Summer’s Heat Shows Vulnerability of Power Grid

A major heat wave has caused temperatures to rise along parts of North-Eastern North America – but hey, it’s summer time – that’s not new.

Nor is the fact that our ageing and antiquated power supply system fails when we need it most.

Every summer, there are days of excessive heat, followed by warnings from local power companies to cut back on air conditioning use during business hours, otherwise rolling brownouts or blackouts may occur.

The warnings aren’t followed, and what happens?

Hydro vault fires, power failures stretching vast distances, and some of the most heavily populated areas in North America go without electricity for hours.

That’s what happened yesterday in Canada’s largest city of Toronto, right at the start of the afternoon rush hour.

Thousands of people working in skyscrapers hundreds of floors high had to hustle single-file down emergency stairwells to escape the stale hot air, as the air conditioners ceased to function in buildings where the windows don’t open.

Once those thousands of people did manage to get down to street level, they were sucked into a flood of thousands more, wandering around, wondering what to do. Traffic lights were out, subways and streetcars were stopped dead, forcing pretty much everyone in the affected areas out onto the streets, causing chaos and confusion.

That is if you got down – hundreds in elevators across the city when the power went out were stuck mid-floor. One person even used social networking site twitter.com, to “tweet” Toronto’s Mayor in a panic about being stuck in the elevator. The Mayor tweeted back emergency contact info, and eventually emergency services freed those in that particular elevator.

Memories of the major blackout in 2003, which darkened the United States and Canada along the North Eastern Seaboard for days returned.

Memories of summers past, with short, flashes of power outages (brownouts) and longer, blackouts lasting hours returned.

Despite our advances in technology, causing a constant increase in electricity demand – and a subsequent increase in the cost to consumers for that electricity -- our power grids continue to take a back seat to improvements.

Even though most high tech toys these days are mobile, we still need to plug them in to charge them prior to going mobile. Think about all our smart phones, cordless phones and laptops. Toss in our usual electric appliances like fridges, stoves, toasters and televisions, and it doesn’t take a genius to see we are completely at the mercy of the power company to keep us fed, informed and in touch with our loved ones.

Over the years, the costs of electricity in North America have continued to rise – about two percent per year since 1990.

Yet when we hit a couple of days when we the paying customer really need to use electricity – during a heat wave to cool our schools, offices and homes – the power company warns us to cut back our use, or the system will do it for us.

Granted, hitting this excessive demand isn’t an everyday occurrence. But then, it isn’t as if we haven’t hit these high levels of electrical consumption ever before. We average about two days every summer in North America when we do just that.

SO, why is it that despite all the technological advances, all the increases in power consumption and subsequent raises in electricity rates to us paying consumers, and all the previous days, every year, where we hit excessive demand of the power grid, that our power grid can’t handle it?

Shouldn’t our power companies have resolved these problems long ago? What the hell are they using the added revenue from constant price increases on? Why aren’t the power companies using the latest technologies to ensure these regular power outages every summer are ended?

Perhaps, because of our dependence upon the electrical grid to power our world, the power companies don’t feel obligated to improve their products or services – where else are we going to go to keep our homes cooled in the summer, lit at night and our tummies full?

Maybe now is the time to look at setting up our own individual solar and wind-power systems, to end the reliance on a faulty – and poorly maintained – power grid?

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World Leaders Fail to Use BP Oil Spill for a Greener Good

Funny thing, with all the media coverage of British Petroleum’s (BP) failure to cap its massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico – it has been over a month since the problem smeared across the waters – and around the world – no one is thinking green.

Yes, it is of utmost importance to put an end to the gushing gallons of crude oil – about 5,000 barrels or 210,000 gallons of the icky slimy stuff billow out per day.

But even the once so-called “most green American president ever,” President Barock Obama hasn’t used this ecological disaster to forward his county’s green agenda.

Yet wasn’t it President Obama who boldly declared from his lofty pedestal in the White House’s Rose Garden: “We have to reduce America’s dependency on oil?”

Ironic, as America – and most of the western world – still depends on the highly toxic fossil fuel for everything from heating our homes, powering our cars, to creating plastics and rubbers used in everything from medical hoses to carry drugs and oxygen to patients, to the tires on our cars.

If the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth can’t truly go green, all hope may be lost.

One person may make a difference, but what really matters are the differences made by those in positions of real power.

So, don’t stop your recycling, and don’t switch back to energy wasting incandescent light bulbs just yet. By reducing your impact on the environment, you are making a difference.

However, oil slicks polluting our wetlands and killing off millions of fish, endangering the lives of birds, trashing our drinking water, and even harming human beings involved in the cleanup efforts will continue until world leaders – like President Obama – stop talking about making a difference and actually do.

Sure, President Obama has extended an American-led ban on deep-water oil drilling, but that was his response to a crisis which could have been prevented, had he acted on his previous promise to move his country further away from a dependency on oil. All he did today when he extended this moratorium to six-months was media damage control for his public image.

Sure, President Obama’s administration is holding congressional hearings specifically on BP’s oil spill – but even if BP is fined, and forced to pay the enormous costs to clean up their mess, that won’t prevent future oil disasters.

President Obama, and other worldly leaders need to get together on greening the planet – and I’m not talking about token carbon emissions. Whenever world leaders meet, they talk about reducing Greenhouse Gases by setting specific emission reduction goals –which often aren’t met.

What our world leaders need to do is to create a functional, working plan for implementing green energy alternatives in their respective countries.

Solar, wind and geothermal won’t work in every part of the globe. Not every spot on Earth receives enough sunlight for solar power, nor enough wind for wind power, nor has the underwater hotspots needed for geothermal.

However, every part of the globe can make use of at least one or more of these green alternatives – to realistically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

We may not completely eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels such as oil – yet. But if we had world leaders that made it law to use environmentally-friendly alternatives wherever possible, it would be just the incentive we need to reduce our use of fossil fuels, while invigorating the drive to research new ways to power our high-energy consumption lives.

Big business wouldn’t see green energy alternatives as a costly hassle, but rather a cheaper alternative to over-using fossil fuels and having to pay fines or added taxes for their wasteful ways. Having fines and heavy taxes on those relying on oil and other fossil fuels would also encourage companies to fund research into green energy alternatives, as it would now be in their interests to use the greener energy sources.

Having court hearings as to what went wrong in the Gulf of Mexico, and why after a month, the toxic crude oil is still leaking is important – we need to find out what went wrong to prevent oil spills from happening due to the same cause.

But the real way – the only way – we will ever truly avoid destroying the only planet we know of capable of sustaining our lives in our universe – is for world leaders to mandate environmentally-friendly alternatives to the point when they aren’t alternatives – they are the norm.

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Anti-Idling Laws Environmental Time Wasted

Politicos in Canada’s largest city are debating whether to follow the lead of some surrounding municipalities, and put in place 60-second anti-idling laws.

The proposed law would mean anyone who pulled over, and left their vehicle engine running for one whole minute in Toronto, Canada, could be charge with excess idling, and be handed a traffic ticket. The proposed fine is $125CDN.

Politicians see anti-idling laws as an environmental way to raise some green – they reduce the number of cars idling on our city streets, while pumping in more revenues to the city in the form of fines paid by offenders.

What the proposed anti-idling law really is, is another cash grab by our city’s politicians.

Anti-idling laws can work – provided the time set on them is reasonable. Giving people a mere 60 seconds – one minute – to turn off their vehicle is ridiculously short.

If you stop to pick up your spouse and kids, and help load up their bags, toys and other things, if you didn’t turn off your car, you’d be charged $125CDN easily.

Helping your elderly relatives into or out of the family car could just as quickly cost you a $125CDN anti-idling fine, as they often take more time to do the things we take for granted.

Regardless of the short time-span for the proposed anti-idling law, laws such as these actually aren’t as environmentally-friendly as you think.

Oh reducing vehicle idle times does cut the amount of pollution being spewed out into the atmosphere, especially when done on a grand scale.

But an even better investment of our tax dollars would be funding green transportation alternatives. Investing in stricter vehicle emissions such as California does in the USA is a start.

Even better, would be mandating hybrid, electric or alternative fuelled green vehicles on our streets – which can be done. It’s just our politicians lack the courage, and enjoy the kickbacks from the petroleum industry and automotive industry lobbyists too much to really make a stand for the environment.

If we phased out gas-powered vehicles over time, the same way we phased out lead-based fuels in the 1970’s – then automakers would be forced to manufacture and sell vehicles which were truly green.

And then anti-idling laws would be a thing of the past, because a truly environmentally-friendly vehicle, is a zero-emission vehicle.

Zero-emission vehicles exist, just the oil and gas industry is so powerful they keep these green forms of transportation out of sight. We’ve seen fully functional electric cars, motorcycles and bikes, which produce zero-emissions. Solar-powered vehicles and hydrogen-powered ones are also zero-emission ones, but these do have some limitations to overcome. But if more research was being done on these – thanks to governments mandating environmental modes of transportation – these obstacles may be overcome.

Our lawmakers – our politicians – have the power to do the right thing, by making and enforcing laws which benefit us and our planet.

It is just a matter of getting our politicians weaned-off the kickbacks from the powerful oil and automotive sectors long enough to smell the roses on the green side of the fence.

And that’s going to take a lot more hard work – as money sometimes smells better than roses.

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Anti-Environmentalism? Only in Canada

Today, hundreds of angry protesters demonstrated outside the Ontario legislator. It isn’t all that uncommon to see people stomping their feet, yelling and screaming while holding up signs of protest in front of government buildings.

That’s one of our fundamental freedoms in our democratic society – freedom of expression.

However, WHAT they were protesting is anything but common.

The group assembled in front of Canada’s largest provincial ruling body was protesting wind farms – large swaths of land, filled with clean, environmentally-friendly wind turbines, to power our world.

“Stop the Wind” and “No Industrial Wind Turbines” read some of the many signs being carted around by the protesters. How they intend the government to “stop the wind” remains to be seen.

Seriously, they claim that large-scale wind turbine facilities are an eye soar and lower local property values around the wind farm. They also claim they aren’t cost effective, costing more to build than the revenues they provide.

Could this be the start of the anti-environmental movement?

Are nuclear power plants, with their enormous concrete domes any less of an eye soar? What about coal-fired power plants, with their tall smoke stacks coughing up stinky sulfur-smelling swirls of smoke? Would you rather live next to one of those?

Wind turbines don’t give off any pollutants, have no hazardous bi-products – like radioactive waste from a nuclear power plant – and some have even commented that the low hum sound the turbines make in the wind are peaceful, and soothing.

Though sounds and sights are individualistic opinions – one person’s art is another's junk.

The real issue here isn’t whether or not wind power is better for the planet – academics, scientists, politicians; even the suits and ties behind big business have all gone on the record promoting alternative green sources of energy, such as solar and wind power.

The problem is our old friend Mr. NIMBY.

Perhaps you met Mr. NIMBY before?

Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) was a term coined in the 1980’s by a British politician for people that don’t want something built close to their homes or businesses. It has been used extensively to refer to residents that don’t want a landfill site in their neighborhood, but our friend, Mr. NIMBY appears to have reared his ugly head once again, this time over wind turbines.

No one wants a garbage dump in their backyard, or even a nuclear power plant. And it makes sense that some wouldn’t want a wind farm in their field of view either.

But as our population continues to grow and cities and towns expand, we’ll need more of the supporting infrastructure in place to accommodate this growth. This means, we’ll need more waste water/sewage facilities, more garbage and recycling facilities and more power generation facilities.

Given the choice, I’d rather look out my window and see a bunch of wind turbines off in the distance, instead of a giant nuclear power plant, a coal-fired power plant, or a landfill site.

It might not be as pretty as the hundred acre wood, but it sure beats waking up to the smell of sulfur or rotting trash.

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Nothing More Eye Opening then a Time Change

YAWN – Wake up!

Yeah, I know you are all tired, what with losing an hour of sleep thanks to moving your clocks back an hour for Daylight Saving Time.

That lack of sleep is responsible for an increase in traffic accidents the Monday following the time change in major city centers, as our bodies are still adjusting, according to many local cop shops, and scientists that study this sort of thing.
The scientists say if we actually did the clock change on Friday night (giving us Saturday and Sunday to adjust) instead of Saturday night (giving us only Sunday to adjust) our bodies – and vehicles – would be better off.

But there is a method to the madness and it tugs at your environmental heart strings.

Falling back and springing forward saves energy. Energy to heat, light and power our homes is directly connected to when we wake up in the morning and when we go to bed at night. For all but you night owls – you know who you are – most of us go to bed in the late evening and wake again in the early morning. While we’re under the covers, most of our lights and other appliances are turned off – unless you fell asleep watching the boob tube.

By moving the clocks ahead one hour in the spring, the average home cuts its energy use by about 25 percent.

Here’s how it works -- Daylight Saving Time adds an hour to the day – giving us an extra hour of sunlight, which in turn reduces the period between sunset and the average bedtime by one hour. That translates into less electricity used for lighting and appliances late in the day. We tend to use more electricity in the morning because it is darker, but that’s balanced by the energy we save at night.

As the days are longer, we tend to be home fewer hours during the day. Aside from the warmer sunnier weather promoting us to spend more time outside, studies show we tend to do more when the days are longer. These studies show we tend to prefer to do everything from housework to grocery shopping under a sunny sky – the increased amount of daylight actually motivates us on a subconscious level.

Maybe that’s the theory behind the term “spring cleaning?”

Also, as the days are “longer” we have more light later into the evening, meaning we can delay turning on our lights to see.

Need proof?

In the United States during the energy crisis of the 1970’s, Congress put most of America on extended Daylight Saving Time for two years to save energy. The American Department of Transportation conducted a study during this extended time shift and found it saved the equivalent in energy of 10,000 barrels of oil each day, for a total of 600,000 barrels in each of those two years.

Daylight Saving Time also keeps us safe. Makes sense, there is more daylight, so there are fewer car and pedestrian accidents caused by traveling under the darkness of the night. The same American Department of Transportation study found that about 50 lives were saved and about 2,000 injuries prevented, by extending Daylight Saving Time during the energy crisis in the 1970’s. The study says that amounts to about $28 million saved in motor vehicle accident costs.

Another reason we do it is because it is just a Canadian thing to do.

Despite Daylight Saving Time changes across the globe, the whole process was invented by Canadian Sir Sandford Fleming to keep the goods and people traveling by train across North America on time. Fleming created time zones which were first used in 1883 to standardize train schedules.

Train travel made time keeping obsolete under the old system where major cities and regions set clocks according to local astronomical conditions. Fleming may not be father time, but his standard or “mean time” and hourly variations from that according to established time zones was adopted at an international conference in 1884. Standard Mean Time – Sir Sanford Fleming’s invention is the way we tell time to this day.

So wake up sleepy head, springing forward is something we Canucks should be used too.

YAWN.

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What Politicians and General Motors Have In Common

Aside from Canada, the States and other countries owning a large portion of ailing automaker General Motors (GM), there are other similarities which make you wonder if the auto giant really will dig itself out of this global depression.

GM announced last week that it is ready to leave bankruptcy protection and enter the world of selling cars once again. Fritz Henderson, the company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) says the company is sleeker and more customer-friendly.

Having borrowed $50 billion in government loans, it better be something more than it once was.

Henderson also said the company would be more receptive to its customer’s needs and wants when it comes to designing and building new models, and that these new vehicles would be launched faster.

Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Flickr

Sounds a lot like the never-changing world of politics. During election campaigns, politicians always make promises which may – or more often than not – may not actually happen. Politicians always talk about listening more to their constituents, and acting faster on those requests.

Guess when government money bails you out, you become more politician-ish?

Though, if GM was really paying attention to their customers, they probably wouldn’t have ended up filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the States in the first place. One of the golden rules to running any successful business is to ensure you are meeting the needs of those who will pay for your products and services.
Failing that, you might as well close up shop, because you are ignoring the people that will put bread on your table.

Henderson says that going forward, the company’s top priorities will be customers, cars and culture. Sounds like an election promise, and we all know how far those go in the real world.

As gas prices continued to soar uncontrollably due largely in part to oil industry greed, GM continued to build and sell gas hoarding machines, which their customers weren’t buying, because they couldn’t afford all that gas.

But, in the 1990’s GM came out with the world’s first fully electric car – the EV1. It was capable of traveling on average about 160KM on a single charge – more than enough for most day-to-day use. It took a full eight-hours to c

Image via Wikipedia

harge the batteries, but then again, unless you are driving non-stop 24/7, you just charge it up while you are sleeping.

GM not only canceled the EV1 project, they destroyed it – actually hunting down their own loyal customers and repossessing the cars at the end of their leases, without giving their customers the option to buy or extend their lease. The reclaimed cars were crushed like tin cans, except for a handful which were allowed to be put on display in vehicle museums – sans any functioning engines. GM didn’t want the legacy of their success to show, claiming the vehicles were dismal failures and no one was willing to buy them.

Most of the EV1 owners were willing to buy them, they held massive protests, begging and pleading with GM to allow them to either lease of buy their cars at the end of their lease.

But due to pressure from the former Texas oil tycoon turned president, George W. Bush, and the strong oil lobby groups, GM killed the electric car because these groups saw this successful electric car as a death sentence to their monopoly over the world’s transportation systems.

Though if GM were smart and really had intentions of listening to their customers, they should have fought back. Sure, they would have been going after the American government and the mighty power of the oil industry, but they aren’t exactly a small player either – they were the world’s largest company.

Had GM kept the EV1, today, they probably would have a whole product line of electric cars, even better than their first attempts. They may even be the only car company in the world producing completely electric vehicles, at a time when oil prices continue to stay high, and consumers look towards other ways to travel, to save fuel costs.

So, when the CEO of GM says he’s planning on listening to his customers, and design vehicles which cater to those very same customers, he’s chirping from uneven ground.

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