For some reason, my Facebook account is not letting me write new notes. As I have this blog set up as a note feed, if I post here it WILL show up as a note in my Facebook account. Thus, for all to enjoy is my family’s favourite pancake recipe: Gingerbread Pancakes!
Recipe By: Pancakes and Waffles Cookbook
Serving Size: 4

Ingredients:

2 cups flour (whole wheat works great)
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cloves
2 eggs
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup buttermilk (see notes)
2 tbsp. molasses
1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled

Directions:

Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves into a bowl. Put the eggs and brown sugar into a second bowl and beat well with a whisk. Beat in buttermilk, molasses, melted butter, and 1/2 cup water.

Add the flour mixture and beat once or twice until almost smooth. Don’t overwork mixture – lumps are OK.

Heat a non-stick griddle over medium heat. Reduce the heat. Using a 1/4 cup measure pour batter onto griddle and spread with back of spoon. Cook until small bubbles appear on surface and underside is a golden brown. Flip and cook for another minute. Transfer to a plate and serve immediately or keep warm in a low oven. Delicious with maple syrup!

Notes:

Pour 1 tbsp. of lemon juice or vinegar into a 1 cup measure and fill with milk to make 1 cup of buttermilk substitute.

Double or triple this recipe to have lots of leftovers for a quick weekday breakfast. Freeze pancakes between pieces of wax paper. Defrost in microwave and pop in toaster for a few minutes.

An acquaintance of mine is wheelchair-bound. He uses a power chair to get around, and has adapted his vehicle such that he’s independently mobile. A few months back he posted a quick tale on his blog about how he was out by himself and got his chair hung up on the ramp of his vehicle. He had to violently rock back and forth to get off, which did the trick, but could have just as easily found him lying down in the mud. This got me thinking – would a roadside assistance-type service for wheelchair users be a viable business?

Full disclosure here, I have NO data on the number of wheelchair users in Canada – or anywhere else, for that matter. Until such a number can be quantified there is no hope of determining whether this could be a viable business or not. Regardless, I thought it an interesting idea, so I’m putting it out there to share. You want to have a go at making this a business? You have my blessing.

So the idea is to provide assistance to a wheelchair user on-demand. At first glance, this sounds pretty impossible on its own – how could you possibly afford to hire enough people to cover even a metropolitan service area? The idea came to me a few days later – outsource! What you’re aiming to do is dispatch someone on-demand to a known location… which is exactly what a taxicab service does. So instead of hiring your own service providers, you’d contract with cab companies to provide the service. All you have to do is provide the back end – the “emergency” number for members to call for assistance, a membership program, and the payment system (both from members and to the cab companies for supplying the manpower).

From here, there’s a lot more legwork to be done. What kind of membership model would customers prefer? Per use? Annual membership? I’d guess the latter… if you’re looking for peace of mind for your wheelchair use, chances are you’re in it for the rest of your life. What price point would someone pay for such a service? What amount of that will need to go to the cab companies for being at your beck-and-call? Lots of questions… that can be answered by someone wanting to have a go at this as a business.

It has been nearly two years since I last wrote here. Life, as it will do, happened, and the Sustainapedia got put on the back burner. My previosly-planned career change has not happened, and thanks to a fortunate job change, will not happen in the forseeable future. That means that the Sustainapedia doesn’t have the purpose or mission I started it for.

With that in mind, I may rebrand the Sustainapedia and repurpose it. What’s been added here will stay, but going forward posts will not likely have the same focus on sustainability. The exact focus to come is yet to be decided, and may be multifaceted. Time will tell.

To those that encouraged the Sustainapedia, I thank you. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed bringing it to you.

Very surely we’ve been trying to make our lighting in our house more energy efficient. Our foyer fixture has been on a dimmer for a number of years now, any new fixture we get has CFL bulbs in it, and old incandescent bulbs are being replaced with CFLs on a sporadic basis. There has been one light in the house that wasn’t being changed, and it was the one light that I really didn’t like: the 300W halogen ceiling fixture in my kitchen.

Yes, 300W. It’s a shameful amount of energy in terms of lighting, but when the original lower-wattage (“only” 200W, I think) burned out, 300W replacement bulbs were all I could find. The intensity of the light became simply too much, and I’d turn it off whenever possible. Truth be told, I hated the light it gave off.

On a recent trip to Ikea, my eagle-eyed wife spotted a new fixture similar to what we had, but instead of requiring a halogen bulb it had 3 standard sockets inside. Ikea being one of the first early full-scale adopters of CFL bulbs, they have a huge selection of same, which meant we were able to pick up a 3-pack of 11W CFLs (equivalent lumen output to a 60W incandescent) to go along with the new fixture.

Now we have the new fixture installed, and it gives off a wonderfully diffuse light that I love. What I love even more is the fact that we’ve trimmed our power use from 300W all the way down to a measly 33W. Is that great or what?

Well, it is… but at the same time, consuming our way to sustainability simply can’t happen. Did I do the right thing?

Let’s do some math. The new light fixture and bulbs cost $45 together. At the current rate I pay for electricity (5.3¢/kWh) that would have purchased 849 kWh. Having gone from a 300W light down to a 33W light, I’m saving 267W for every hour I have the light on. That means that I’ll have broken even when the new fixture and lights have been used for 3180 hours.

On one hand, that good. The CFL lights in there are good for 6000 hours, so they’ll last well beyond having paid for themselves and the light fixture. On the other hand, it may take me between 2-5 years to use the light that much.

So I did the right thing… sort of. Obviously, if it’s taking me a matter of years to recover spending $45, focusing on lighting efficiency improvements is hardly worthwhile. Yes, it’s “low hanging fruit”, and swapping out an old bulb with a CFL is something anyone can do. If you improved your vehicle’s efficiency by 1% you’d save way more in fuel than if you swapped out all of your lights for CFLs. Reducing your shower time, and/or installing a drain water heat recovery system would save a lot more energy in hot water heating. Turning down your thermostat, driving less, eating more local food… there is lots we can do, but for some reason swapping out our lights for CFLs is what we’re being told to do. I don’t get it.

At least I like the light fixture in my kitchen now.

During my final year in university, I was a member of the University of Waterloo’s Propane Vehicle Challenge team. This was the second year for the Propane Vehicle Challenge, but the first year for the pickup truck category. The Challenge: convert a pickup truck to 100% propane fuel use, focusing on emissions, fuel economy, range, and driveablility. Our team received a Dodge Dakota V8 and competed against teams from across North America. It was a great experience, especially as we won the top prize, beating out the previous year’s champions despite being one of the least-funded teams competing.

The glow of past victory aside, I find myself asking, “Why did we bother?” Nothing any of the teams did was extraordinary technically. All teams used off-the-shelf propane fuelling systems, with only the fuel delivery side being customized by each team. The fuel tank shape was novel, but everything else about it was entirely standard. Essentially, the challenge came down to how we tuned our vehicles. Nothing any one team did could not have been accomplished by any other company or organization involved in the challenge. So what was the point of it all?

In the years after my involvement, competition shifted from propane to ethanol, and then to “Challenge X” focusing on hydrogen power. Currently it seems that automotive challenges have taken a back seat to other recreational transportation challenges, such as the “Clean Snowmobile Challenge” that started fairly recently. Quite frankly I see challenges based on recreational vehicles as being somewhat technologically masturbatory – yes, they’re fun and have a “cool” factor, but what does it really accomplish? It’s sustainable transportation, but it targets a very small slice of the whole transportation pie.

Propane, natural gas, ethanol, hydrogen, electric… it’s all been done before. Private companies, student teams, and back-yard mechanics have been doing this stuff for decades. Heck, taxis have been running on propane forever. We don’t need any more proof-of-concept vehicles – we know we can power vehicles on pretty much any fuel source, providing you put enough effort into converting the vehicle. So why are these student teams being lead over ground already covered? Why are these challenge sponsors focusing on fuels whose only challenges, quite frankly, are either market acceptance or lack of infrastructure?

Were I to organize a new vehicle engineering challenge, I’d like to see student teams break new(er) ground with the following challenges:

1) Straight Bio-Oil Challenge

Some people run their diesels on straight vegetable oil, but only after fuel system modifications. There is debate about whether any currently mass-produced diesel fuel system can handle the different properties of vegetable oil (namely much higher viscosity). Why not develop a fuel system that is designed from the outset to run on bio-oil? What is bio-oil? Oil derived from any biological source, either vegetable or animal. Why not run on waste beef tallow, if it’s possible?

This would be, in my opinion, the most useful challenge by far. Making a diesel run reliably on straight vegetable oil would allow sidestepping turning vegetable oil into biodiesel, a process which currently requires toxic and dangerous chemicals, and increases the embodied energy of the fuel, decreasing its well-to-wheels efficiency.

The trick to this challenge will be in fairly weighing what fuel is used. Running virgin vegetable oil will be significantly less technically challenging that running a mixture of used vegetable oils and animal fats. The latter would have to address issues of oil cleanliness and contamination (water, chunks of fries, etc.) to ensure powertrain longevity. The fact that using used oils amounts to recycling a resource should also be accounted for. Cold soak testing will be key in any case, to make sure teams design for bio-oil’s low-temperature gelling (or solidifying) properties.

2) Producer Gas Challenge

During World War II, vehicles were converted to run off of a gas mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide called producer gas, or wood gas. Dump in a load of wood or wood chips, fire it up, and off you go. Of course, such conversions would instantly gum up today’s high-technology engines… or would they?

This challenge would be to build a safe producer gas reactor, and then mate it up to a suitable modern engine. This challenge would be rated based driveability, start-up time, emissions, fuel economy, and on how many different fuel inputs the vehicle could handle. Dry hardwood wood chips? OK, I guess. Agricultural wastes like straw and corn cobs? Great! Plastic medial waste or scrap tires? Outstanding!… so long as the emissions are too.

3) Steam Power Challenge

Somewhat similar to the Producer Gas Challenge, convert a vehicle to run on closed-loop steam power, powered by an exernal combustion unit. No, scratch that… powered by an external POWER unit; use combustion, stored energy, fission, or whatever. Points for efficiency, fuel economy, emissions, and diversity and sustainability of fuels the unit can use.

4) Gen Set Challenge

Take any of the above three challenges, and apply it to a generator. If we can have sustainable mobile powertrains, stationary ones should allow for even more creativity and flexibility, right?

The vehicles I would like to see be converted for any of these challenges would be one of the following:

• Class A transport truck
• Class D truck (dump truck, heavy delivery truck, etc.)
• coach or city bus
• any off-highway machine (excavator, backhoe, bulldozer, etc.)

These are the vehicles that use serious amounts of fuel and are operated orders of magnitude more than any family passenger vehicle. An SUV driven 20 000 km a year uses a fractin of the fuel that a transport truck logging a million kilometres a year does. Even near-stationary equipment like backhoes and excavators, while not moving much, run flat-out 8 hours a day (and sometimes many, many more), consuming loads of fuel too.

Unfortunately, with big vehicles come big expense, and it would be very unlikely that any university engineering team would have the space, infrastructure, or correct class of driver’s license to deal with any of those vehicles. So, the closest thing should be used instead:

• any heavy-duty vehicle with a diesel engine (pickup truck, panel van)
• skid steer loader
• small agricultural tractor

These vehicles would have a similar use pattern as the vehicles these challenges would ideally be applied to, just in a physically smaller (and thereby less expensive) package.

One benefit to these challenge programs is the experience the students get. Without my involvement in the 1997 Propane Vehicle Challenge I would have never had the opportunity to work on a vehicle, help test it, or compete against other teams from across North America. With the above proposed vehicle challenges, students will get the same kind of experience, but will also get to break new ground, write academic papers, deal with intellectual property and licensing, and do something to advance the state of sustainable transportation.

The question is, how does one start a student engineering challenge? If you’re flush with cash like DARPA or the Ansari X-Prize foundation, you simply put up a huge cash reward to the first team that can meet your target goal. If you’re a bit more modest with your finances, you find industry partners to sponsor the event, as the Propane Vehicle Challenge did with the U.S. Department of Energy, Chrysler, and ICG Propane. Of course, such industry partners would only be interested in such a venture if it promotes their industry and/or product. That may be tricky for the above challenges. No trickier than finding a wealthy backer, I suppose, but still not a trivial task.

One other way would be to grow a challenge as a grassroots event. Instead of luring teams to the competition with prize money, lure the sponsors to the competition with teams. All it would take is a dozen teams from across North America to opt to take up one of these challenges, and we’d have a viable competition. Sponsors would be much easier to get with existing teams with proposals and a draft set of competition guidelines than with only a good idea. So, who’s up for it? Are you an engineering student looking for a competition that better addresses sustainable transportation? Are you a gearhead that likes playing with alternative fuels? Are you running a racing team or service shop and looking to branch out into something bigger? Let’s see what we can start.

As it turns out, it was not biodiesel that was giving my New Beetle TDI issues. According to the dealer, there is a techical bulletin from Volkswagen on these vehicles that implicates a valve in the fuel system as the culprit. The small amout of gelling biodiesel may have simply prompted the valve to fail (causing fuel starvation, which I took as a gelled filter), but the vehicle was prone to that failure regardless of the fuel.

Now, I’m still nervous about using biodiesel in an unheated fuel system. The B100 I got actually turned solid below freezing, so it may have been (and likely was) produced from some pretty heavy feedstock (possibly tallow). All fuel is not created equal! So I’ll stick with petrodiesel for this winter, and consider any fuel heating modifications next spring/summer.

I still stand by my recommendations that you know how to change your fuel filter before you start using biodiesel, but rest assured that it was not biodiesel that was causing the vehicle troubles I’ve been experiencing.

Updated Nov 13/07: It wasn’t the biodiesel’s fault, after all.

I’m going to come right out and admit that I am getting rather disillusioned with biodiesel. At the outset, I was very keen to have a diesel vehicle that could run on biodiesel without any modification, or even waste vegetable oil should I decide to modify the vehicle. Well, that enthusiasm has been pretty much drained, and I’m pretty much ready to put a hold on any further biodiesel use for a while. The most frustrating part of it all is that everything I’ve experienced is avoidable, however due to the fact that biodiesel isn’t mainstream yet, you pretty much have to find this stuff out on your own.

Well, learn from me. Some good has to come of it. If you’re considering biodiesel, please read on…

Allow me to start by reiterating what I’ve already said on the subject of preparation before using biodiesel: buy a new filter, learn how to replace it, and THEN start using biodiesel. That still holds true, but I’ve now learned that there is another way to go about it that is even better.

Apparently it is possible to have a vehicle’s entire fuel system flushed out, which will clean all of the diesel gunk out, and thus largely prevent fuel filter clogging when you switch over to biodiesel (or a biodiesel blend). I have absolutely no idea how much it costs, but I’m willing to bet it’s under $300, which would have paid for itself in my case. To date I’ve spent $200 in dealer service (relating to the fuel filter), over $100 in towing, $60 in alternate transportation, and $100 of spare fuel filters. That doesn’t even begin to account for the time and frustration I’ve had in not being prepared to change my fuel filter. Flushing your fuel system of gunk should be the first thing you do to any vehicle you are considering using biodiesel in.

So, for those following along, here’s the NEW Must-Do list before running your diesel vehicle on biodiesel:

1) Have vehicle’s fuel system (tank and lines) flushed.
2) Purchase spare fuel filters.
3) Learn how to install said fuel filters (anytime, anywhere).
4) Start using biodiesel, and be prepared to use your spare filters.

I would also like to mention that the fuel filter my VW New Beetle uses has no way of telling you if it’s constricted due to clogging… except by way of making my vehicle lose power and stall out. There are many kinds of filters in the world that have built-in constriction indicators – why a fuel filter isn’t one of them, I don’t know. If I knew how to monitor the input and output pressure of my fuel filter, I’d rig up a warning light to tell me when to change the filter. That would be a LOT more convenient than trying to coast to the nearest parking lot to swap a filter out.

If that was the only issue, I’d probably just keep refining my fuel filter replacement technique and keep going. Unforunately, the fact of the matter is that biodiesel isn’t well-suited for year-round use in Canada’s climate, and that can have a direct impact on you.

The B100 I have is high-quality stuff. That is not in doubt (although it could be quite easily, be careful). It has been entirely clear and homogenous ever since I got it. However, when I had to change my fuel filter yesterday, I noticed that the B100 I keep in my trunk to fill new fuel filters got cloudy. When I had poured it in, it was clear, but in the week that it was in a Mason jar in my trunk, it clouded. What happened?

Chances are that cold weather happened. The one drawback to biodiesel is that its gel point (the temperature at which portions of it begin to solidify/gel) is much higher than that of petrodiesel. Gasoline and petrodiesel have been around for over a century, and have constantly been tweaked and improved in that time. Thus, we have fuels that are equally useful in Manitoba in the middle of February as it is in Arizona in the middle of August. Biodiesel doesn’t have as much going for it – yet. There are many, many feedstocks it could be made from. It’s not widely available commercially yet. It simply doesn’t have the century of development behind it that gasoline and petrodiesel do, and it’s compounded by the fact that it can be made from a huge variety of virgin, used, or waste vegetable and/or animal fats.

It would be a simple matter to get around these issues: a heated, insulated fuel tank and heated fuel lines would put biodiesel on pretty much equal footing as petrodiesel in terms of useability across a temperature range. Deal with the petrodiesel gunk issue, and you’ve got a level paying field. Unfortunately, no vehicle I know of comes with an insulated, heated fuel tank (although I have heard that some Mercedes vehicles have heated fuel lines). Retrofit is an expensive proposition, and again because there isn’t the century of experience with biodiesel, finding expertise to do such a retrofit for you isn’t as simple as looking it up in the Yellow Pages.

Where does that leave me? Disillusioned. I was SO gung-ho to use biodiesel, and it’s given me a small dose of bragging rights and a huge amount of frustration. For now I just can’t justify using any more biodiesel, especially with the cold weather slowly creeping in. Biodiesel (in conjuction with my lack of preparation) has now stranded me twice and my wife once, and I’ve only just used 40L of it. Steep learning curve? Maybe… but it’s enough to make me wonder if I want to climb anymore.

Don’t let my experiences dissuade you from running biodiesel in your vehicle. If you are going to do so, however, I STRONGLY urge you to heed my advice such that you may avoid the issues I’ve had to suffer. You learn the most from making mistakes, but I firmly believe that you can still learn from other’s mistakes too. Learn from mine, please!

The cohousing group I am a part of, Laurel Creek Commons is developing quite nicely. We’ve approved our Vision Document, and are sinking our teeth into a Mission Document, membership policy, and other big matters. However, one issue seems to loom large in all of our minds: location. Do we as a community want to locate ourselves in an urban/suburban area, or a more rural/agricultural setting? No small question.

My personal preference is to look for agricultural land. It provides us with room to grow as much food as we could possibly need in a post peak oil world (when it finally comes), first and foremost. It is also two orders of magnitude cheaper than urban land. Extra space will also allow us to become more energy-independent (if not entirely so) without worry of lot line restrictions or by-laws, not to mention the much smaller amount of solar exposure an urban lot gets as compared to a rural acreage.

Of course, those are not the only considerations to where to build. Land stewardship is part of Laurel Creek Common’s vision, and so we have to determine what is best for the land.

The term “sprawl” has entered our group’s discussion in terms of locating rurally. I agree that urban sprawl is not a good thing to perpetuate. (In fact, we are being faced with exactly that on Waterloo’s West Side right now, with three subdivisions being pushed into development over the region’s moraine.) However, I wonder if our group’s purchasing and development of rural land could really be considered “sprawl”.

In your typical subdivision sprawl, the bulldozers come in, pile up the topsoil, flatten everything, utilities are dug in, kilometres of roads entomb the now-barren earth, the land subdivided into tiny parcels, and then hundreds of houses are put up. Mature trees, if they did exist are gone, not to return for decades to come. Topsoil is returned only in minute quantities if at all, and put over highly compacted earth that is now littered with construction debris and garbage. The land (generally former crop land or pasture) is gone, never to return.

What Laurel Creek Commons is wanting to do is very different, however. Assuming we go rural, I see us purchasing approximately 100 acres, 98% of which we would very likely not be developing. The possible land uses in our hands would be naturalization or farming (based on organic and permaculture principles), but it won’t be bulldozed and turned into a strip mall. Our proposed final community size is around 30 dwellings, which can be built on 2 acres, based on existing cohousing developments (Ecovillage at Ithaca, Windsong Cohousing). Two acres may sound like a lot, but that is roughly the same footprint that one farm house, a barn, and a driving shed occupy. Is that sprawl? Not if all of the currently aerable land stays intact.

Another point to consider is what is truly sustainable in terms of land use. One acquaintance of mine likes to consider sustainability as being the “carrying capacity” of the land. By that he meant, if you walked out into the middle of the wilderness, how much wilderness would it take to keep you alive, just by living off of what is there (the edible flora and fauna)? That amount of area has a carrying capacity of one person. Of course, through agriculture you can significantly increase the carrying capacity of the land, but there’s likely a point at which said agriculture cannot be sustainable – it will deplete the soil, the water, drive out native plant species, whatever.

Right now pretty much any agricultural land in South-Western Ontario is being farmed using modern techniques (and equipment and chemicals), which I would argue falls under the “not sustainable” category. Huge monocultures of crops taking up every last square meter of land, multiple crops being grown in the same field over one growing season, no place for native species (flora or fauna), and the whole thing mechanically worked over within an inch of its life. A recent article in Scientific American goes so far as to say that agriculture may be the “largest threat to biodiversity and ecosystem function of any single human activity”.

In my vision of our community’s future, any land that we’d have would be brought back into being sustainable, yet still having an increased carrying capacity. The total amount of agriculture would drop tremendously, and the agriculture that would happen would be done with organic, permaculture techniques that would rebuild the soil and promote future soil health. Naturalization and the re-introduction of native species would allow the remainer of the land to heal and reclaim some of its natural, wild roots. In short, we’d be improving the land, and the regional biosphere in general.

The only aspect about locating on former agricultural land that remains distasteful is the lingering worry about essentially taking one farm out of production, forever. Somehow, that just seems wrong, denying humanity the food that could be produced on that land. With some thought, that worry is dispelled quite quickly.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that biofuels are coming on very strongly in the automotive sector; both biodiesel and ethanol are being promoted to no end, with some governments mandating minimum levels of biofuels within the next decade. The question you must ask is, “Where are these biofuels coming from?” In the case of biodiesel, some of it is coming from processed waste vegetable oil. That is an excellent use of what would otherwise be a waste product. However, biodiesel is also made from virgin oil, most preferably rapeseed (canola), as well as other varieties. Ethanol can be made from any feedstock with sugar in it, the current favourite in North American being corn. With all these formerly food-only crops being diverted into producing biofuels, do you see any food shortages? (Would a corn-burning pellet stoves be on the market if we needed all the corn we could produce?) No – we are producing way too much food, so much so that farmers leap at the opportunity for another market for their produce. In other words, taking one small farm out of mass production forever will not harm the world’s food chain, but will positively affect the biosphere.

The conclusion I’m drawing is probably crystal clear at this point – our cohousing group should purchase a rural piece of land, and focus our land stewardship goals there. I’ll admit that I may have missed something in drawing this conclusion, so if you have a counter-point, I’d love to hear it. In the meantime, I’m going to go check some agricultural properties on MLS.

I’d noticed over the past few days that the tire on our other vehicle was looking a little soft. With the only inflating device I own being a bicycle pump (a really cheap one at that), and it being the vehicle that I drive the least frequently, there wasn’t much I could do about it until I could get it to an air compressor at a gas station. Well, what an eye opener that turned out to be.

The first station I tried had an air compressor, but it had recently been converted from a free push-the-button-and-fill type to one that requires a 50¢ donation to a select charity. That’s a nice gesture, but it’s so rare for me to carry cash these days, let alone actual change, I had to take a pass and keep driving on my under-inflated tire. The next station I came to (and there aren’t all that many on the West side of Waterloo) was the same deal: 50¢ to inflate. Again, I had to carry on. Thankfully the 3rd station I came to had an air hose that was free to use and I could re-inflate my dreadfully low tire and top up all the others.

(Oh, in case you’re considering it, don’t bother filling up with nitrogen. It’s purely a marketing scheme. You benefit from having no moisture in your tire that could cause bigger temperature-based pressure fluctuations, but for the cost it’s really, really not worthwhile. The proof? The tires I had to refill had all been filled with nitrogen in the spring, on a vehicle that was brand-new in October.)

This little adventure in trying to fill my tires got me thinking. I pulled in to (and quickly pulled away from) two perfectly good air compressors, simply because I didn’t have 50¢ on me at the time. I’m also cheap, and knowing that free air station do exist I’d much rather find one than shell out even a couple of coins. If that is my reaction, I have to guess that there is a segment of the population that is also in one or both of the two boats; no change, and/or stingy enough not to want to spend 50¢ on tire inflation.

So, for the lack of half a dollar, how many people are driving around on underinflated tires? How much less mileage are they getting as a result? How much bigger is their emissions/carbon footprint because of this? And is the change that these air compressors are eventually donating to charities really worth the net emissions and carbon increase? I’m going to guess not.

Gas stations are already footing the bill for the electricity used to power these pumps. One way or another, they’re giving power away for free. By putting even a minimal cost on operating the pumps, this creates a barrier that some consumers are either not willing or unable to overcome. Thus, having air compressors cost anything basically amounts to having more people driving around on underinflated tires for longer than they would otherwise. Thus, my conclusion is that all air compressors should be free.

What of the charities? Make the donation optional, if you want, but don’t make the air compressor’s operation dependent on a donation. If we look at the larger good, having more tires at proper inflation levels is probably going to do more than a hanful of change going to a charity will. Call me pessimistic, but that’s how I see it.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking to top up your tires in Waterloo for free, the Shell station at Westmount and Father David Bauer Drive offers free air, and last time I was there (admittedly a couple months ago) the former GTO station at the corner of Columbia and Phillip (now also a Shell? I forget) provided free air. Once you’ve got your tires inflated and you’re feeling good about saving gas and reducing your emissions, send $5 to your favourite charity. Then everyone wins.

As I recently reported, I’m getting great fuel economy with my New Beetle TDI. Since starting my commute between Waterloo and Stratford late last year I’ve managed to improve my fuel economy from 8.0L/100km down to 6.5L/100km through driving style changes, and then down to 4.9L/100km by switching to a more fuel-efficient vehicle. It certainly seems like I’m heading in the right direction, but I’m not entirely convinced that’s correct. My fuel economy numbers are great right now – but is fuel economy the right metric to use?

In a world where everyone drives, fuel economy is a good starter metric. If we can get people to start tracking their fuel economy, chances are they will start looking for ways to improve. That’s good from a dip-your-toe-in-the-water point of view, but looking towards true sustainability, we have to look at a different metric: total fuel use.

I now use about 5L/day in fuel to get to work and back. Assuming I work 5 days a week for 50 weeks a year, that means I use 1250L of fuel per year. Now look at a hypothetical example of someone driving a Hummer to and from work. Assume they’re getting an abysmal 20L/100km, and driving 20km round-trip 5 days a week for 50 weeks a year. Their fuel use is actually only 4L/day, or 1000L of fuel per year. All else being equal, who is driving greener?

Yes, I realize that instead of driving a Hummer they could downsize to.. well, just about anything would be downsizing… and reduce their fuel use even more. That isn’t the point. The point is that regardless of their fuel economy, they are using less fuel annually than I am in my biodiesel-burning Beetle. Consequently, their carbon footprint is actually smaller than mine. Like it or not, using less total fuel trumps better fuel economy.

There are complications to using total fuel use as a comparitive metric, such as how you’d count carpooling or taking mass transit, but these issues are no worse than if you are using simple fuel economy numbers. Short of using a full carbon emissions grading system, you’re not going to be able to track absolutely all the fuel used on your behalf. Nor should you try at this point – the idea is to shift your viewpoint from how much fuel you are using per unit distance to how much fuel you are using per year. By doing so, the amount of driving that you do will be included in the measurement, which is an important part of how much fuel you use in total.

I’d like to be able to reduce my daily fuel requirements, period. The only way to do that is to move closer to work, telecommute, or find a job that is closer to home. Deciding and implementing that change will be a lot trickier than the purchase of a fuel-efficient vehicle. In the meantime, the best I can do is to use a biodiesel blend to reduce my transportation-based net carbon emissions.