Saving gas at the pump helps the environment too

Gasoline is volatile hence prone to vaporization. The smell from your tank, when first opened, is that of trapped and pressurized gasoline vapors escaping. Also when you pump, the splashes within the fuel tank encourages fumes to escape, which is why all pumps in gas stations in the United States have caps on them. Recently, I learned about a way to save gas, that I have not heard of, so perhaps AskPatty readers may also want to learn about it. To get the maximum bang for your buck at retail gas station, here are some tips I received from a forwarded email, which I have since checked against other sources online to verify its claims.

Firstly, pump when temperature is lower, like in the early part of the day or later at night. The reason being, when the ground temperature is cooler, the gasoline in the underground storage tanks is more condensed, hence you get more of what comes through the pipe. Remember physics? When it is colder the molecules within the vapor move less and are thus more densely packed together in the same volume. So you get more gasoline molecules per gallon! Gasoline expands 1% per Fahrenheit change. Diesel? 0.6%. However, beware that the underground storage tank is huge and more insulated than air, so the temperature does not change as much. This impact is more notable between summer and winter, but then you can't not use gas in the summer. Take this tip with a grain of salt.

Anyway, the science and politics behind it is more interesting. Temperature compensation is used by the petroleum industry when calculating production amount, and when filling up trucks, but NOT at the retail pump. A quick Google search reveals a rather active debate on this topic. It seems that temperature compensation at retail pumps happens in Canada (calibrated to 15C), and in Hawaii (80F), but such is not the case nation-wide. And if you live in the colder state, you benefit more. Download temperature_compensation_slides.pdf .

This means that depending on the temperature (and altitude too... I would guess), a gallon is not a gallon.

Secondly, set nozzle on low. Those little notches to rest the nozzle when you hands get tired of squeezing them come in three settings -- low, medium, and high. How hard you squeeze the nozzle also affects how much gasoline is vaporized. These vapors get sucked back through the pump via a parallel vapor return system that returns the gasoline vapor to the underground storage system. This system is needed to prevent air pollution and to protect consumer health. The number at the pump may still be running forward as it dispenses liquid gasoline, but the extra churn created by setting the nozzle on high returns vapor to the gas station storage that you don't get credit for! (Do you know that gasoline vapor contains VOC, or volatile organic compounds, such as benzene, toluene and 1,3-butadiene, that are harmful to your lungs and cause cancer in the long run? These compounds also contribute to ozone, smog, and brown haze of summers.)

Thirdly, fill up regularly, e.g. when your gas tank is around half full (or empty -- depending on what type of outlook you have :-P ). This reduces air space where vapor can form. Since gasoline is volatile, it evaporates faster than you can blink... the more air space, the most you lose when the gas cap is popped open. This problem is prevented in industrial storage tanks via the use of "floating roof", which rises and falls with the liquid level inside the tank. Floating roofs are considered a safety requirement as well as a pollution prevention measure for many industries including petroleum refining.

Fourthly, don't overfill.
When you try to overfill a little to be safe, you ain't getting more gas if your station is equipped with vapor recovery systems. This is because when the gas pump automatically shuts off, a vapor lock blocks more gas from entering your car. Excess gasoline will just be sucked back into the storage tank, even if the meter is still running forward.

This EPA website sums it up succintly as well as having nice graphics that illustrates it. Over-topping wastes money, pollutes the environment, and ensures the next person using the pump pollutes too.

If all these steps sound complicated, you are not alone. But with gasoline prices closing in on $4 in California, it makes me willing to adopt some of these new behaviors. Plus, now that I know better, it is just hard to worry about the impact of these vapors to my health... I won't do this just to save money -- the amount saved is decent but quite negligible (estimated $30-$50 per gasoline car per year, or $400-700 per diesel truck per year) but I will definitely be more careful with these vapors for the sake of my health and for the health of those in my car.

An hour of darkness

Here's an interesting activity to help spread the word on energy use reduction. At locations around the world, Earth Hour is holding a 1-hour voluntary blackout event to reduce the load on the grid. In the US, the next event is this Saturday, March 29, 2008 at 8 p.m. local time wherever you are. They suggest that you do it solo, or invite friends and family to join the vigil. More than 100 cities across North America will participate, including the US flagships–Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco and Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

Originally created by the WWF in Australia in 2007, it has grown quickly into events all around the world.

IMO, this is a good exercise for several reasons:

1. Trying to turn off all power usage at home or at work is an exercise in awareness. It may surprise us how many appliances, outlets we take for granted. Turning then off in one exercise shows the aggregate effect.
2. Having a community turn-off event like this can help demonstrate how much power we typically use during that hour. Each household's usage may not seem like a lot, but it all adds up. It is a great community awareness tool, and again, shows the aggregated impact of concerted efforts.
   

If you are not free at that time, you can just pick an hour when you are, and try going through this exercise. Might be a fun thing to do with the family (at home), with colleagues (at work), or with a group of kids (at school).

A Twist for A New Year Resolution

As originally published on AskPatty.com, under the title "Women and Cars: The Psychology of Global Warming".

Here is an entertaining New Year resolution that we women could adopt to help fight climate change. What’s more, it seems like it will makes for a lively conversation topic with girlfriends!

Recently, Britain’s top government scientist, Professor Sir David King of Cambridge University, was quoted as saying that if women stop admiring guys with fast and sexy cars, the world could be a greener place. An advocate for individuals to assume more personal responsibilities in fighting climate change, he was asked at a lecture by a young woman what she could do. His advice? “Stop admiring young men in Ferrari's.” Instead, admire people who conserve energy.

What an interesting take. Although a bit flippant, he does have a point. Our mindset determines the kind of world we live in. It is all in the attitude.

Personally, I too am an advocate for individuals being more aware of the impact of their personal actions on the environment. That was the reason I originally started writing my blog. Little decisions that we make regarding our choices in daily life can make a huge difference, even if the benefits are not readily apparent. After embarking on my personal journey for making changes in my personal life to be more sustainable, I found that every little action became a little seed that further opened my eye to more possibilities in the world. I kept learning about the world, which is fun, and renew the sense of awe that I had lost after childhood.

Mother Theresa once said, “Don’t wait for leaders. Do it individually, one person at a time." Personally, I made some small changes that added up to a lot, in the end. It started with being conscious of my car usage and writing a blog about the topic (which happily got me a gig writing for AskPatty). I have learned so much about alternative cars and fuels. Then I converted to solar power (thanks to my fiances' persistence), requested a worm bin for composting as Christmas gift, and enrolled in a sustainable MBA program so I could be in jobs that make a difference. Each step made me feel good, and each step was a learning experience. This Christmas, I gave green services as presents (e.g. GreenDimes.com, Kiva.org) instead of goods, after watching the short movie “The Story of Stuff”. So Professor King’s suggestion was exciting to me, because unlike my green adventure so far which was mainly stuff-related, he is suggesting some psychology to go with it.

Obviously, Professor King’s quote angered Ferrari owners and sports car racers, which is understandable. But the fact remains -- those fast cars have really low mileage. That means more fossil fuel used, which is the greatest contributor to greenhouse gas. (Click on the graph below for the breakdown.) However, if electric sports car, such as the Tesla Roadster are more widely used – I think Professor King will approve of women admiring such race car drivers. :-) Well, really there is nothing wrong with liking the look of muscle cars. In fact, I admire the look of the Lotus and Lamborghini very much. However, there is no waay I will let my vanity contribute to climate change. I strongly agree with the professor that we all have levers. Similar to the concept of voting with our purses, we can vote for goodness in the world with our heart. He said: admire guys who are into a sustainable lifestyle. I like that. We women are known to be emotional, so why not let our emotions help fight climate change?

Interestingly, the article also mentioned that although 77% of the population in U.S. believe in climate change, only 40% believe that it is due to human activities. However, if you look at the EPA figure below, the chart clearly shows that human-related activities, especially transportation and electricity contribute the most to greenhouse gases. Now, even if you think that the professor’s comment is a little chauvinistic, don’t you think he has a point?

Pie Chart: This graph clearly shows the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emission, from human activities.

Another interesting concept: "Ecological Debt Day"

As originally published on AskPatty.com, with the title, "What is Your Ecological Footprint?"

The Footprint Network tells us that this year, we have finished consuming all the natural resources the world produces for the year, on Oct 18. Globally we humans now requires 1.3 planets to support us. In other words, we are not living sustainably. We are borrowing resources from future generation in order to cover all our consumption needs today. This calculation is made by calculating humanity’s Ecological Footprint (its demand on cropland, pasture, forests and fisheries) and compares it with global biocapacity (the ability of these ecosystems to generate resources and absorb wastes).

The Ecological Debt Day has been creeping earlier on the calendar. According to current calculations, humanity’s first Ecological Debt Day was December 19, 1987 - the first time we spend more than earth can replenish. Since then, our eco-footprint has continued to grow, and we are exhausting the world's natural supply earlier and earlier each year.







This reminds me of the glaciers I saw in Alaska. According to the park ranger, the melting of these glaciers are significantly faster each year in the past few years. The amount that used to melt in 3 months is now melting in a week. Apparently, within a decade, most of the glaciers up north will be gone. This very visible impact of our increasing demand on earth’s capacity to support life is scary stuff. However, since each of us contributes to the problem, we can each do something about it. We pretty much owe it to our grandchildren, don’t we? Borrowing against their bank of future natural resources just to satisfy our own personal needs today for more stuffs, is pretty irresponsible of us.

Since we are spending a deficit of 30% in natural resources this year, let's see what that means closer to home. Say you are spending 30% more money than you earn each month, and you keep on with it, you will need to constantly borrow against those credit cards to finance yourself. The lifestyle may seems good in the short-run because you can keep buying the things you want soooo much to have, but what are you doing to yourself in the long run? You will need to work forever, just to pay the interest and minimum payments. You will never get out of debt. Is the short-term worth doing? Definitely not. The only solution then is to immediately start spending below your earnings so that you can make a dent on already accumulated debt.

Now the forests, oceans, soil, climate, and air around us do revive themselves so we have been taking them for granted somewhat. They provide services necessary for our lives, such as oxygen, food sources, medicinal sources, and various cleaning services that keep our water supply potable and available. There is no “Ecological Debt” credit card statement in our mailbox to remind us. However, there are plenty of evidences of them suffering. Scientists are most worried about ecological overshoot, when a natural system is so taxed that it cannot recover by itself. Remember the collapse of the Great Banks fisheries off the Atlantic Coast of Nova Scotia in 1992, forcing its closure? The Atlantic cod fish stock was decimated.

I found an intriguing competition by Planet2025.tv, called the Ecological Debt Day video competition ending Jan 31st, 2008. They, along with Footprint Network, are trying to get the word out on the concept of ecological overshoot. Perhaps you can think of an innovative way to describe overshoot by tying the concept into your daily life -- e.g. commute, home, or work.

While the footprint concept seems to be related to the renewable capability of planet earth, I think it is relevant to an automotive blog, since our cars are the biggest contributors to GHG emissions, which taxes our atmosphere's capability to regulate earth's temperature and air quality properly.

How Good is Ethanol for the Environment?

As originally published on AskPatty.com at Thanksgiving, 2007.

Ethanol is all the rage in some circles now as an alternative fuel for our cars. Midwest America is especially enthusiastic about it because the agricultural economy can benefit from it. Brazil has successfully built a national industry based on sugarcane ethanol and biofuel cars. How good is ethanol really, for the environment?

The hope is that ethanol can potentially produce many more benefits compared to oil. Farmers, obviously, are eager for the ethanol economy because it expands the market for their crops. Midwest America hopes that ethanol will help restore many rural agricultural communities perhaps even making them profitable enough so we can do away with government subsidies one day. That's the dream.

Ethanol has the potential to help nations achieve energy independence, reducing dependency on foreign oil. For example, Brazil announced last year that it has weaned itself off of oil, after 10 years of intensive effort in encouraging the budding ethanol industry to mature. This is a hopeful development. Imagine if China and India and USA goes energy independent! This would definitely change the geopolitical picture of our world. Indeed many countries with agricultural economy create enough agricultural wastes to produce certain amount of domestic ethanol fuel sources. Brazil used its sugarcane stalks leftover from its sugarcane processing industry. Closer to home we have weed grass and corn stalks in abundance.

Ethanol proponents also claim that it creates no net addition to the world’s carbon emission. Plants are carbon sinks, meaning they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere to grow, so when we burn biofuel, we are simply releasing what it had absorbed. How true is this? A recent National Geographic article explored this quite effectively, in my opinion.

The gist of the article is that it is important that the right agricultural product is used for producing ethanol. The drawback of our national ethanol picture today, is that, it takes herbicide, machines, land, and lots of water to produce corn and soybean which generates most of our ethanol today. This creates competition with food supply (think cereal and feedstocks). Even if we turn all our soybean and corn supply into ethanol, we can only replace 12% of our gasoline and 6% of our diesel. The article also said that there is no net gain in fossil fuel replacement by moving to corn ethanol because it takes as much gasoline to produce the amount of corn needed. Additionally, to produce enough corn as ethanol feedstock, we will need to plow into increasingly marginal lands.

Biofuel According to Nathanael Greene, a senior researcher with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the key is to figure out how to make fuel from plant material other than food: cornstalks, prairie grasses, fast-growing trees, or even algae. Brazil did a great job in this area by converting the agricultural waste products from their massive sugarcane industry into fuel. These would have ended up as waste anyway, so finding another usage for them is a great example of whole-system thinking. As a result of their forward-thinking approach, 85% of Brazilian cars now run on alcohol, and although most have flex-fuel ethanol-gasoline engine, the price advantage of sugarcane ethanol in Brazil means that many haven’t visited the gas station for years. That's something I'd like to have for the sake of my ever diminishing wallet! Still although the ethanol picture in Brazil is rosier and definitely more sustainable than that of the United States, it is not without problems. Pressure for deforestation because of acreage expansion, burning of cane to prepare fields for harvesting, and worker exploitation remain issues to be solved.

Some groups are working on taking the food chain out of the picture entirely. This seems to be most promising path for the U.S. ethanol progression. Cellulosic ethanol, made from plants with high-level of chains of sugar molecules in the plants’ cell walls, is currently hailed as great replacements for soy and corn sources. These alternatives are none other than the deep-rooted perennial prairie grasses like switchgrass or buffalo grass, sawdust, and other non-food stalks and leaves (e.g. cornstalks). The trick is to make processing them cheap enough to be competitive with other fuel sources.

In sum, the ethanol picture is complex. It is an alternative for now, in competition with electric and hydrogen fuel cell to power our vehicles. The eco-footprint argument for ethanol is still murky and will probably remain contentious for the next few years. As voters and consumers, it is important that we continue to educate ourselves on the total impact of each fuel alternative, as billions and billions of dollars are being poured into each. Which one will help us reduce our greenhouse gas and carbon footprint the fastest? How long can we afford to wait before having a real solution to power our car more sustainably? The climate crisis is here, and we can’t afford to fool around for years until a solution is found. We need market solutions that will make a significant dent on the climate crisis, TODAY, so we better spend our precious R&D dollars and time wisely.

If you haven’t seen the news yet, IPCC, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has just given us the last warning on climate change in its final report as reported by NYTimes this past weekend. Even in its cautious and measured tone, IPCC has declared global warming as "unequivocal." That’s scary stuff.