Digital Sustainability

Looks like 3rd of June will be a red-letter day for electric motorcycles. Not only are we to have our hearts unbroken by Mission Motors, but it is also the exact same day that another of our two-wheeled favorites will ride into the spotlight. Moto Electra Racing has announced it will begin a journey from coast to coast with its Norton-styled retro-electro machine in a bid to make the record books for the quickest continental crossing by an electric vehicle.

The team will set out from Florida and drive to Santa Monica in about 3 days, with an estimated 20 stops for charging and cat-napping.

Inspired by a film about the first gas-powered automobile cross-country trip in 1903 – a time before gas stations and, for the most part, paved roads – the team plans to set out from the beach in Jacksonville, Florida and quietly hum their way to the Santa Monica Pier in California in about 3 days. That's about 2,500 miles along Interstate 10 at, or slightly below, the 70 mile-per-hour speed limit with an estimated 20 stops for charging and cat-napping.

In the saddle will be team stalwart Thad Wolff. The former AMA Superbike racer has lots of experience with the bike, having raced it in the TTXGP and claiming 2nd place overall in the North American 2011 season. He will be supported by team principal Brian Richardson and a group of students from James Madison University who will bring along a portable generator. The general strategy is to ride for two hours, then charge for one, being careful not to tax the batteries.

The bike itself is one sweet piece of work. Built around the famous Norton featherbed design, it is powered by an air-cooled AC motor and holds a battery pack which, while somewhat old, still holds an amazing 19 or 20 kilowatt-hours of energy (most comercially-available electric motorcycles offer about half that capacity, it's more than the 16.5-kWh in the Chevy Volt). While copies are not yet officially offered for sale, the team hinted in an email that it may be a possibility in the future

Digital, mobile and networked – changing media usage habits of modern society require the faster transmission of increasing vol-umes of data. Compared to the European standard, Germany lags behind in the expansion of the fiber-optic network, according to statistics from the FTTH Council Europe. Deploying new fiber-optic cables is expensive and difficult when there are natural or urban obstacles such as rivers or traffic junctions. Broadband radio links can help to overcome such critical areas, thereby facilitating the expansion of the network infrastructures. In rural areas they can be a cost-effective and flexible alternative to "Fiber to the Home".

Researchers have now set a new world record in wireless data transmission: For the first time, fully integrated electronic transmit-ters and receivers have been developed for a frequency of 240 GHz, which allows the transmission of data rates of up to 40 Gbit/s. This equals the transmission of a complete DVD in under a second or 2400 DSL16000 internet connections. Distances of over one kilometer have already been covered by using a long range demonstrator, which the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology set up between two skyscrapers as part of the project "Millilink". "We have managed to develop a radio link based on active electronic circuits, which enables similarly high data rates as in fiber-optic systems, therefore allowing seamless integration of the radio link", says Prof. Ingmar Kallfass, who coordinated the project at Fraunhofer IAF within the scope of a Shared Professorship between IAF and KIT. Since 2013, Kallfass is with the University of Stuttgart, where he continues to lead the project.

High frequencies enable fast data transmission

Using the high frequency range between 200 and 280 GHz not only enables the fast transmission of large volumes of data, but also results in very compact technical assembly. Since the size of elec-tronic circuits and antennae scales with frequency / wavelength, the transmitter and receiver chip only measures 4 x 1.5 mm⊃2;. The semi-conductor technology developed at Fraunhofer IAF, based on tran-sistors with high carrier mobility (HEMT), makes it possible to use the frequency between 200 and 280 GHz with active transmitters and receivers in the form of compact, integrated circuits. The at-mosphere shows low attenuation in this frequency range, which enables broadband directional radio links. "This makes our radio link easier to install compared to free-space optical systems for data transmission. It also shows better robustness in poor weather condi-tions such as fog or rain", explains Jochen Antes of KIT.

ICFF 2013 just kicked off in New York, and Team Inhabitat is on the scene to bring you the best sustainable designs from the nation's largest showcase of contemporary furnishings. Our first day of coverage turned up a great array of green design gems ranging from dazzling energy-saving LED lamps and chandeliers to furniture made from recycled plastic, repurposed propane tanks, and even salvaged bicycles. Read on for a first-hand look at our favorite finds fresh from today's show
!

LG Electronics’ advanced front-load clothes washers recently became the first in the world to meet the requirements of the new CSA sustainability verification service, which takes a broad, multi-attribute and holistic approach to assessing the environmental impacts of residential clothes washers.

The Sustainability Standard for Household Clothes Washers takes a multi-attribute approach developed using life-cycle assessment information along with other key factors influencing product environmental performance such as materials, manufacturing and operations, energy and water consumption during use, innovation, use of consumables and end-of-life management.

According to CSA Group, LG models WM8000HVA and WM8000HWA achieved the scores required to meet the new environmental standard, which verified the units following extensive testing and data analysis.

Aker Solutions has won a contract to perform the world’s first tests for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from a cement production plant.

The CO2 technology company won the award from Norcem, in cooperation with the European Cement Research Academy (ECRA). It did not disclose the contract’s value.

Aker Solutions says it will perform long-term testing on the actual flue gas to select the best chemical solvent for high-content CO2 flue gas at Norcem’s plant in Brevik, Norway. Aker Solutions’ in-house developed Mobile Test Unit (MTU) will perform the tests. The MTU is a CO2 capture plant that includes all processes and functions found in a large-scale commercial plant.

The companies say the project results will provide Norcem and its parent company HeidelbergCement information for future decision-making on reducing CO2 emissions and help the European cement industry understand the use of technology for future full-scale CO2 capture from cement production plants.

Satellite analysis by a Brazil-based NGO indicates that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon continues to pace well ahead of last year, when the government passed a weakened version of its law governing use of forest lands.

Imazon's near-real-time deforestation tracking system — known as SAD — detected 1,570 square kilometers of accumulated forest loss between August 2012 and April 2013, an 88 percent increase over the 836 sq km cleared during the year earlier period. However accumulated forest degradation was down by nearly a quarter, according to the system.

The Brazilian government's own tracking system suggests a more moderate rise in deforestation between the two periods. INPE, Brazil's National Space Research Agency, earlier this month released its numbers, which estimated forest loss between August 2012 and April 2013 at 1864 sq km, 14 percent higher than the 1631 sq km from a year earlier.
Read more athttp://news.mongabay.com/2013/0518-imazon-sad-update.html#Rmd0g7kj5ReEFyYX.99

In the world of motorized transportation, the global electric bicycle business is a pretty major concern.Navigant research recently published a detailed analysis of the industry, finding that in 2012, sales of e-bikes reached 29.3 million units worldwide, with 90 percent of the market residing in China. Here in America, the market is minute by comparison, with sales of only 53,000 – but manufacturers are increasingly taking an interest in the U.S. market, hoping to build on the potential growth in affordable transportation.

Last month we reported that major bicycle company Specialized was getting in on the action by launching its own e-bike, The turbo – while this month, established electric bicycle maker A2B, is relaunching its range of bikes under the new ownership of India’s Hero Eco Group.

First, a little history. A2B originally hit the market in 2008 in Europe and the USA, exclusively as an electric bicycle company under the ownership of Ultramotor. According to A2B’s new ownership, although Ultramotors were “technically brilliant, the organization did not have the business knowledge and experience to properly support its dealers and distributors.”

Enter Hero Eco – an Indian conglomerate that has been around since 1956, with 24 companies operating in 83 countries with 27 manufacturing facilities worldwide. Already established in the automotive and bicycle industries, and with experience selling electric scooters, Hero Eco took over A2B in late 2011. With the backing of the new holding company, A2B’s presence in the market will now have a little more muscle behind it.

Their range of e-bikes was relaunched in the U.S. in San Francisco earlier this month, and I got to test a few of them on the city streets around their 9th Street, San Francisco, U.S. headquarters – having a ton of fun in the process.

A team of international experts has drawn up the Soil Atlas of Africa — the first such book mapping this key natural resource — to help farmers, land managers and policymakers understand the diversity and importance of soil and the need to manage it through sustainable use.

They say that despite soil's importance, most people in Africa lack knowledge about it, partly because information about it tends to be confined to academic publications read only by scientists.

"There was an existing database on soil that had not been updated by soil science experts from Africa, so we asked them to provide us with new information, which we translated into a form understandable to key stakeholders," says Arwyn Jones, a member of the soil team at the Land Resource Management Unit of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, which produced the atlas.

The project began four years ago, and involved experts from the European Commission, the African Union and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The atlas was released at the meeting of the African Union and European Union commissions in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last month (25—26 April).

Robert Zougmoré, regional programme manager for West Africa at the CGIAR research programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, says the atlas displays the diversity of African soil for both agricultural and non-agricultural purposes.

"We documented all the different types of soils and mapped them so that our decision-makers at national and regional levels can use the maps to decide where to invest in terms of food production and urbanisation," he says.

"For example, using the atlas, we can identify regions such as central Africa, some parts of west Africa, and southern Africa where a type of fertile soil called vertisol — which maximises crop yields — can be found in greater quantities."

Zougmoré tells SciDev.Net that most African countries have national soil bureaus that are inadequately resourced, making it difficult to generate new soil information. He is now calling for more support from African governments.

Energy Saving Investments (ESI), an Equitix managed fund in which the UK Green Investment Bank (GIB) is a cornerstone investor, has announced a fund of £4.9 million for its first energy efficiency project. The funding will join a further £5.1 million investment provided by the Equitix Energy Efficiency Fund (EEEF) to replace inefficient heating systems with biomass boilers in both public and private community facilities.

The £10 million investment is being made through the energy services company Roundwood Energy Limitedwhich is responsible for financing, installing, maintaining and fuelling the new systems for a period of up to 20 years. The company is supported by its technology partner, Woodpecker Energy Limited of Yeovil, Somerset, which manufactures wood pellet and wood chip biomass boilers.

Non-domestic energy efficiency (NDEE) is one of the Green Bank’s priority sectors. The bank awarded the competitive fund mandate to Equitix to invest £50 million, matched by private investors, to drive investment in small-scale low carbon infrastructure requiring less than £30 million of financing. The investment could fund over 60 projects in both private and public sectors thereby saving customers up to 30 percent on their energy bills as well as reducing carbon emissions and supporting the green economy. Customers will not need to make an upfront capital investment in order to switch their heating systems to biomass and applications are now open.

“The Green Investment Bank is helping to fund energy efficiency measures for everyone from our largest companies, to individual households through the Green Deal” said Shaun Kingsbury, Chief Executive of the Green Investment Bank. “Today's announcement will provide a low-cost and straightforward way for a range of organisations like schools, leisure centres and local businesses to switch their old, inefficient and high emission boilers for new energy efficient biomass ones; saving energy, cutting emissions and saving them money.”

The project is expected to cut carbon emissions by around 150,000 tonnes over the 20 year life of the investment. Although Woodpecker is based in Yeovil, its boilers are manufactured in Northern Ireland and use ENplus A1 standard wood pellets produced in the UK. Organisations interested in switching to biomass should contact Roundwood Energy in the first instance.

When New York City opened registration for its much anticipated public bike-sharing program on April 15, 2013, more than 5,000 people signed up within 30 hours. Eager for access to a fleet of thousands of bicycles, they becameCiti Bike members weeks before bikes were expected to be available. Such pent-up demand for more cycling options is on display in cities across the United States—from Buffalo to Boulder, Omaha to Oklahoma City, and Long Beach in New York to Long Beach in California—where shared bicycle programs are taking root.

At the start of 2013, the United States was home to 22 modern public bike-sharing programs. By spring 2014, that number will likely double as a flurry of cities joins the more than 500 bike-sharing communities worldwide. (Read more about bike sharing around the globe here.) With the expansions of current programs and new openings in larger markets like New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, the nationwide fleet of shared bikes is poised to quadruple in the next couple of years, from nearly 9,000 to above 36,000. And with a growing list of American communities exploring the possibility of setting up bike shares, this number is expected to continue to climb.

The Formulec EF01 is a pretty sweet all-electric race car, but it's really been just a place holder for the vehicles that will eventually form the FIA Formula E Championship grid. Along with an announcement thatRenault will be a technical partner, the budding series has just released images of what we can expect the actual cars to look like when they take to the starting line. Think less Formula 3, and more Formula 1.

As it has been presented, the poetically-named Spark-Renault SRT 01E is a mix of mirror-like polished aluminum body work and carbon fiber struts and wings. Its aerodynamic package not only has the traditional elements that provide downforce and keep the wheels planted through the turns, but it also features a few touches like partially faired wheels to help keep the slipstream free of energy-robbing turbulence.

The collaboration is more than skin deep, too. According to Managing Director of Renault Sport Technologies Patrice Ratti, the French automaker will call on expertise derived from its experience in Formula 1 and its production of road-going EVs to keep the electrons in the drivetrain flowing properly. And we quote,

"Engineers from Renault Sport F1 and Renault Sport Technologies will collaborate with Spark Racing Technology team to optimize the electric and electronic layout and performance of the powertrain."

Besides the big partnership news, Formula E has also revealed that Bangkok, Thailand has been chosen as the ninth of ten cities that will host a race. Although it has a burgeoning auto-making industry, the Asian country lacks an international motorsport presence. This event should help raise that country's automotive profile and give the electric racing series one of its more interesting backdrops.

You can read the two official press releases by scrolling below, as well as view a clip of Formula E Holdings CEO Alejandro Agag discussing the concept of the series in a recent interview with the Financial Times

Preparing for next month's Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, Mitsubishi – the presenting sponsor of this year's PPIHC – has unveiled its entrant for the race: the all-electric MiEV Evolution II. Building off last year's MiEV-inspired entrant, the Evolution II has received numerous improvements, including a more powerful electric drive system, a lower center of gravity and even a more traditional racecar look. Driving a pair of MiEV Evolution II models this year will be Hiroshi Masuoka from Mitsubishi vehicle development and six-time PPIHC motorcycle winner, Greg Tracy.

Both MiEV Evolution II racers employ a quartet of electric motors (last year's car used just three), and output has been increased from 280 kilowatts (375 horsepower) up to 400 KW (536 hp). For improved handling, the cars' lithium-ion battery packs help provide lower centers of gravity, and both Masuoka's and Tracy's cars have received active yaw control, stability control and redesigned anti-lock braking systems. Hopefully, this will help them stick to the mountain better. As previously mentioned, even their look has changed, with less of a wide-body i-MiEV feel and more of a racecar appearance. We think the finished product would actually make for a pretty cool Le Mans Prototype racer, or perhaps an electrically powered rival for trackday cars like those from Radical.