Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Yamaha Motor Test-Drives Golf Cart Fuelled by Cow Dung

Nice. Yamaha invents a golf-cart that runs on biofuel from cow poop, then they test it in a town in Japan that actually promotes the use of biofuels at every turn. Now I'm not sure of the value a golf cart that runs on methane has. Is the carbon footprint of a methane gas golf cart smaller than that of charging a battery with a coal fired electricity plant? Or what about charging the batteries using a solar array or wind power? Or a small turbine that is powered by methane gas from cow poop? I'm not sure. Perhaps it is just the imagination that kicked in and Yamaha wanted to see if it was scalable. But I would rather see them put some brain power behind a hydrogen fuel cell that burns clean.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Golf is a sport in which players using many types of clubs including woods, irons, and putter(s), attempt to hit balls into each hole on a golf course in the lowest possible number of strokes. Golf is one of the few ball games that does not use a standardized playing area; rather the game is played on golf "courses", each one of which has a unique design and typically consists of either 9 or 18 holes.Golf holidays in Costa del Sol Golf is defined in the Rules of Golf as "playing a ball with a club from the teeing ground into the hole by a stroke or successive strokes in accordance with the Rules".

Wishful Thinking

*Before adding PV, wind, or solar thermal to your residential or commercial structure, the first step is to analyze this structure's energy consumption through a professional energy audit. I'd like to see some public education on the importance of an energy audit for any structure. Remember Smokey the Bear's forest fire shtick drilled into our heads over the last few decades? How about something like, "Henry the House" desperately wanting to know how much energy he consumes and wastes throughout the day?

*With over 300 sunny days a year on the Front Range is it too much to ask for solar PV and thermal modules on every residential and commercial unit (after an energy audit of course)?


*How about affordable plug-in electric cars that go more than 100 miles on a charge with PV and wind powered recharging stations?

*Dreaming of companies large and small adopting business sustainability practices to maximize profits, reduce their carbon footprint, and enhance the lives of their employees and the communities that surround them.

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