M.I.T. Engergy Club

New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman: "The People We Have Been Waiting For"' December 2, 2007:

.....The Energy Club, which was founded in 2004 by a few graduate students discussing energy over beers at a campus bar. Today it has 600-plus members who have put on scores of events focused on building energy expertise among M.I.T. students and faculty, and "fact-based analysis" including a trip to Saudi Arabia. Then he got together with three engeneering undergrads who helped launch the Vehicle Design Summit - a global, open-source, collaborative effort, managed my M.I.T. students, that has 25 college teams around the world, including in India and China, working together to build a plug-in electric hybrid within three years. Each team contributes a different set of parts or designs. These kids are building a hyper-efficient car, which, they hope "will demonstrate a 95 % reduction in embodied energy, materials and toxicity from cradle to cradle to grave" and provide "200 m.p.g. energy equivalency or better." The Linux of cars!

They're not waiting for G.M. More informationon their goal, they explain on their website vds.mit.edu...

Comments

[Andrew]

On a different note, I found this article http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?p=3225220 listing the greenest cities in the US. This shows that municipalities care about climate change. I guess the general population cares about the environment and global warming. My score on their calculator was 400 but at least I am trying. Here is the link to the website that published the list of cites and where the carbon calculator can be found: www.earthlab.com. The test took me like 5 minutes tops, and then maybe another 2 minutes to find the pledges I wanted. Pretty cool application.

[Blake]

That is pretty neat, most of those big conservation from a night at the bar don't get very far. Here's hoping them the best for their success.

[addy]

Does anybody know about this site ( http://www.earthlab.com ) ? I have seen other environmental sites with carbon calculators like yahoo and tree huggers, but I am wondering what the deal with earthlab.com is? I saw they also published a list last month of the top ten greenest cities ( http://www.efficientenergy.org/Top-Ten-Green-Cities-in-the-United-States ). Does anyone know if this site is better than the others? Fill me in!

I took their carbon foot print test and it was pretty interesting, they said that I put out 4.5 tons of carbon, does anyone know about any other tests?