Veronika Wild

  Dear Friends Here's wishing you all a very quiet Happy and Safe Christmas  with lots of Good Wishes for  2022

This e-scooter casually leaning against a fence caught me by surprise   I saw my first electric scooter late on Friday night when my son rolled up on one after his office Christmas party. The e-scooters had only been launched in Hobart the day before. The next day on the way to town, I saw them everywhere. There they were – lounging outside the library, standing at attention outside the theatre and mingling in the mall. I even saw two people riding them. I would have jumped on one on the spot if I hadn’t had both hands full of shopping. I was quite chuffed though that our normally rather conservative city was giving them a trial.    A Beam patiently waiting outside the theatre Two companies are providing e- scooter services here – purple coloured Beam and   Orange Neuron and there around 300 of each. It looks like a fun, exciting way to get around our narrow, crowded streets, especially with summer coming on. Tasmania’s second biggest city, Launceston also has them...

The E- ferry Ellen has been operating between islands in Southern Denmark since 2019. Although  it cost 40% more to build than conventional ferries it saves 75% per year in operating costs. It also saves 2,000 tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere and is clean and quiet.       -Image by Erik Christensen , CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons   Problems and solutions Shipping is responsible for almost 3% of global emissions which means around 940 million tons of carbon dioxide. However, the heavy bunker fuel used means that a single container ship also releases 5,000 tons of sulphur oxides (SOx) per year and sooty particulates which contribute to air pollution and are especially detrimental to human health. In 2008 shipping volumes totalled 900 million tonnes. By 2018 they had reached 3 billion tonnes which were carried by 60,000 ships, and that volume is set double on 2015 volumes by 2050. Eighty percent of the world’s goods currently go by ship ...

Alstom's iLint Coradia is powered by Hydrogen Fuel Cells. When the hydrogen is made with renewable energy (see below), they are Zero Emission transport. Expect to see a lot more of them around Europe in the near future This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND Rail is already the greenest mode of travel after bicycles , even more so if electric and run on renewable energy. For example, 100 tonnes of freight going 1000 Kms by train will produce 100 tonnes (75%) less CO2 than trucks travelling over the same distance. If it's so good I hear you ask, why isn't everything going by train? The European Union has been asking itself the same question. In 2006 it established the European Railway Agency to encourage rail transport and in 2011 it called for 30% of road freight to be carried by trains by 2030 and 50% by 2050. Despite a number of improvements, 75% of freight still went by road in 2018 and rail's share had actually fallen slightly to 17%. Rai...