Climate Solutions
Climate Initiatives
Red Carpet, Green Cars
The most effective solutions to climate change are only adopted when they are effectively communicated to policymakers and the public. In just the past three years, Global Green has reached hundreds of millions of people around the world through its innovative celebrity campaigns around the Academy Awards that have featured: Charlize Theron, Leonardo DiCaprio, Morgan Freeman, Natalie Portman,Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon and Salma Hayek.
Global Green’s Red Carpet/Green Cars hybrid campaign has generated high profile media coverage in publications such as the New York Times, LA Times,Washington Post, and Architectural Digest as well as the entertainment and broadcast media including CNN, Fox News, and all of the networks and their affiliates.
Clean Transportation
The 450 million vehicles on the road today account for half of the world's total consumption, generate nearly one fifth of greenhouse gas emissions, and have pervasive effects on land use and air quality. Personal transportation (i.e., home use) is responsible for 30 to 50% of overall transportation greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, 33% of toxic water pollution, and over 45% of toxic air emissions. In addition, fueling passenger cars accounts for more than one quarter of world oil consumption.
Building roads for all those cars also creates a lot of environmental problems, fragmenting habitat, consuming resources for their construction, and generating water pollution from runoff. In the U.S., roads and parking lots occupy one half of urban space. That much land, if dedicated to food production, could produce enough grain to feed 200 million people per year.
Light trucks and sports utility vehicles (SUV) are all the rage today, but have severe implications for the environment. The average new light truck or SUV gets lower gas mileage and does not have the same emissions standards as a new passenger car, meaning it will emit more pollutants than a new car.
Just as the last several years brought us hybrid vehicles, several promising automotive and fuel technologies are just on the horizon:
Plug-In Hybrid Vehicles (PHEVs) - Often described as “an electric vehicle with a safety net”, PHEVs offer the best of both worlds: the ability to use electricity for your daily commute, and a gasoline hybrid system for longer distances. Using this technology, vehicles will have the ability to achieve the equivalent of over 100mpg, and a PHEV with even 20 miles of electric range would reduce gasoline consumption by 60%. While no automakers are yet manufacturing Plug-In Hybrids, innovative companies have created kits that will be available to convert existing hybrids to PHEVs.
Flexible-Fuels - today, most of the fuel for our cars is petroleum-based, but there are several innovations with regard to ethanol and renewable diesel, both of which will eventually be made from waste products and can be integrated into existing fueling infrastructure and vehicle technologies. These fuels are currently being manufactured in pilot programs and will available in various cities nationwide over the next several years.
In order to see these technologies in a showroom near you, it’s important to ask our automakers to build better cars as well as vote for and support the policymakers that uphold your values.
Publications
ENERGY EFFICIENCY, CLEAN POWER AND THE SMART GRID
Our report highlights the need for integrated strategies in reducing energy use, increased distributed renewable energy generation, and a more intelligent electrical grid and explores the role of the “smart grid” in developing a more sustainable, energy efficient future.
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Global Solar Report Card
The Global Solar Report Card by Global Green USA and Green Cross International outlines successes and failures in 16 countries’ (and the state of California’s) efforts in designing promising policy frameworks for sustained solar development. It finds all countries still in the early phases of solar deployment. The ranking is based on a 100-point system that allocates points for the amount of solar installed so far, as well as for drivers of future growth, including financial and regulatory incentives, and educational and advocacy efforts.
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