Jay Leno’s garage (he’s a car and motorcycle nut) has 30 kW of solar power on the roof. Yes, Jay Leno has net metering. It cut his monthly electric bill from $3,000 per month to around $180. What is that, around 6% of his original bill? Nice.
Oh yes! and there are fancy cars in the video, too.
Speaking of cars I had a girl moment here, with the next video. Or maybe just a moment. The truth is, a lot of folks aren’t interested in going green unless they can keep to certain, um, performance stands. I guess you would say.
Many of these performance standards appear to revolve around their cars. Evidently if you can drive it faster and get to the finish line before anyone else, that’s good.
However, since many of the guys I asked to watch these clips said some version of “WOW!” I am posting them. Thus here is an electric car beating a Dodge Viper off the line in a short sprint. I’m not sure how affordable it is to power a car with thousands of laptop batteries but it did win the race.
To turn this into a slightly more educational episode, I will simply note that vehicle emissions (created by combustion of the fossil fuel, gasoline) are responsible for almost a quarter of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. Finding a way to power the transportation network without fossil fuels is thus pretty important.
Videos courtesy of CEP intern Ben Morgan.
— Maril Hazlett, www.climateandenergy.org
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