

Chris Duffrin is taking me for a spin in the Prius.

“You just unplug the plug back here, and you enter the car just like
the rest of our cars — you use your key fob to scan in. That pops the
locks open.”

The key fob is programmed with your account information. It gets
you in the car, and tells the computer when you’re using the car and
when you bring it back. The key to the Prius is in the car.

“power up…”

The computer screen on the dashboard displays all kinds of
information, including data on the most recent trip.

“There’s the trip I just took to South Minneapolis for a meeting; we
went 18 miles round-trip; we got 94.8 miles per gallon. With our plug-
in we often get in the 90s, and at times we’re running over a hundred
miles per gallon.”

There’s still an engine in the front, and it kicks in when you accelerate
quickly. But the primary power is delivered by the battery. These
vehicles get about twice the mileage of a standard Prius.

Chris Duffrin is Executive Director of the nonprofit Neighborhood
Energy Connection. One of its projects is HourCar, a three-year-old
car sharing program.

“You can get some trips in this car where you are literally emitting no
carbon.”

It costs about $10,000 to add the battery, and the solar collectors cost
about $18,000.

“What we’re trying to do is demonstrate that, when those prices start
coming down, this is something people can do. And not just for
themselves, but if they share a car and share those costs, then this
can become a really efficient, clean way of traveling.”

Duffrin says at first, the people who joined HourCar were mostly
motivated by concerns about the environment. But now people want
to save money on gas. He says membership grew by 70% in the last
year. Still, it’s a tiny number: there are 650 members. They share 16
cars, parked at about a dozen locations around St. Paul and
Minneapolis.

The payment plans include a monthly fee and a charge per hour and
per mile.

HourCar is helping just a tiny handful of people reduce their carbon
footprint. But their individual choices are moving the whole society
toward better answers, according to J. Drake Hamilton. She’s a
climate change expert at Fresh Energy.

“When companies and policy makers see that people really want
better options out there — they want smarter ways to get to work, and
they want cleaner cars — that’s a time to step in and say, ‘Okay we’re
raising the bar, we’re keeping climate and people’s pocketbooks in
mind, and we’re making better choices available everywhere.'”

HourCar is installing another solar battery-charger at a light rail
station. Members say as mass transit options improve, more people
will be able to get along without their own car.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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White House Bars Science

  • Memos from Bush political appointees are telling government scientists there's no way to make a connection between specific greenhouse gas emissions and endangered wildlife, so don't going looking for one. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Wildlife scientists in government
agencies have been ordered not to analyze
whether greenhouse gases affect endangered
animals. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Wildlife scientists in government
agencies have been ordered not to analyze
whether greenhouse gases affect endangered
animals. Lester Graham reports:

Memos from Bush political appointees are telling government scientists there’s no way
to make a connection between specific greenhouse gas emissions and endangered
wildlife, so don’t going looking for one.

In other words, that ice melting in the arctic causing polar bears so much difficulty?
Don’t try to use science to blame coal-burning power plants in the U.S.

Jeff Ruch is with Public Employees for Envrionemental Responsibility. He says this new
rule is the Bush administration’s way of making sure more coal-fired power plants can
be built.

“The Bush administration is doing everything they can to smooth a way to site an
additional 20 plants in the near term from their point of view, before they leave office.
And that’s an awful lot of greenhouse gases and that’s where the fight is.”

This ruling will likely be overturned in the courts, eventually – but probably not before the
coal-burning plants have been approved.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Beetle Threatens Anishinabe’s Ash Trees

  • Emerald Ash borer is a type of beetle that is threatening black ash trees. (Photo courtesy of USFS)

American Indians have been making baskets from the wood
of black ash trees for hundreds of years. Now, they see that tradition threatened by a beetle. The emerald ash borer has killed millions of ash trees in Lower Michigan over the past few years, and Indian basket makers are preparing for the day when their grandchildren may no longer find black ash. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Allen
reports:

Transcript

American Indians have been making baskets from the wood of black ash trees
for hundreds of years. Now, they see that tradition threatened by a beetle. The
emerald ash borer has killed millions of ash trees in Lower Michigan over the
past few years, and Indian basket makers are preparing for the day when their
grandchildren may no longer find black ash. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Bob Allen reports:


(Sound of museum)


The Anishinabe believe the black ash tree is a gift to their people, and they say
its carried them through many hard times. The story of the baskets is part of a
display in the Ziibiwing Center at the Saginaw Chippewa Reservation in
central Michigan.


Judy Pamp is assistant director of the Center, and she remembers how
important baskets were when she was growing up.


“If we ate it was because there were baskets to sell or trade, and it went from
that being the thing that sustained us to where now it’s more of a an art and a rare art,
and that you do in limited quantities.”


Pamp comes from a long line of basket makers, and she’d like to pass on the
skills to her granddaughter, but she says the baskets aren’t the most
important thing… rather it’s a sense of connection among the generations.


“You know the whole family pulling together, the whole community pulling
together to help one another out… that everybody was important and
everybody had their role.”


Some family members may be good at one part of the basket making, and
there’s plenty of work to divvy up. First, there’s going into a swamp to find a
black ash tree, cut it down and haul it out.


(Sound of pounding)


Then, there’s peeling off the bark, and pounding the wood into strips, called
splints, for baskets. All that can take 25 hours of hand labor. Then, it’s
another 6 or 8 hours to weave a basket. Without the trees, basket makers worry
they may lose that closeness of working together.


The emerald ash borer isn’t on tribal lands yet, but it’s in
two neighboring counties. Scientists say it’s only a matter of time before the
beetle invades the reservation and wipes out the ash tree. The invasive pest got
to the U.S. in cargo shipped from Asia. Despite quarantines the bug continues to
spread because people move infested firewood, timber or landscape trees.


Deb McCullough is an entomologist at Michigan State University. She
concedes ash trees in Lower Michigan are goners.


“Took me a while to get my mind around that. You know we’re going to see
somewhere probably in the neighborhood of four hundred million ash trees in the forests
of lower Michigan that eventually are going to succumb to emerald ash borer
unless something really amazing happens in the next few years.”


McCullough says they’re looking for a way to help trees resist the insect, or a
predator to keep it in check, but it might be years before a solution is found.
So, the tribes are looking at their own ways to deal with the ash borer.


(Sound of splint pulling)


One idea is to harvest a whole bunch of black ash splints for baskets and freeze
them to use later. That would keep basket making going for a while.


(Sound of basket maker)


Another plan is to collect and save seeds from black ash trees.


Basket maker Renee Dillard says someday maybe trees can be replanted from
seed, but she says that means forty or fifty years before any wood is
harvestable, and she doesn’t think she’ll be around then to teach her
grandchildren how to choose the right tree and pound out the splints.


(Sound of pounding)


“As a people, we’re pretty resilient and we can adapt to change. It’s just that we’re
losing an important part of that whole black ash process, and I don’t want my great
grandchildren to just make baskets. They need to understand the whole process because
it’s done carefully and prayerfully.”


Dillard follows the old ways. She lays down tobacco as an offering of thanks for the tree,
and she believes this calls her ancestors to witness her use of the gift.


The Anishinabe don’t know why the emerald ash borer is taking their trees at
this time, but their tradition teaches for every hardship there will be an answer
and something to balance the loss.


For the GLRC, I’m Bob Allen.

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