Getting (up to) PACE
In the last issue of Odd Green Fridays, I let you know about a new energy-efficient mortgage program called Michigan Saves. It's pretty cool, but it's only for residential properties. Suppose you own a commercial building and you want to make some energy improvements. If you're in Ann Arbor...well, you're in luck. 
Ann Arbor is pioneering a new state-enabled program called PACE, which stands for Property Assessed Clean Energy. Through this program, an energy contractor will:- come look at your building and provide an energy audit;
- suggest ways to lower your costs with the highest payback energy-efficient improvements;
- hire trades to do the improvements;
- and guarantee that the money you spend on those improvements will be made up in energy savings over time.
With the right improvements, you can save through lower energy bills because you are consuming less energy. Clean energy.
So it's good for you, good for the planet and it's good for the region, as the program will create jobs, stimulate the economy, and lower the operating costs for local businesses.
I am going to get up to PACE right here and on this PDF. Then I'm going to contact Wendy Barrott at wbarrott@a2gov.org or at 734-794-6430 x43724.
Special mortgage helps green up your home
I love it when a green innovation enters my own profession. There's an exciting, smart new program called Michigan Saves that helps home owners and buyers...
- green up their home
- afford the updates by folding them into a new or refinanced mortgage
- save money long-term with greater energy efficiency
- and get money back with DTE rebates of $500–$2,500. That's cold, hard cash, not credit.
Pretty cool, eh? With winter coming, you've no doubt been dreaming about draft-free windows, better insulation or an Energy Star furnace. With Michigan Saves you may be able to *do* instead of just dream—and do so easily. The program has already vetted contractors and you can apply for pre-qualification online.
I also love it when synchronicity makes decisions even easier: Mortgage rates hit an all-time record low last week. Now's the time.
Michigan Saves also has a Home Loan Program, and will have a commercial component as well. Detroit is running a pilot now, and a statewide program for small businesses and nonprofits should be ready by early next year
Green Hands, green heart
Clifford started the Green Hands Reskilling Initiative earlier this year. Its motif is a Green Hand sign that you place in your window to let others know you have green skills to teach and talk about. It’s like the Blue “Helping Hand” signs from the '60s and '70s, but for grownups.
"When I was growing up in the Lansdowne neighborhood of Ann Arbor, I was taught that if I were ever hurt or lost or scared, I could safely go to a house that had the Blue Hand sign in its window," Clifford says. "The Green Hand is also an invitation, telling adults there’s a person in your neighborhood willing to 
share skills and knowledge. You can put an email address or phone number on the sign to screen the responses."
The Green Hand means the people who live there invite you to learn how to reskill yourself: learn to bake bread from scratch, sew a quilt, grow a garden big enough to feed your family all year. In other words, rekindle the household and husbandry arts lost to mass manufacturing and big-box stores.
"Suppose you're raising chickens, as is now legal in Ann Arbor," he says. "Put up a Green Hand and let others know you have a skill to share."
The Green Hand Reskilling Initiative sounds warm and fuzzy, but there's also an urgency to it. As a Peak Oil educator, Clifford is looking into a future where petroleum is too costly to continue business as usual, and seeing the need to build community connections and local economies in response.
"People don’t realize how fundamental petroleum is. Currently the danger is not about ‘running out of oil,’ as many say, it’s about not having enough of it to continue economic growth at the pace the financial system requires to remain stable. It’s not even about price, really. Even $1 gas is too costly when you’re out of work or your retirement plan was reduced to rubble by the latest market moves.
“Friends tell me not to focus on that. Too discouraging. But it doesn't hurt to know there's a sense of mission to the Reskilling Initiative," he says.
There's much more to learn—and plenty of good reasons to. Read Clifford's blog and website. And if you have skills to share, you've got a sign to make.
Go green, from paper to screen
I may have to relinquish my Luddite card. I boarded a plane with an electronic boarding pass. Paperless!Granted, I may have earned demerits for taking a short flight to Chicago. It seems intuitive that driving would have been greener, although checking sites like grist.com or about.com allows you to calculate your greenhouse emissions of any trip. But time was of the essence and I had little.
And it was a must-go trip. As president-elect of the Ann Arbor Area Board of Realtors®, I had to attend the Leadership Summit of the National Association of Realtors® . It wasn't until moments before I was to leave for the airport that I realized that I had not printed my boarding pass. Luckily, my partner was there. Always an early adopter, Sandi had already found the electronic boarding pass feature available on Smartphones. I used my new iPhone to check in for my flight. Moments later, Delta had texted me a QR code. I grabbed my bag and headed out.
I must admit I was a little nervous. How do I use this black and white square on a screen instead of a tangible piece of paper? At the airport, it was click, read and go.
There was only one other person boarding with a QR code, a man of about 50 who'd been using this method for two years. He looked at me conspiratorially and then at the pile of boarding passes at the check-in counter: "Look at all the paper. Look at the waste."
It's a small thing, this QR code, that could eventually rack up many, many green points.
6-11 p.m., Ann Arbor Farmers' Market, 315 Detroit St.
We still need volunteers, too.
Please sign up today to get your preferred slot!
No to bottled H2O
Read more about the students' vote!
Institutional memory
Today our guest writer is my partner, Sandi Smith, First Ward Ann Arbor City Councilmember, who is obsessively green.Did you know that the Downtown branch of the Ann Arbor District Library was originally built with a green roof?
Designed by Alden B. Dow the building was completed in 1957 and it featured several innovative building techniques. Some of those innovations were ultimately not very successful, like the internal gutter system, and others were forgotten, like the green roof. One director had all the "weeds" removed from the green roof and replaced with grass. The problem with that, of course, is that grass needs to be mowed. For years a lawnmower was routinely hoisted up onto the roof to cut the grass. A new director came in and saw the inefficiencies with that system and had the green roof ripped out.
This week a new green roof is being installed on another Alden B. Dow building in town, City Hall. The renovations to the 1963 Guy C. Larcom City Hall are the second phase of the changes to the Ann Arbor Municipal Center. The Justice Center, a LEED Gold candidate prominently situated on Fifth Avenue at Huron Street, represents Phase 1. The green roof will reduce the heat island effect as well as be part of an on-site storm water capture system. The Municipal Center as a whole will have a zero runoff effect.
With one building at a time, we can reduce our negative impact on the environment. It is critical that we take these extra steps each and every time that we have the opportunity to do so. One more step we can take is to ensure that we don't forget why we went in that direction to begin with
.
Coming up: Green My House: Energy Saving Edition
Learn ways to make buildings energy efficient from the experts at The Clean Energy Coalition.
7-8:30 p.m, Aug. 25, Downtown Library, 343 S. Fifth Ave.
Cooler cooler air is on its way
It is a pleasure to come to the office in this heat. The closed-cell foam insulated walls with the deluxe caulk and seal pre-treatment makes cooling our building easy, and keeping it cool even easier.
Our old drafty house is another story. Because we have radiators for heat, we can only have window AC units for cooling. Most summers we hardly use them, and some summers we don't even install them. Not so this year! I am afraid to see the bill, and I am concerned with the damaging effects to the environment, too.
But there is hope, for there are changes in the air...conditioning industry. In particular, there is the brilliantly innovative and cleverly named Coolerado. It's a new kind of air conditioner that uses one-tenth of the energy of traditional units, half the electrical drain of a hair dryer, no compressors, no chemical refrigerants—only water, fans and an evaporative technique. Here's the kicker: it saves users 90 percent of their air conditioning costs.
The Coolerado company, based of course in Colorado, is still young. Founded in 2004, it spent its first years researching and testing its units. Now its results are verified by the U.S. Department of Energy, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has endorsed the Coolerado for all federal buildings.
It's winning awards and getting attention, but it's not ready for prime time yet. So far, it doesn't work well in humid climates, and the company has concentrated mostly on commercial use. Only in Denver has the company moved into residential use.
"We're still a small yet growing company and we are not resourced to sell to, install and service units [in] scattered residential areas," says company spokesman Ryan Smith. "Someday, though."
Someday, we will have a cooler way to make cooler air. For now, I'll spend more time at the office.
Brew
for the River!
"Green Smoke" is and isn't
First, a claim: I smoke. Second, a disclaimer: I don't litter my butts. Third: yes, I know smoking is un-PC, ungreen, yada yada yada. Butts account for trillions of pounds of toxic trash worldwide and my fellow smokers flick them everywhere. Even in this greenie town, they're sickeningly ubiquitous.
On top of that, growing and curing tobacco are toxic professions, cigarette-making is bad for the planet, first- and secondhand smoke are huge health hazards, and fire is a constant danger.
So will electronic cigarettes be better for our environment? And our health?
I'm testing this, having been given an early birthday present of an e-cigarette called "Green Smoke." It looks like a plastic cigarette, though it's metal and heavy. The white part is a battery and the "filter" is a nicotine atomizer, which creates "smoke" when you exhale.
In the starter kit, the battery has two chargers. One plugs into an outlet. The other has a USB port! Can you believe it? I charge my ciggie butt on my computer. Wild! Also available: a car charger and a solar charger, for crying out loud.
Why it's called Green Smoke isn't explained outright on the manufacturer's website. It doesn't make a greenie claim. It just implies that because users aren't blowing toxic smoke around and aren't littering, it's greener. And that's true.
But it doesn't even address disposal of the batteries, which are considered "e-waste" and won't ever degrade. So the e-cigarette is yet another "green" thing—like an electric car—that may be a step forward but isn't a perfect solution. Fortunately, Ann Arbor's toxic waste center does accept e-cig batteries. Other places may not.
The greenest thing, of course, is not to smoke at all. Yada yada... In the meantime, e-cigs may help us smokers dump our yada yada excuses for clinging to our addiction.
Whoop it up for hoophouses
Hoophouses are enclosures typically made of tubular steel and covered in translucent plastic. Heated only by winter sunshine, they help plants grow green and vibrant when most of Michigan is covered in snow.
But that’s not the only thing that makes them “green.” Since most of our winter vegetables are trucked in from hundreds or even thousands of miles away, using this cost-effective way to produce vitamin-packed veggies locally nets us significant energy savings.
Aware of this and the need to keep our food dollars in Michigan and develop the local food system in every way, Ann Arbor’s Selma Café launched an ambitious hoophouse-building initiative. Its purpose is to expand
local food capacity by harnessing the energy of hundreds of volunteers. Lisa Gottlieb and Jeff McCabe are the cofounders of the café. “Hoophouses are very magical tools for creating food year round in a northern climate,” says Jeff, who was supervising the builds at a recent hoophouse construction event. “In the summertime it’s like bringing Georgia to Michigan,” which benefits hot-season crops like tomatoes. “For cold season crops like spinach, it’s actually a better climate than you’ll find anywhere.”
Volunteers are occasionally wined and dined at day’s end, but they are always amply coffee-and-bageled to start the morning and fed a hearty lunch. Some describe the builds as an updated version of classic American barn-raisings. The community that forms and the illuminating conversations that accompany the work are as amazing as seeing these immense structures go up in a single day. Hoops have been installed on private, nonprofit, as well as publicly controlled lands.
As a volunteer I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to roll up my sleeves and create a better future by helping local food producers come into the market. I may not be any greener, but I sure am getting a nice suntan!
To find out more about this and future SELMA initiatives, visit the Selma Café site.
How to green up a disaster
Disaster struck a few months ago. A pipe burst in the family cottage and it ruined the entire kitchen, dining room and sun porch. We had to gut most of the first floor down to the studs and start over. But if you know me, I will always find the green lining in calamities of this sort. It means a new chance to green our way of living, and we get a new kitchen.
Our biggest decision was the cabinet replacement. The old ones were solid wood—knotty pine—a
nd custom built in place. Even with insurance, it would take a small fortune to replicate what we had. With only a little searching, we discovered Pioneer Cabinetry, Inc. Our new cabinets will be a solid wood product (cherry! ) and it's even made in Michigan! Less energy is used to transport the product to us, plus we get to support a Michigan company. What more could we ask for?
Inside a base cabinet are some nifty recycling bins. Up north, we still have to separate our materials. At least they have recycling centers now. We used to transport it all back home with us. It is interesting to notice how quickly we have grown accustomed to recycling in Ann Arbor, as sorting just seems so archaic now.
Nearly zero
Trillium Real Estate's 10th anniversary party almost made it to zero. Zero waste, that is. With food and drink for more than 200 guests, the bulk of our waste was compostable. Bottles and cans were recycled. Much of the food arrived in crockery, Tupperware or foil, which is all reused or recycled.
But we didn't make it to absolute zero, and it was mostly because of packaging. There was plastic wrap on the cardboard boxes that held the pop cans. And a plastic cover to protect the pretty icing on the cake. We also used plastic wristbands to monitor the bar service. None of which was recyclable.
Despite not being perfect, I'm glad we made the effort. Next year we can take this a step further. We can go up the supply chain.
- If we had a keg of beer, particularly from a local brewery, we could eliminate the waste from the glass recycling process and the emissions used to haul glass back and forth.
- We could rent linens, plates and utensils that merely get washed and reused.
While compostable products are a step in the right direction, there are still energy and resources spent in production, shipping and ultimately hauling the waste to the compost facility
Imagine if we thought through all of our consumption as we did for this one event. What a difference we could make!
A huge thanks to all of our clients, friends, and family who brought their good wishes, cheer and appetites to the Trillium's 10. You helped get us this far. We hope you'll be with us for the next 10.
Upcoming Green Events
- 11th Annual Mayor's Green Fair: 6-9 p.m., Friday, June 10, Main Street. Food, fun, and more than 120 exhibits. Call the mayor's office for more information: 734-794-6161, ext. 41602, or see the website.
- Paddletrip and Wildcrafting, both from Huron River Watershed Council, and both June 11. Paddletrip from Dixboro to Frog Island and learn all about the ecology and water features. 10 a.m. put in. Wildcrafting is in Gallup Park, 1-3 p.m. Learn about both events on the HRWC events page.
Who doesn't love a party? Our planet, for one
So much waste from a typical celebration! Every year Americans throw away an estimated 40 billion plastic utensils, which are petroleum based and destined for the landfill.
Here at Trillium Real Estate, we're trying to buck that trend. For our "Trillium's 10" celebration June 1, we're throwing a zero-waste party—and it's only costing us about 5 percent more.
All our flatware and plates and glasses will be compostable. For an extra $15, we get the peace of mind of knowing we aren't creating waste that will hang around for millennia.
And we're buying local. After researching costs and vendors, we had narrowed our choices to one national company that would have shipped our eco-conscious order across the country in one day, and a local company that carried green products and is about five miles away. We're going with BGreen, a company that was founded here in Ann Arbor by a local couple.
Come help us celebrate Trillium's first 10 years in business. We'll serve up some mostly local food, local musicians, and a cash bar to benefit a local nonprofit: the Jim Toy Community Center. Together we can party hearty—and green—and say thanks to all of you for our first decade in business.
Join us
JUNE 1
for the Trillium's 10 Party!
at the Trillium Real Estate patio at 323 Braun Court, Ann Arbor.
Partake of hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar with beer and wine
to benefit the Jim Toy Community Center. And enjoy live music and
an art exhibit in our lovely building.
Shine on, you squiggly pigtail bulbs
As many of you night owls know, Stephen Colbert's been on a tear about the federal "ban" on incandescent light bulbs. Hates it. Hates being forced to give up the warm golden glow of the old familiar bulbs for the cold blue of the new "squiggly pigtail" CFLs. No doubt he hates not being able to use his godgiven American right to waste energy if he so chooses.
He's kidding, of course. I think. That's his humor. He rails like the bloviating gormless blatherskites on those right-wing stations I never watch, but he actually means the opposite. I hope.
And he exaggerates. It's not a ban. Not in the U.S. at least. Here it's a minimum standard for lightbulb efficiency that will save us big-time.
About $10 billion big, according to one of Stephen's guests, Dale Bryk, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's air and energy program. "Just from improving light bulb efficiency," she said.
Until 2012, when the minimum goes into effect, we can test those supposedly "soft white" pigtail light bulbs. They still seem pretty blue to me. I wholeheartedly support the minimum efficiency standard and saving big-time—and of course we're already using the blue bulbs. But I'm pleading with manufacturers to create one that doesn't make everything look like death warmed over. (Here's one that might make the grade.)
Until then, enjoy one of Colbert's funniest, cleverest parodies on the politics of the ban.
Get ready for our
JUNE 1
10th Birthday Party!
Cash bar with beer and wine to benefit the Jim Toy Community Center, as well as food, live bands and an art exhibit in our lovely building!
Bribes and prizes to curb our car
Of course we're principled enough to curb our car and jump on the getDowntown Commuter Challenge bandwagon—or bus, as the case is.Of course we're deeply interested in commuting so greenly that we lower our carbon footprint by telecommuting, biking, walking, and ridesharing. Sure, we want to use go!passes for free bus rides and Zipcars for the cheap weekday rate of $8 an hour for 180 miles and free gas. And of *course* we want to save the planet, decongest downtown, and decrease pollution.
If you'd really like to goose your bosses, convince them to buy go!passes for all full-time employees. Then they're just $5 apiece—for part-timers, too—and come with their own long list of discounts.
Nothing like an almost freebie to get us on the bus...Gus.
How green are our greens?
We're on a "spring roll" here these last few weeks on OGF. Sunshine, green cleaning, solar chargers. And today, we bring you green greens—and veggies and flowers and all manner of plants.
Of all the urges of springtime, the one to grow things may be strongest in our household. We planted our seeds for squash and peppers weeks ago, rejoicing at every baby leaf that poked through. We've been hoarding toilet paper rolls to help start and then later transplant those seeds. And we're drooling at the prospect of their harvest.
Turns out we're saving the world. We're helping our species reach 350. That's the number of parts per million of carbon dioxide that scientists believe is the safe limit for us. We're now at 391 ppm—and rising quickly.
So give in to this growing urge if you have it. It's not too late to start your seeds this season. But it's closing in on too late for the planet.
SAVE THE DATE! June 1 is Trillium's 10th Birthday
art exhibit, and buck-a-book sale.
No garden space? Use your walls
Try this indoor vertical
gardening system.
Gadgets to lasso the sun
Some days our power strip is filled with chargers, despite our efforts to pare down. And while we try not to leave our gadgets charging longer than they need to, sometimes it happens and we succumb to vampire power loss.
Which is why I'm intrigued with solar battery chargers. Free energy! Very not-free prices to harness that energy, though.
I did a bit of poking around on my fave green sites and found these and Googled these and Amazoned these. Whew! So many choices it's overwhelming. And I only started searching for an iPad charger. Fortunately, most of them can be used for lots of other devices, too.
Some cost a pretty penny: $250 for a PowerTraveller to charge my laptop? From $50 to $200 for a backpack solar charger?
I found these two especially intriguing:
- OffGrid Solar Backpack by Voltaic. Not only will it charge my phone and camera and laptop, its fabric is made of recycled bottles.
- Solar Gorilla Laptop Charger, which has a Minigorilla version too. Cute!
Granted, you can plug the chargers into an outlet, too, but that defeats the purpose, which isn't just saving money on the electrical bill—chargers are expensive enough that switching would be a wash. It's more about putting our money where our mouths are. If we're talking about saving the planet, it's about supporting companies and products that are working on saving the planet.
Downside of a solar battery recharger? Another gadget to carry around.
Come foolishly parade through town tonight with luminaries lighting the way.
Dusk to midnight. Meet at Kerrytown, UMMA, or Slauson.
More info for this and the full FestiFools below:
FestiFool.org
FestiFools!
Greening our spring cleaning
Yep, it's spring in Michigan, that fickle thing, and already it's gray and cold. But on those few glorious mid-60s days last week, I felt the spring-cleaning bug bite. It'll be back again, along with the sun. And again the dust on the blinds, grease smears on the stove, grime on the outlets, spots on the windows will be glaringly obvious.
In the meantime, I'm ready. I got all my green cleaning ingredients from Clean House, Clean Planet by Karen Logan. It's our all-season bible of how to get everything spic and span without hurting ourselves or the earth with harmful chemicals in harsh cleaners.
Karen's advice basically boils down to all-baking-soda-all-the-time (which makes you wonder: what the heck is baking soda?). Oh, and there's salt, liquid soap, water, elbow grease, the ubiquitous vinegar—and essential oils to cover up the vinegar smell. Lavender-scented kitchen floor, anyone?
The baking soda and salt are the abrasives that don't injure surfaces and do a great job with the grime and soap films. For special problems like mold and stains that need disinfectant, she recommends tea tree oil. Another eco-mom suggests grapefruit seed extract.
Stuff you find looking up other stuff
Join us at An Evening with
JUDY SHEPARD
Dinner 6 p.m. • Talk 8 p.m.
What the frick is fracking?
Today our guest writer is Alex Yerkey, Michigan campaign organizer for Clean Water Action.What the frick is "fracking"? A very cool-sounding word. A way uncool and ungreen activity.
Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing, an environmentally dangerous way to drill for natural gas. Basically, gas extraction companies drill deep then wide into underground shale. They force millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals into the well to break up the shale and release the gas.
In Michigan, those companies are leasing mineral rights to thousands of acres of state-owned land—and leasing thousands more from private owners, some at incredibly high prices. And, yes, they're planning to frack it.
Why should you care? Because in other parts of the country, fracking has been associated with a number of public and environmental threats, including earthquakes in Arkansas, flammable tap water, and radioactive discharge into rivers. In Pennsylvania, which has about 71,000 active gas wells, The New York Times tracked the wastewater troubles.
Though some say this natural gas rush could provide us with cheap, abundant power and heat for the next century or more, it may not be worth endangering public and environmental health. Supporters point out that fracking and natural gas are better than building a coal-processing plant. It's nowhere near as environmentally safe as solar-, wind- or hydroelectric-generated energy.
But it's coming in a big way to our state. We have one well now. More are imminent. So come learn more at our screening of GASLAND March 29. This multiple award-winning movie, an Academy Award nominee, details the adverse effects that under- or unregulated natural gas extraction has wrought across the country.
- GASLAND screening, discussion and Q&A
- 6-8:30 p.m., March 29
- Helmut Stern Auditorium, U-M Museum of Art
We still have several open sponsor spots for elected officials who'd like to add their names to this effort. City Councilmember Sandi Smith has already signed up and invites her colleagues to join her. Sign up by emailing ayerkey@cleanwater.org.
Read more:
- NYT: Drilling Down
- The Diane Rehm Show: "Drilling for Natural Gas: Rewards and Risks"
- Clean Water Action: national site, state site
We're all in this climate change together
Given the weather this February, one may question the concept of global warming. We have had a near record amount of snow this season, and we're not done yet. Is it really anything new?
As a kid, I grew up in a country subdivision in a suburb of Detroit with lots of open space between houses and empty lots destined to be a neighborhood someday. We had a snowmobile and, most winters, plenty of snow. I was a bit of a daredevil as I would launch the machine high in the air off piles of hard-packed snow left behind by the snowplows. I don't even think I had a helmet on.
Those were the winters of my youth. I don't think this one is much different: a few heavy snows, several smaller squalls—enough to coat the roads for good snowmobile traveling—and at least one good thaw in between. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't believe in global warming—or, more appropriately, climate change.
It really is not about how harsh or mild our winters are. It's about a global average temperature that's rising dramatically. It's about polar ice caps that are melting at an alarming rate. It's about each of us altering the way we live, eat and work every day.
- Take the city's Energy Challenge and carry it on past February.
- Learn about local food choices, in Michigan, in the middle of winter.
- Encourage your company to become a Waste Knot partner.
We're all in this together. Keep your stick on the ice.
3rd Annual
HomeGrown
Local Food Summit
Morris Lawrence Bldg., Washtenaw Community College.
Are you up for the Ann Arbor Energy Challenge?
Ever feel as if your efforts to be green—turning off the lights, turning down the heat, walking instead of driving—don't add up to much? Do you even know what size shoe your carbon footprint wears?
- First, why I should inflate my tires. I went right out and did so. There, 17 percent of my challenge is conquered.
- Second, in its Energy Challenge Booklet, it busts the myth of how restarting your computer takes more energy than keeping it on.
HomeGrown Local Food Summit
A one-day grassroots gathering of folks interested
in food and community food security in Washtenaw County.
8 a.m.–4 p.m. March 1
Morris Lawrence Bldg.,
Washtenaw Community College,
4800 E. Huron River Dr.
How green is the Volt?
- North American Car of the Year!
- Green Car of the Year
from the Green Car Journal! - Car of the Year from Motor Trend
and Ann Arbor's own Automobile magazine—and many others!
To find out, I waded through lots of articles from all sorts of sources, from automotive magazines to green websites. The answer? I'm still not sure.
If we used the greener solar and wind energy to generate the electricity that powers the Volt, how green is it then? What about the components of the car? the manufacturing? the 12-gallon gas tank that takes over for the next 260 miles after the battery is depleted? - If the Volt and the Nissan Leaf and their ilk become popular, it will eventually reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
- Switching to electric is headed in the right direction, meaning greener, and has us thinking, reexamining and innovating.