Green Daily

Is McMansion culture finally coming to an end? Current data about new homes in the US seems to indicate that the economy -- and possibly an increase in energy and environmental awareness -- is affecting the tendency to fixate on a home's square-footage above all else. From the second to fourth quarter in 2008, average new home square footage in the US plummeted from 2,629 to 2343.

While it took a major mortgage and economic meltdown to reverse the bigger is better trend, there's some real hope out there that the change will leave a lasting impression. According to VP of the National Association of Home Builders Gopal Ahluwalia: "this will remain a trend. I don't expect this (home size) to come back up ... family size has been declining for the past 35 years." Is the economy forcing us to realize what we've already knew about energy-efficiency, maintenance, and sustainability? KB Homes, one of the nation's largest builders, has watched its average home size shrink from 2,400 sq-ft to just 1,600 over the last two years. In Houston, they've started selling an 880 sq-ft house for $63,995.

[via TreeHugger]

These days, when you think of banks you probably think: big, bad, wasteful or some combination of those words. However, there is at least one thing they can help you do which has a huge positive impact on the environment: get paid paid by Direct Deposit.

Besides having your money in your checking account immediately instead of having to remember to go to the bank, deposit a check, and wait for it to clear, a new study sponsored by the 2009 PayitGreen Alliance actually quantifies how direct deposit can reduce your carbon footprint.

If you switch to direct deposit, in one year you will:

• Save one pound of paper.
• Eliminate the release of four gallons of wastewater.
• Eliminate the release of one pound of greenhouse gases -- this is equivalent to not driving four miles and preserving half a square food of forest for 10 years

That's pretty good, right? Well is everyone who could use direct deposit actually used it, the results would be staggeringly huge:

• Save 11,082,971 pounds of paper
• Avoid the release of 105,709,380 gallons of wastewater
• Save 4,105,889 gallons of gas
• Avoid the release of 31,581,675 pounds of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which equals:

• 112,329,703 miles not driven
• 1,345,379 trees planted and grown for 10 years
• 13,756,978 square feet of forest preserved

Not to mention how much is can save a business, which these days can mean saving jobs! If you have a business and want to calculate how much you can save, check out the Direct Deposit Cost Calculator on ElectronicPayments.org.

Finding a silver lining in the gigantic economic mess that is gripping the world right now is pretty hard to do, but if you were to look for a silver lining, experts are predicting a major drop in oil demand and global emissions. Ideally, the drop in emissions would come as a result of people making responsible choices, not the expansion of poverty -- but the word on the street is that oil demand will drop 1.5 percent this year from 2008 levels, which were already down .4 percent from 2007 levels.

If the experts are right -- and it looks like they will be -- this will be the first time that global demand for oil has dropped in two consecutive years since 1982-1983. To put that into some kind of concrete yet still unimaginably large and therefore abstract terms, the IEA estimates that the world will consume 270,000 fewer barrels of oil every day. On a related not, a professor at Cambridge University is predicting a 40-50% drop in greenhouse gas emissions due to the global economic downturn. So, that's kinda like a platinum lining for you.

[via Earth2Tech]

Sure, it's easily the most hyped (overhyped?) car in recent history, but is the Chevy Volt truly awesome enough to woo the new auto task force that's in charge of monitoring GM's viability plans? Today, we may find out. The auto task force is kicking the tires in Detroit today, trying to decide whether or not the federal government should roll the dice and sink $21.6B more dollars into America's spiraling auto giants. If not, it may dash our hopes of seeing the Volt outside of a museum.

At present, mindnumbingly upsidedown automakers GM and Chrysler are living off a $17.4B taxpayer bailout gift "loan." Considering that GM by itself has reported $82B in operating losses since the end of 2004, they're not exactly considered an smart credit risk. The task force is expected to test drive the Volt at GM's tech center in the Detroit suburb of Warren. Is it possible that a single electric car could erase years of mismanagement and poor performance by the auto industry? Probably not. Still, I'm hoping that the Volt somehow comes out of this crisis intact.

Back in December, Tesla's SVP Darryl Siry announced rather abruptly that he would be leaving the senior executive position "due to some disagreements in strategy." Now, the plot thickens. According to Gawker, the true reason Siry tendered his resignation is that he disagreed with CEO Elon Musk that the company should start taking deposits on the Model S -- a super sexy-looking $50,000 electric sedan for which there is no factory or financing in place.

Considering all the circumstances surrounding Tesla (and most automakers) at the time -- and even more so now -- it seems pretty reasonable that Siry felt a little weird about taking money for a car with no real production plans. BTW, Tesla started taking deposits last week for $40,000. Some have already started comparing Musk with famous flop-miesters like Preston Tucker. Considering the relative success of the Roadster so far, I think it's a bit way-the-hell-too-early to call Tesla a flop. Granted, it appears that Musk is playing a little bit fast and loose for some people's tastes.

[via Gawker]

After driving around in the Jetta TDI last September, I knew it was going to make a splash in the US diesel car market -- which is small, yet significant. Well apparently, it's doing a little better than that. Right smack in the middle of this doom and gloom recession, Jetta TDIs are flying off the car lots all over the Western US. According to reports, demand for the Green Car of the Year is so strong in certain markets, that it's causing all sorts of distribution bottlenecks across the country.

It's easy to see why penny pinchers and environmentalists are enthusiastic about the vehicle -- it gets 30city/41hwy or 38city/44hwy depending on who's word you take and its got a very air-friendly particulate filter -- and I guess all of the gleaming reviews didn't go unnoticed. Surprisingly, the demand is spotty in some markets on the east coast, while its ridiculously jammed-up in places like California. According to one VW employee, "In Washington, D.C., there's no wait list... I could probably go there to buy one, but what am I going to do, drive it all the way back to California?"

[via AutoBlogGreen]

As places like California endure their worst drought conditions since 1977, now would be an excellent time for science to step in and tap into a new source of drinking water. Thankfully, Yale researchers Rob McGinnis and Dr. Menachem Elimelech have built a low energy desalination system that might finally make drinking the ocean a feasible alternative. Oasys, the scientists' Connecticut-based startup, claims to be able to convert seawater into drinking water for half the price.

How exactly do they achieve that? That's a trade secret, of course, but appears to have something to do with using a low heat method for sucking salt and contaminants out of water. The company's proprietary "Engineered Osmosis" process reportedly consumes only 10% of the electricity and fuel used by a conventional desalination plant. Water production is already the largest drain on California's energy grid. Oasys recently ended a fundraising campaign that brought in $10 million, so I guess their idea sounded as good to venture capitalists as it does to drought-ridden Californians and Central Texans.

If you pay much attentions to the burgeoning world of EV start-ups, you've no doubt noticed an emerging pattern: tons of them are missing a wheel. If you're wondering what's up this three wheeled fetish, you're not alone. Our friends at ABG have put together a great post documenting exactly why so many start-ups are ditching the fourth wheel and joining the three-wheeled revolution.

The first and most important reason for going tri instead of quad is simply the fact that in the US, a vehicle with three wheels is considered to be a "motorcycle" by regulators. That means, a three wheeler doesn't have to go through the rigorous and expensive safety testing that a "car" would have to go through. Though many of these vehicles are obviously meant to be cars, the loophole (while it lasts) helps carbon-friendly start-ups cut expenses. The second reason also deals with costs: it's simply cheaper to engineer and build a three-wheeler in both materials and operating costs. Sure, there are other factors like aerodynamics and drag -- but it looks like cost, as always, is the bottom line.

[via AutoBlogGreen]

When you buy a Prius, you can be fairly sure your going to save money at the pump, cut down your greenhouse emissions, and generally enjoy the benefits of one of the most reliable products on the road. What you may not know about the Prius is that when it comes time to take it into the mechanic -- which shouldn't happen too often -- you might have to dole out a lot of the money you thought you'd saved on gas.

A recent study is confirming what a lot of Prius drivers have learned the hard way, parts for a Prius run about 8.4% more expensive than similar cars its size. In general, all hybrids including the Civic and Camry cost a little more than gasoline powered cars to fix -- an average of 3.8%. Why is the Prius so much more? The reason is mostly because the Prius is a dedicated hybrid, so there are far less parts in common with the rest of Toyota's fleet (or any other fleet for that matter). One bright spot for potential Prius owners is that repair costs on 2007 and later models have come down signigicantly.

[via AutoBlogGreen]

As you well know, yesterday the Senate passed a $838 billion stimulus package that will supposedly turn a forthcoming financial armageddon scenario into a mere economic disaster -- what a relief. Along with a list of spending allocations that would make you cringe, there are a few portions of the bill that environmentalists can be happy with. One of those provisions is a $300 million budget for the government to purchase green fleet vehicles.

Apparently, the money won't all be spent on Hybrid Escalades, as you might expect. Included in the bill, thanks to the lobbying of Chrysler I'm guessing, is a specific shout-out to "NEVs." Neighborhood electric vehicles, that is, like the Chrysler-owned GEM Peapod. Another provision of the bill gives a 10% tax credit for the purchase of a "low speed" vehicle costing up to $40,000! Yowza, that's an expensive golf cart. There's nothing in the bill that explains exactly what the government's new NEVs, with a top speed of 25mph, would be used for. Most politicians, as we've come to learn, ride in limousines and cheat on their taxes.

Last September, Honda announced that they were bringing back the Insight -- or at least the Insight brand identity -- and in 2009 they we're going to come after the Prius with a vengeance. With the Insight's launch date set for Earth Day, April 22nd, the suits at Honda are still deliberating over pricing options for the US market. Obviously, in this down market, the lower the price, the better. That's why Honda's executive VP Koichi Kondo is campaigning to sell the Insight for less than $20K.

If Honda is really serious about knocking the Prius out of the #1 spot, or even gaining a significant foothold in the hybrid market, they know they've got to go painfully low on price. The first market to see the Insight will be Japan, and the price for the Japanese is already set at 1.89 million yen ($21,140), so I don't know how they will manage to sell the Insight in the US for under 20K -- but they might have to. Although some would argue that the EPA underestimated the Insight's fuel economy, the EPA rated it 43mpg city/40mpg Highway. Compare that to the Prius' 48/45.

Sure, banking institutions around the world are reeling from stupendous amounts of toxic debt. But now, the financial sludge has somehow seeped all he way to a bank that performs no traditional lending or banking functions at all: the Millennium Seed Bank Project. Based in the UK, this seed bank is basically supposed to serve as the Noah's Ark of biodiversity, attempting to collect seeds from all of the Earth's plant species and house them for posterity -- or to re-seed a post apocalyptic planet. Take your pick.

The Millennium Project houses almost 10% of the world's plant species, and is the only seed bank of this magnitude in the world. The bank receives its funding through only a couple of avenues: half from the UK's National Lottery, and the rest from corporate donations. Now that the most large corporations are in retreat, or else saving their limited resources to donate to the London Olympics in 2012, about half the bank's funding is in serious jeopardy.

Good news for the 30-50% of Th!nk's staff that haven't yet been laid off : private investors have stepped in and provided the financing needed to keep the EV maker from turning out the lights. If you'll remember, the last time we checked up on Th!nk, they were facing some dark times and were asking for a handout bailout rescue from the Norwegian government to the tune of $15-30M. Instead, the private sector stepped in. Nice.

Here's the twist, out of the 40 million Kroner ($5.69M) bridge loan given to Th!nk, the vast majority of it came from Ener1 Group -- the company that manufactures the battery packs for the these cute little EVs. So, I guess it's just good business for Ener1 -- because I'm sure that Th!nk buys a pretty substantial portion of their battery sales. With that, Th!nk will hopefully be able to bounce back to their healthy pre-global recession levels even though they're still short a few million bucks.

[via AutoBlogGreen]

If you've been holding off on doing some green home improvements, you'll be happy to know that some of the tax credits for green building (and improving) will still be around in 2009.

Some of the best?

• $150 for some Energy Star furnaces and boilers.
• $200 for Energy Star windows
• up to $500 for insulation
• up to $3,150 for a hybrid vehicle purchase

There are limits on how much you can benefit from the tax credits in one year, so make sure and do your research ahead of time and talk to your tax preparer as well. You can also check for state tax incentives.

[Via Green Building Elements]

Where exactly does this rank on your greenwashing index? Discover arrived at the party a little late, but they showed up nonetheless with the world's first biodegradable credit card. Made from an eco-friendly type of PVC, Discover seems to be making its first baby steps into the world of sustainability. Instead of biodegrading in your wallet -- which could be mighty inconvenient -- the card will break down 99% in 9 months to 5 years when placed in soil, water, or compost.

Of course, some people in the green community find this news a bit incredulous, since credit cards basically encourage the high consumption lifestyle that's blamed for most of our environmental problems. Still, credit cards are just a tool -- one that can be used for good or evil. Mostly evil. But I guess Discover has to be given some credit for their effort. Junked credit cards may not have been a major factor in plasticizing the world's oceans, and no cardholder may ever plant their card in the compost heap -- but it's a start.

What do you think? Does Discover's green card feel genuine, or is it just straight up greenwashing?

[via Inhabitat]