FoS.blog: The Friends of Seattle blog

Seattle Inventor's Prototype Personal Windmills Shows Promise

We've written about micro wind-power generation before, so we were pleased to see today's newstory about a Seattle inventor who has developed a clever design for a personal windmill.

Thomas Key, who works on the renewable-energy program of the Electric Power Research Institute, believes that micro wind-power generation is infeasible, and he cites city zoning restrictions as one obstacle. But the City of Seattle's proposed revisions to the multifamily housing zoning code would allow personal windmills to be built.

Windy Seattle: Micro Wind Power May Not Be Economically or Environmentally Beneficial---Yet

It is likely that personal wind farms, rooftop solar panels, and the like will not save the planet, but we have a hunch that they might be one of the many little things that we can do to achieve one big thing---reduce the environmental effects of generating electricity. The Nickels administration seems to understand this, so its proposals (PDF) for revising the multifamily-housing zoning code would allow for small wind turbines and solar panels lower than 10 feet in height to be installed on the top of multifamily housing without violating the zoning code. We like this innovation. Make renewable energy lawful, as opposed to illegal.

[Photo by Glogger from the Wikimedia Commons, published under a GNU Free Documentation License]

But in the Business section of this morning's New York Times we see an article questioning the economic efficiency and the environmental benefits  of the kind of small wind turbines that would be installed on multifamily housing buildings in Seattle.

Paris Planning New Electric Car Sharing Program

After posting about municipal bike sharing progams, we came across CoolTown Studios' post about a new electric car sharing program in Paris.

Zipcar is great, but Paris's Autolib program seems better. It's car sharing 2.0. Not only are the cars electric, but the computerized system allows users to park the cars at any drop-off point (700 of them!) and then, after completing the trip's purpose, to pick up a different car. This system would allow for more efficient use of the cars and the city's curb space. With Zipcar's system, in contrast, the cars just sit there unused when the driver doesn't need it, and the cars are more tethered to their parking spots.

Hey City of Seattle, why let Paris have all the fun?

Bike Sharing and So Can Seattle

Barcelona:

Read more about the Barcelona program.

Corporate-sponsored program in Vancouver, BC:

Paris:

Read more about the Paris program.

Bring this to Seattle, please!

UPDATE: Portland is struggling to get its own bike-sharing program off the ground. (Via Planetizen)