Mike Berners-Lee posts on the Guardian his findings. As it turns out riding a bike is about 1/10th the carbon footprint driving a car when taking into consideration the full life cycle of both transporation choices.
Mike presents a nice discussion on the points to consider when making this comparison, such as, differences in quality of life. The full blog post can be found here on The Guardian website:http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/08/carbon-footprint-cycling
REMINDER: Call for Abstracts for Going Green – CARE INNOVATION 2010, Schoenbrunn Palace, Vienna (Austria, Europe), November 8 – 11, 2010. The deadline for submitting your abstracts is coming up in only 2 weeks (May 31, 2010).
Speaker opportunities are still available. For more information visit the conference website HERE.
Press release – March 3, 2010
Bridgestone’s takes a global view of the environmental impact of tires – the so called “cradle to grave” approach – covering the whole product life cycle from raw materials, production and distribution to tyre usage and end-of-life disposal.
All research, and particularly the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study conducted by the European Tyre and Rubber Manufacturers’ Association, shows that the tire usage phase has the largest impact on the environment. While Bridgestone is taking important steps to minimize environmental impact in all tyre life stages (documented in the Bridgestone Europe “Environmental Commitment and Performance” brochure and elsewhere), the company is currently engaged in a major development programme in the tire usage stage.
Tire manufacturers working within the BLIC (European Association of the Rubber Industry) carried out a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in 2000/2001 for a standard size passenger car tire (195/65 R15, speed index H, summer) representative of the European market. The referenced tire LCA study clearly showed that the impact of tires on the environment and human health is mostly due to fuel consumption, and thus to rolling resistance and not to the tire production phase or end-of-life collection and management.
The press release can be found here:
http://www.bridgestone.eu/press/press-releases/all/2010/safety-or-environmental-benefits
The US Department of Energy (DOE), National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) has just released its baseline LCA model for energy. This model calculates the 2005 national average life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for petroleum-based fuels sold or distributed in the United States in the year 2005. Specifically, the model reports, by life cycle stage, the life cycle GHG emissions for conventional gasoline, conventional diesel fuel, and kerosene-based jet fuel. The model served as the primary calculation tool for the results reported in the NETL November 26, 2008, report entitled “Development of Baseline Data and Analysis of Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Petroleum-Based Fuels”. The model was created in Microsoft Office Excel 2003 and requires macros to be enabled to solve iterative calculation functions.
A download of the model can be found here: http://www.netl.doe.gov/energy-analyses/refshelf/detail.asp?pubID=283
Researchers at the University of California Berkeley, have just completed a LCA study of compressed air powered vs. electric vehicles. The study concludes that even assuming best case scenario conditions, an all pneumatic vehicle is less efficient that an electric. However, hybrid technology is technically feasible and inexpensive and could compete agains hybrid electrics. See the study on the open access journal for environmental science: http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/4/4/044011/erl9_4_044011.html
Creutzig F. et al. (2009) Economic and environmental evaluation of compressed-air cars, Environ. Res. Lett. 4 (October-December 2009) 044011
doi:10.1088/1748-9326/4/4/044011