autonomous truck

With all the talk of self-driving cars, I figured self-driving trucks and buses wouldn’t be far behind. And here is a self-driving truck, already licensed in a few U.S. states. It sounds like there is still a human driver in it for now. But in the long term, I imagine this is bad news for human driver as an occupation. It should be good news for the safety of humans on the road in general. It seems like it could favor the economics of road freight vs. rail. Then again, it might make much narrower travel lanes practical, leaving plenty of room in the right of way for other infrastructure like high speed rail, high voltage lines, pipelines, etc. Time will tell.

renewable energy

The renewable energy conversation is starting to change, with talk of renewables driving the market for more traditional energy sources, rather than the other way around.

The BBC on Japan:

Following the Fukushima disaster in March 2011 all of Japan’s 48 other nuclear reactors were shut down. The predicted blackouts did not happen, the country kept running just fine.

But there has been a cost. Prior to the Fukushima disaster nearly 30% of power came from nuclear. That has been replaced by burning lots more coal and gas – Japan is now the world’s biggest importer of liquefied natural gas…

Following the Fukushima disaster, the Democratic Party government enacted a “feed-in tariff”.

Anyone could put solar panels on their roof, connect up to the grid and the power companies would be required to pay them a generous 40 Yen per kilowatt.

The response was dramatic. Money poured in to solar, and not just on people’s rooftops. In 2011 Japan had just 4.9 gigawatts of installed solar capacity. Just three years later, at the end of 2014, that had leapt to 23GW. It put Japan ahead of Italy as the number three solar energy producer in the world.

They go on to suggest that the government may turn the nuclear plants back on, and that may slow down the renewable revolution. But still, renewables were competing favorably with fossil fuels in the meantime.

Meanwhile, NPR actually suggests that renewables may be helping to drive down the price of oil.

“What the Saudis could see was new forms of renewable energy consumption — windmills, tidal power, solar power and the Tesla,” Verleger says.

He says in the longer term, electric cars and those other technologies could mean less demand for oil. Shorter term, the global economy has slowed and that means less thirst for oil right now. At the same time, with fracking the U.S. is now rivaling Saudi Arabia as an oil superpower…

So he says the Saudis now want cheaper oil, in part to slow down the fracking revolution in the U.S. — and to signal to the developing world: Don’t worry — you don’t need to invest in alternative energy. You can buy cheap oil from us.

This is very different than a couple years ago, when we were arguing that renewables were competitive only because of high oil prices.

what’s going on with Star Wars

Were you wondering what was going on with Star Wars? It’s owned by Disney now, which is concerning, but Episode VII: The Force Awakens is supposed to come out on December 18, 2015. There are also some spinoff movies coming out in the next couple years that take place “in the Star Wars universe” but don’t involve the main characters.

vaccines without needles

New technology may deliver vaccines without needles. Actually, there are needles but they are so small and short you can’t feel them.

But with if a vaccine could be delivered by simply applying a patch? That’s Mark Prausnitz’s goal: creating a nickel-sized bandage-like device covered with 100 microscopic needles that would puncture the skin, then dissolve to get the vaccine into the body.

Maybe that sounds scary — 100 needles instead of one. But Prausnitz says you can’t really feel the needles. “It wouldn’t be like sandpaper or scratching,” he says. “You would have a hard time feeling a difference between the needles being there or not being there.”

compendium of inspiring planning practices

Move over Agenda 21, we have a new contender for the world’s most boring urban planning related conspiracy theory, Resolution 24/3! Seriously, don’t read it. It’s boring. However as a supporting study, the UN has put together a book of case studies on planning best practices in cities around the world, which is actually interesting. I found the Melbourne case study particularly interesting, and would like to dig into it more:

Melbourne developed a new approach to urban planning, through an ecosystem-based climate adaptation programme, embracing what the City refers to as ‘nature sensitive’ urban design and planning. This approach emphasises the services that nature provides to the city and focuses on how it can be protected, restored, created, enhanced and maintained within the urban setting. The urgency posed by the current impacts of climate changes resulted in the City creating a multi-million dollar integrated ecosystem-based climate change adaptation program in 2010 – the ‘Urban Landscapes Adaptation Program’.

The primary goal of this programme was to reduce drought vulnerability and to cool the city by 4°C in an effort to safeguard its citizens and the ecosystem services of its environmental assets from the impacts of climate change. The programme is underpinned by two strategies: the Open Space Strategy, which aims to increase green space by 7.6% and the Urban Forest Strategy, which is projected to double the City’s tree canopy to 40%.

recycled water

Recycled water, i.e. treating sewage back to drinking water standards, has been around for awhile and doesn’t raise many eyebrows in truly water scarce areas. Which is why it is getting more popular and less controversial in California cities. Here are some fun pictures of politicians drinking it out of beakers with big smiles on their faces.

Which, maybe because we are in mayoral election season here in Philadelphia, reminded me of this great scene from The Wire.

 

April 2015 in Review

Negative stories:

Positive stories:

  • Mr. Money Mustache brought us a nice post on home energy efficiency projects. This was a very popular post.
  • Biotechnology may soon bring us the tools to seriously monkey with photosynthesis. (This is one of those stories where I struggle between the positive and negative columns, but clearly there is a potential upside when we will have so many mouths to feed.)
  • Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, is retiring. That might sound bad, but his ground-breaking ideas are continuing on and actually seem to be going mainstream.
  • Lee Kuan Yew, who took Singapore “from third world to first” in one generation, passed away (in March, but I wrote about it in April. Let me be clear – I am an admirer and it is his life I am putting in the positive column, not his death.)
  • Donella Meadows explained how your bathtub is a dynamic system.
  • Robert Gordon offers a clear policy prescription for the U.S. to support continued economic growth.
  • I explain how a cap-and-trade program for stormwater and pollution producing pavement could work.
  • Joel Mokyr talks about advances in information technology, materials science and biotechnology.
  • Some U.S. cities are fairly serious about planting trees.
  • Edmonton has set a target of zero solid waste.
  • Saving water also saves energy. It’s highly logical, but if you are the skeptical type then here are some numbers. Also, urban agriculture reduces carbon emissions.
  • Peter Thiel thinks we can live forever. (positive, but do see my earlier comment about mouths to feed…)
  • A paper in Ecological Economics tries to unify the ecological footprint and planetary boundary concepts.
  • Philadelphia finally has bike share.