The author of today’s post, Sheryl Canter, is an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

Total greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks is a function of three factors: amount of driving, fuel economy, and carbon emissions per gallon of fuel (the "three-legged stool [PDF]"). The news media tend to focus on the latter two factors, but how much people drive has a huge impact.

A new report published by the Urban Land Institute says that greenhouse gas emissions cannot be reduced sufficiently by making vehicles more efficient, because growth in driving cancels out improved fuel economy. People also must drive less. And the report’s solution is not just better public transportation.

The way to reduce driving sufficiently, the authors say, is to shift development patterns to favor compact, mixed-land-use neighborhoods where you can walk to school and the grocery store. If you live in a car-dependent area, moving to a walkable area will do more to fight global warming than buying a fuel-efficient hybrid car.

This idea is already being put into action in some areas. New York City is expecting one million more people by the year 2030, and is using rezoning to direct development towards areas with strong transit access.

Environmental Defense helped California’s San Joaquin Valley, which is notorious for bad air quality, implement a similar strategy. The Air Pollution Control Board adopted an incentive program [PDF] that gives developers two choices: reduce the environmental impact by creating sidewalks, bike paths, and nearby schools and commercial districts, or pay a fee for any excess pollution.

Living in a walkable neighborhood has other advantages. Recently released figures from the New York City Department of Health show that New Yorkers tend to live longer than most people in the country — an odd finding considering the lack of fresh air and other hazards. The city’s Commissioner of Public Health thinks it’s because New York is a walking city.

Today’s post is by Leslie Valentine, an editor and writer at Environmental Defense.

When I visit friends and family in other places, whether it’s Portland or Los Angeles, Austin or New York City, I’m always struck by how traffic and commuting inevitably come up in conversation.

Those who live in the central core of a city are grateful they don’t have far to drive, or can walk or ’sub’ it to work. Others trade stories of commutes from hell, driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the main route into downtown. Everyone laments how it seems to be getting worse and worse every year in these lively, growing places.

Many growing cities and towns are traffic-choked and plagued by pollution. But population growth accounts for only a small share of increasing road traffic in recent decades.

What’s really going on is that Americans are driving more: We are taking more trips on motorways, making longer trips and driving alone more. More people live in car-dependent suburbs not conducive to walking or transit.

Sadly, incentives are skewed toward car use: "freeways" subsidized by general tax revenue, "free" parking paid for by employers, low mileage drivers subsidizing insurance costs for high mileage drivers, and countless policies favoring low density sprawl over infill mixed-use development. (Read more about our broken transportation system.)

But this has to change. We can’t keep building our way out of traffic jams and pollution with more roads and highways – it just doesn’t work. And the costs to our health and quality of life are too high. Our transportation experts at Environmental Defense have long studied the problems and are working on smart solutions. (Read more about solutions to traffic problems.)

One key is to use existing infrastructure much more efficiently. Incentives like congestion pricing and bus rapid transit lanes are two ways to get traffic moving. With tools like these in place, an existing highway can move more people more quickly with less environmental damage.

Says Environmental Defense regional director Andy Darrell: "Our country is growing, and we’ll always be building something new. The key is to build new communities in ways that decrease dependence on the traditional car and increase opportunities for walking, cycling and innovations like car-sharing, advanced vehicle technologies and new ideas for transit."

Take action: Help support transportation solutions. Earn points for your state for the personal actions that you pledge.

The author of today’s post, Sheryl Canter, is an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles got a big boost when President Bush made them part of his 2003 State of the Union address:

Tonight I’m proposing $1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles… With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom, so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free.

That generated a lot of interest in hydrogen cars! So what are they, and can they become mainstream in the next 20 years?

Honda FCX fuel-cell car.

Hydrogen fuel cells take in hydrogen and oxygen, and put out water, heat, and electricity - no pollution at all.

Sounds good, but there’s a catch - producing the hydrogen fuel can itself generate significant greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants. And unfortunately, that’s not the only serious hurdle.

Honda is the first company to put a fuel cell demonstration car into the hands of ordinary consumers. Yet as Steve Ellis, Honda’s Manager of Fuel Cell Vehicles, told me hydrogen-powered cars are not likely to be mainstream for another 10 to 20 years. Many industry analysts put the number at well over 20 years, and some think it will never fly. All agree it’s not a near-term solution.

Chevrolet Sequel fuel-cell car.

Joseph Romm, in "The Hype about Hydrogen, notes five main problems with hydrogen cars as they currently stand:

• They are extremely expensive, currently costing around $1 million (for example, the GM SequelHonda’s FCX). Most of this cost is in the fuel cells. If history is any guide, it will take decades for the cost to come down sufficiently.

• On-board fuel storage is a huge problem - literally - since at room temperature and pressure, hydrogen takes up 3000 times more space than an energy-equivalent amount of gasoline. There are several ways to store hydrogen, but all known approaches are complex and costly. Storing hydrogen as a liquid isn’t practical because it takes so much energy to liquefy and then convert back to gas. Storing it as compressed gas requires 300 to 600 times atmospheric pressure, and even then the tanks take up more than five times the space of a gasoline tank.

A National Academies study [PDF] noted, "In even the best case of improved compression efficiency and high pressure on-board tanks, the energy, space, cost, and weight penalties are formidable." It goes on to recommend that the U.S. "halt efforts on high-pressure tanks and cryogenic liquid storage" since "neither approach can reach DOE targets for energy density". A Department of Energy review reached a similar conclusion.

• There are serious safety issues with hydrogen fuel since it’s among the most flammable substances known. It is vastly easier to ignite than gasoline, and leaks are much harder to detect and control. A cell phone or flashlight could ignite it, as could static electricity or an electric storm a few miles away.

Russell Moy, former Project Manager for hydrogen storage at Ford Motor Company, wrote about this in an article for the Energy Law Journal [PDF]: "Industrial experience has shown that 22 percent of hydrogen accidents are caused by undetected leaks, despite the standard operating procedures… of specially trained hydrogen workers. With this track record, it is difficult to imagine how the general public can manage hydrogen risks acceptably." Chemical Engineer Reuel Sinnar put it even more strongly [PDF]: "A hydrogen car as presently envisioned is a potential suicide bomb that cannot be detected by any of the standard methods that detect explosives."

• Producing hydrogen is expensive and energy-intensive [PDF]. The same energy currently used to create electricity would be used to create hydrogen, and today this mostly involves the use of fossil fuels (see House testimony of Dr. John Heywood of MIT).

Current methods using natural gas produce significant heat-trapping emissions, and there is a serious question of whether a renewable fuel used to create hydrogen wouldn’t be better used to replace electricity now generated from coal, since generating electricity is much more efficient than producing hydrogen power for vehicles.

• There’s no fueling station infrastructure for hydrogen. Building a hydrogen fuel infrastructure will be very expensive. A National Renewable Energy Laboratory report estimates the cost at $837 million [PDF]. Others say it could be tens of billions of dollars.

Companies hesitate to build something so expensive when there are no cars to use it. Similarly, automakers are reluctant to manufacture hydrogen cars when there’s no infrastructure, because consumers won’t buy them if they can’t fuel them. It’s a classic "chicken-and-egg" problem.

There’s another obstacle to infrastructure. Ideally, hydrogen would be produced in a central location so carbon emissions from its manufacture could be efficiently sequestered. But that isn’t set up yet, so initially the hydrogen would be created locally. No one wants to invest large amounts of money in an infrastructure that will be abandoned.

All these problems may be solvable, but it will take time. And you can’t necessarily trust the automakers’ predictions. In 2001, our automobile expert, John DeCicco, Ph.D., wrote an in-depth review of fuel cell vehicles [PDF] for the Society of Automotive Engineers. In it he noted that "Several automakers have pledged the introduction of fuel cell vehicles, including buses, by 2003-2005." It’s 2007, and beyond a few demos I don’t see them yet! Dr. DeCicco considers the hydrogen car an "utterly speculative proposition."

Maybe we’ll have hydrogen fuel cell vehicles by 2030, but in 20 years, who knows? Perhaps some new and better technology will come along, and research into hydrogen power will be abandoned. None of us can know which technology will be the future, but we do know this: the world can’t wait 20 years to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles. So while the hydrogen car is worth researching for the long term, the heavy emphasis placed on it by the Bush Administration is ill-considered.

So if you’ve been waiting for hydrogen cars to let you off the hook for buying a fuel efficient car and driving it smartly, time to reconsider! It’s the same old smart driving tips for now.

Editor’s note: We’re pleased to welcome Kira Marchanese to the Green Options blog! Kira, Director of Internet Communications at Environmental Defense, will be taking over for Jessica Bosanko, who’s moving on to other pursuits, including a wonderful-sounding trip with her partner to South America. We’re glad to have Kira on board, and very grateful to Jessica for her time and effort in contributing to Green Options.

Today’s post is by Tom Elson, from Environmental Defense’s Living Cities program.

If you spend time in a dense urban area like New York City, you know the frustrations of gridlocked streets: blocked intersections, horns blaring and tempers flaring. But there’s an invisible cost to traffic, too: the damaging health effects from breathing the air polluted by so many cars and trucks. Vehicles stuck in stop-and-go traffic produce up to three times the pollution of cars moving steadily.

But New York and other metro areas are on the road to clearer streets and clean air. Congestion pricing is one of the innovations that will help them get there.

The idea is simple: at times when the roads are busiest, drivers pay a premium to use them. Think of the way you buy an airline ticket. When you check fares, you get a wide range of prices depending on factors like when you want to fly and how many stops you’re willing to make. We know that flying at convenient times costs more, and we might take a red-eye to save money.

The concept is the same on the road. An electronic toll system collects the fee as drivers enter busiest sections. The system charges drivers more during the busiest times. Those who take mass transit or reschedule their trip can save money. (See more about congestion pricing.)

This isn’t a new idea. London started charging motorists to enter its central business district in 2003 and has seen traffic congestion cut by nearly a third. Sooty particles and nitrogen oxide pollution dropped by roughly a fifth each. Singapore, Stockholm and several cities in Norway have also reduced traffic, travel time and pollution.

The idea is still new enough in this country to raise questions, though, as last week’s debate in New York shows. Critics of congestion pricing worry that boundary neighborhoods – those just outside the pricing zone — will see an increase in traffic and cars trying to park there. Studies in London and Stockholm show otherwise. Those cities limited conflicts around the boundaries by issuing residential parking permits and creating park-and-ride facilities.

Commuters who live in areas with poor public transit fear not being able to drive – but revenue from collecting tolls is generally used to improve transportation. London, for example, raised hundreds of millions of dollars, which it invested in better transit such as new buses. Ridership rose dramatically, and bicycling increased. There, as in other places that have tried this system, skepticism gave way to enthusiastic support for the plan.

This year Mayor Michael Bloomberg embraced congestion pricing and unrolled a plan as part of his sustainability ‘greenprint’ for New York. A remarkably broad coalition of 140 civic, religious, health, business, labor and environmental groups supported the plan, despite strong opposition from some legislators. After intense negotiations, Bloomberg and state leaders agreed to consider a three-year pilot program.

New York City is one of nine finalists for $1.2 billion in federal grants to try congestion pricing and other traffic-busting incentives. Eight other cites — Atlanta, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Denver, Miami, Minneapolis, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle — are vying for funds by proposing a variety of traffic-reducing tools, from tolling and parking management to express buses to telecommuting support. New York’s is the most comprehensive, with specific traffic-reduction goals leading to substantial cuts in air pollution and real public health benefits.

You can help! If you live in one of the cities trying to implement smart traffic policies, contact your elected officials and ask them to support congestion pricing.

By Dr. Lisa Moore, Environmental Defense scientist. (Cross posted from Climate411.org.)

Photo: Green OptionsLast week, Yahoo! launched a new site that can calculate how much your carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions go down when you try their energy saving tips. It's fun to use, and I especially appreciate the snazzy interactive features because I know how hard people worked to build it. My colleagues and I provided the Yahoo! design team with the data they use in their calculations.

I hope you'll visit the site to see how simple changes in your house and car can save energy and lower emissions. But first, let me take you behind the scenes to the complicated world of carbon calculation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chicagoan Betty Schlatter, a self-described nonathelete, traded in her van for a bike.By Leslie Valentine, Writer/Editor at Environmental Defense

National Bike-to-Work Week is May 14-18, and there's no better time to start doing just that. Here's why. Besides the glorious spring weather, bicycling instead of driving pays off: you save gas money, avoid traffic jams, get exercise, help curb global warming pollution and often save time, too.

Consider these facts:

• If everyone who lives within 5 miles of their workplace left the car at home and cycled to work just once a week, we would prevent nearly 5 million tons of global warming pollution every year — that's like taking about a million cars off the road.
• Pedaling to work 30 minutes a day or even twice a week is a great way to get more exercise while helping reduce unhealthy air pollution. Nearly two-thirds of American adults are either overweight or obese, and cases of Type 2 diabetes are at epidemic proportions.

If you're hesitant about taking the leap, take some pointers from these five commuters who pedal to their jobs nearly every day in Austin, Chicago, Long Beach, CA, New York City and Washington, D.C. From a nurse-midwife who downshifted to a carless life and the photographer who uses his bike to lug pounds of gear to shoots, to the father of two young sons who bikes to work to live simply and economically – each has their own story to tell.

Biking used to be commonplace, and it's surging again

Early in the 20th century, bicycling to run errands or to work was common in the United States. Even in the 1940s, people often biked to make short utilitarian trips. But bicycling and walking increasingly took a back seat to driving in the 1950s and 60s, with the advent of the high-speed Interstate Highway System.
Today, bicycling to work is enjoying a rebirth. Some 2 million Americans cycle to work or use a bike as part of their job (nearly 10 million walk to work). Bicycling trips have doubled since 1990. (Read the full story.)

Growing bike-friendly options can entice more people to bike

National surveys indicate many more adults would bike to work if they had safe routes, secure parking and changing facilities. Cities and states across the country are responding. From spread-out cities like Houston to dense urban centers like Chicago and New York, more bike lanes, paths and greenways are in the works or on the drawing boards. (Take our survey and let us know if you bike to work, and if not, why not.)

Bike transit centers are proliferating across the country, too. They offer convenient, locked facilities to store bicycles at train and bus depots, so commuters can combine pedal power and mass transit.

But the picture is not all rosy. Although more people are bicycling more, more people are driving more too. The percentage of bicycling trips has barely budged in relation to driving.

That's where you come in. Consider biking to work at least one day a week and see what a difference it can make.

See how five other cyclists manage the daily commute.

By Mel Peffers, Project Manager of Environmental Defense Living Cities program

Cars in traffic in New York City

Last week, after Mayor Bloomberg announced his bold "greenprint" for New York City, Environmental Defense called for people to share stories about traffic. Arturo, a resident of Long Island City, Queens, New York, responded. He describes the perils of living on a busy high-speed thoroughfare:

"Trucks, buses, cars whiz by at high speeds. The green [light for drivers] is at least 90 seconds, perhaps longer, so vehicles are inclined to drive very fast. …. I play a game of chicken every time I cross. And during rush hours, other pedestrians like me are forced to jaywalk," he writes.

Besides the dangers of navigating traffic-choked streets on foot, Arturo's story illustrates dangers that are harder to see. "Soot accumulates on my windowsill and I clean that off on a regular basis. I was happy when I saw the local bus now employs hybrid-electric vehicles. My lungs will be thankful."

His story reflects the frustration and hope that many residents of vibrant, growing urban areas feel. Across the United States, city residents often face a daily dose of gridlock, smog and soot just going about their daily business.

Science has long shown that air pollution from trucks and cars is bad for your health. What's new is that over the last decade, scientists have looked more closely at street-level exposure and found a high-risk zone of about 500 to 1500 feet. If you live within that range of a heavily trafficked road, you face much greater risks than someone living farther away. The soot and fumes from cars, trucks and buses are linked to asthma, lung and heart disease and cancer. (More on how traffic is killing us.)

So how do we deal with future growth do if we already have problems now? Mayor Bloomberg's groundbreaking plan to make New York the world's cleanest, healthiest city can be a model for sustainable growth for cities across the country. How New York handles growth and achieves healthy air, less traffic, green buildings and energy efficiency — and more — will set an example for other cities around the world. (The director of our Living Cities program shares his thoughts on being on the mayor's advisory council.)

Part of the mayor's plan is a promising tool called congestion pricing. Places like London have used a pricing system to encourage less driving in the city at peak times, and achieved remarkable drops in both traffic delays and pollution. (More on congestion pricing and the results in other cities.)

We hope alarming stories like Arturo's about New York traffic are on their way out. But in the meantime, we'd like to hear from you, too. Do your kids go to school or play near a congested road? Tell us about your encounter with traffic.