Re: diet.
Until health played a hand and stopped me, I was a very active cyclist,and regularly used it for journeys (both for the pleasure of cycling AND to get to places) upwards of 80 miles. I found that I ate less than I did on non-cycling days. This was partly because I had less time spent on sedentary activities,when I would be more likely to snack just because I could, or maybe for something to do with my hands..I don’t know..but when cycling I tended to eat smaller amounts, because I wanted to get back in the saddle before my muscles cooled down too much. Also, when cycling regularly I think I was just more tuned in to my body ,so I was less likely to eat when my body didn’t need it. I would be more aware of feeling bloated if I over-ate. I still keep myself averagely fit as far as I can, but it doesn’t foster the same bodily awareness as the prolonged and regular activity of a cyclist who uses their bike both for pleasure and transport.

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Thanks Nommo, funny you should mention hemp, we’ve just been approached by some guys in Norfolk offering to make us hemp body panels and paint made using locally grown pigments – I think we’ll take them up on that and make our car as Eco in that respect as the Lotus Eco Elise. Don’t know about the carbon side, carbon neutral body at least though. Might cause a whole new kind of car crime though, where your body panels get ripped off and smoked… Cheers.

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HI Jeffrey, I’m not sure what you say is right. The more work we do with our bodies the more we need to eat, it’s not a weight issue, the work we do is not free, the energy we expend is provided to us via food calories – comes back to the no free lunch law of physics. Cheers.

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You’re right Paul, human behaviour is a big factor and the bare stats don’t factor that. But I still think they have a relevance, numbers like these are often counter intuitive and add a useful perspective, IMO. Cheers.

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I agree Ben, we need greater access to information, and the whole picture. There’s so much within our own power to change, the media should focus more on that and less on the scale of the problems, which tends to make people feel powerless. Cheers.

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Thanks Justin. We’re going to make sure our car is 100% wind powered. By the time there’s millions of these on the road I’m hoping we’ll have built enough windmills to power them all. It’s all a moving target though, on both fronts. One thing I thought very interesting in the stats is the extent to which even a grid powered electric car is cleaner than a petrol version – an EV powered by today’s grid mix has one quarter (roughly) of the emissions of a petrol car – it’s a massive improvement. So even if we don’t have enough windmills, it’s a good move to make (would lop 9% off UK CO2 emissions instead of 12% for wind powered EV’s). Internal combustion engines are so fuel inefficient (about 15%), that’s the reason – even grid power with it’s 50% fuel efficiency, transmission losses etc – beats the pants off it. Cheers.

The Gym has replaced natural physical activities.
People live less active lives, they drive cars, work in an office, stuff food they don’t need down their throats and then use a gym to compensate.

The other point of course is that this all uses energy and costs money. The energy footprint and resource use is much bigger as a result of modern living. It is IMO pointless isolating one issue with cars, because there is a huge number of issues that have cascading negative impacts on other environmental issues. You only have to look at the way the US has developed as the result of the car, to see why there are problems.

On the issue of food intake. Sure in theory people need more food to cycle etc.
But in practice people eat just as much when they drive a car.
I don’t see people buying less than me at the checkout just because they have a car.

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Thanks Duncan. BTW all the energy used to build and install a modern windmill is ‘repaid’ within it’s first six months of operation, for the next 25 or 30 years the electricity is zero carbon.

You’re right that people have to maintain them, and eat…

There’s also a lot of activity by people in the production, shipping and retail of food. Not to mention it’s storage at home and it’s disposal (for those that don’t compost… shame on you… you know who you are…

The stats I presented just focus on the point of use, I think that has a relevance, though I don’t think it’s the whole answer.

I’ll post some stats on carbon embedded in cars next and how the equation looks over a lifetime of car versus bike use, with embedded carbon included. It’s not quite what we might all imagine. Cheers.

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Thanks for this Adi – If they ever crack it, it will indeed be amazing. As long as there’s enough air to extract…

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Thanks Randy, we’re just looking at Hemp for some of the body panels on our car. Bit lighter than wood but with good eco credentials. Cheers.

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Hi Paul,
People don’t need to go to the Gym to stay slim, all you need to do is not eat more calories than you use in a typical day. If you use the gym to lose weight all you’re doing is burning more calories than you otherwise would. Better not to eat them I think.

Working out in the Gym BTW would require a similar amount of extra calories as cycling would, but without the transport outcome.

We did use food intake for both methods of transport though – that’s the crux of the story. You need to eat more food to cycle than you do to drive. The energy used by the car, in our example, was wind produced electricity – and so zero carbon. Leaving just the food to be compared.

Cheers.

Besides if you really want to compare, you would need to consider the environmental benefits and disadvantages of exercise and related longer life-expectancy (not guaranteed in cycling in London!) and perhaps fewer health care treatments and drugs, all of which have their own environmental impact.

What this really demonstrates is the fallacy of reducing everything to carbon footprints. Both cycling and wind-powered cars are to be encouraged, but for the foreseeable future, cycling remains a more realistic prospect.

More seriously, surely the point is, we must all do as much as we can and only public demand will drive forward change and change will take time, because the majority of people will either pretend that nothing’s wrong. The analogy of a traffic diversion springs to mind where people bowl along in the outside lane, pretending that they have failed to notice the signs and even if they have they could possibly apply to them and then try to barge in front to avoid waiting in the queue. Or, hope that others will do the right thing so that they wont have to. How many loaves of bread does it take to manufacture an electric car?

I agree with most above, and think Paul (above) has a good point that are we talking about behaviour of our friends of a strange average of the population?

People differ greatly and you may find people who drive their car to work (be it a wind car or not) may still go to the gym or ride a bike for fitness afterwards making the food element in the argument almost redundant unless you compare it to a mean average of the nations activities.

The localisation of foods would obviously help still this problem and help greatly generally, but this is obviously a whole different kettle of fish which i won’t delve into now.

I found the stats in ‘are cars greener than bikes?’ extremely interesting. If change is to take hold i still feel more media has to embrace the green issues and make a bigger effort to make statistics largely available, so we all can start making a lfestyle change, not just a shopping one.

But my other comments remain.
IMO a (electric) car owner would have a bigger carbon footprint because the vehicle would offer greater conveniences and opportunities to use more energy.

People commute long distances today because the technology enables them to.

Really many of these statistics ignore human behaviour and desire. The carbon footprint of a car can look good if it is full of passengers, but appalling with just a driver.

So the determining factor will be the use of the technology. If you fill a car up with passengers every time you drive it, you are running a bus service!

http://www.topgear.com/uk/lotus/elise/road-test/eco

What if the car and the bike was made of mostly hemp and other low energy, carbon neutral materials. Wouldn’t the car then be storing more CO2 than the bike..?

I like this thought experiment.

eg. the cyclist world probably burn up the calories and stay slim, thus only requiring slightly more food intake. Where as the car driver would burn less calories and burn fuel or use stored energy in the car. In order to stay slim the car driver may go on extra journeys to the gym and use electric exercise machines, to get slim.

Basically the calculations are not complete unless the food intake for both transport methods are included.
There are significant consequences to using the car that have impacts on many things, this includes the closeness people live to their work place, the support cars give to the super market/ retail park system etc.

The other point is that people that don’t have a car may very well not make a journey because it is less convenient or the weather looks bad etc.
The convenience of a car can result (and actually does result) in unnecessary journeys being made.

Take a look at this!!!! Amazing geo-political solution:

http://www.beaconenergy.co.uk/news.html

Adi

The paltry renewables obligation target for NI is upsetting, and there is no competition or green alternative to choose from, it’s good to hear that you are planning to enter the market now the door is open.

This is very exciting news, not just for me, but I’m sure for many other people in NI. It will certainly garner media coverage in NI as you will be opening up the market, especially if you get in before SSE. You won’t be competing on price most likely, but a real alternative. Why buy just electricity, when you could buy new energy. I’d be glad to be the first domestic customer to sign on the dotted line.

Good luck, with the application, I have no doubt you will easily get the licence, feel free to keep me informed about your progress.

As part of that work we’ll need to get ourselves a licence to supply in NI – and we’ll be one step closer to supplying homes in NI and breaking the monopoly.

Cheers.

Rather than try answer each one, I thought I’d try and summarise what I’m saying and what I’m not saying.

I’m not saying this is the whole picture. It’s a simple comparison of the energy, and therefore carbon cost, of pedalling and driving. It’s unarguable that pedalling costs energy but this is often overlooked, that’s my big point – cycling is not a free lunch, environmentally speaking.

That’s not to say I think cycling is bad or cars are better – I don’t think either of those things. Just wanted to lift the lid on the ‘hidden’ cost of cycling and make the serious point that you can’t pedal for free.

As Scotty (on Star Trek) would say ‘you cannae break the laws of physics’ or as Damon put it more eloquently it’s the laws of thermodynamics, even when it’s not obvious – they still rule.

Doesn’t matter BTW when you pedal compared to when you eat – you either burn fat to make energy (to pedal) or you burn food – either way it costs food and carbon. Fat is like the bodies petrol tank, you can fill up one day and use it the next. When you use it later you still use it – it’s not free.

I don’t think the relative metabolisms of people and their lifestyles negate the basic point that it takes food to power our bodies, the more we use them the more we feed them. Olympic athletes for example can use 12,000 calories a day – and they’re no couch potatoes. In fact the more muscle we have the more calories we consume just to maintain that – it’s a fact. So being fit doesn’t always mean a lower calorie burn.

There are many other benefits of biking, better health being a big one. Very true.

And there’s a shed load of infrastructure out there, roads, hospitals and so on – that support car use, but they also support bike use, and they exist in the world already. They’re not in the calculation. Don’t overlook though that the food industry is also heavily dependent on transport, roads bring it to us. ‘Localisation’ can make that better, but it’s not how it is today and it still won’t do away with the need for roads completely, for food and people to travel on.

The big question I think, that would still be worth answering on this, is how bikes and cars compare when you take the embedded carbon of each into account – what is the lifetime carbon cost per mile? Perhaps that’s the key statistic.

Hope to have something by the end of the week.

Cheers.

I was thinking about this topic myself a while ago.. In the end though it boils down to this. If cars (petrol / diesel) were to be replaced by electric or wind versions we would still have the social problems that are associated with private car transport now, i.e. road injuries, road infrastructure upkeep (as mentioned in an earlier comment), and living arrangements designed around cars as opposed to being ‘human scale’ again. I don’t know many people who would do a like for like commute on a bike as a car to get to work (although I once had to do a 35 mile round daily commute which was knackering to say the least!) and we’d have a better intergration of residential, work and leisure ‘zones’ if people were walking and cycling and unable to drive long distances any more. I know that all this is well without the realms of the argument but like other people have said, a full accounting aproach would need to be made in the comparision. For example, what are the current carbon costs on the health service due to people being unfit due to lack of excercise or from being hit by moving cars? What are the carbon costs of the renewal of road surfaces and potential new road building projects? What are the carbon costs of not having places of work near where people live thus forcing car usage or bike usage for a lot of people as opposed to being able to walk it? What’s the carbon costs of large scale supermarkets *still* having customers who can drive to their centralised shops putting other local producers at a disadvantage (so still enouraging the needless shipment of food over great distances). I am not sure all of this could be accurately measured or if anyone has the time for it but it’s a complicated afair, however, probably not what you’d intended for the comparison

On the supermarket point, the bike would be far less of a carbon contributor if people were builing local organic fruit and veg over supermarket imported versions as the ratio of calories used in production and transport is far less for, say a local organic carrot than one thats been grown in a way that degrades the soil and then shipped through 300 miles of distribution channels I know people are quoting the 10:1 calorie ratio for food in the US at the moment, so 100 calories of food used on a bike is actually 1000 (depending on your shopping habits) and a lot of that 1000 has come from fossil fuels. That’s why I get irritated by the greener than thou cyclists who still buy their food from Tesco

Cheers,

Frosty.

This is all very interesting, but I don’t think that the comparison is complete enough. Suppose that I own both a bike and a car (as most people with bikes probably do). Then I get embedded carbon costs from both, which is clearly less green.

Suppose instead that I don’t own a car. Then, it is very likely that the vast majority of the replacement of the mileage that I used to do in the car comes not from the bike, but from other forms of transport (public transport, taxis etc…). Furthermore, owning a car encourages discretionary driving. For instance, suppose that I want to buy lots of drinks. I live very near a small supermarket that I can walk to. But if I own a car, I will probably drive to the big out-of-town Tesco. Or suppose that I decide to have a picnic with my girlfriend. If I own a car, I will be less inclined to keep the event local, because the time costs of getting to other places are vastly reduced with respect to either using public transport or riding a bike to the picnic spot.

The point is that it isn’t really fair to compare a bike mile-for-mile with a car, because the thing that really counts is the change in transport usage patterns that come with the decision to own or not to own a car. It is literally not a real-world scenario to say “all else being equal”, because it never would be.

There are, of course, externalities that aren’t accounted for in this picture either. For example, by not owning a car, maybe I avoid spending a few grand on buying it, and then maybe a few thousand in running costs, insurance, tax and servicing every year. The money saved this way is likely (given human nature) to be spent on other goods and services. So I now find that I CAN afford that holiday in Bermuda after all…

Added to which, any car that is bought ultimately contributes to the economic support of the car industry, and reduces the demand on public transport, thereby reducing the political pressure for its adequate provision. And buying a car and then NOT using it, your net carbon per mile becomes vastly greater, because the offsetting of the carbon costs inherent in its manufacture happens less quickly.

In fact, you could almost go so far as to say that the contribution to carbon costs from buying anything is pretty much determined by the economic activity that the purchase creates. The only real way around this is a slow yet firm commitment to decouple economic activity from carbon emission, and not any personal decision that one person is liable to make.

In these theoretical circumstances the food consumed by the bicyclist can be produced by the bicyclist. The power consumed by the electric (wind-powered) car is perhaps less likely to be the result of such a direct connection between producer and user. Control is surrendered to a corporation and responsibility is diluted. There is a lessened nobility in being dependant.

Travelling by bicycle is healthy, self-reliant and generally is likely to foster more connection with the locality. The bicyclist might be more vulnerable but probably has a greater awareness of other road users as a result. Driving a car is a practical means of covering greater distances, can be more relaxing and allows an increased opportunity to be less parochial – meeting people from communities up and down the country. On the other hand the cocoon of a vehicle inhibits normal human interaction between travellers, who all become depersonalised in the minds of other road users.

In the end it is horses for courses. I’m sorry – I have inadvertently introduced another, possibly greener, mode of transport into the debate ….

Figures are based on CO2/passenger for a 650k/400mile trip from London to Edinburgh. The flights are calculated using an RFI multiplier of 2. And I presume from these figures, they’ve only put one individual in the cars!

Express Coach = 53Kg
Hybrid (or small) Car = 68Kg
Intercity Train = 73Kg
Medium Car (2 Litre) = 129Kg
Large Car (4.8 Litre) = 215Kg
Plane = 339Kg

Obviously that doesn’t take into account the damage of vehicle and infrastructure manufacture or disposal.

John

But it is a bit shortsighted to think of the energy/co2 emitted by the vehicle/cyclist/runner. One uses an extensive, costly infrastructure that needs constant renewal. The others don’t. And on this thesis all gyms should be shut, pathways closed and a free subsidised remote control given to the poor to avoid unnecessary movement.

Indeed the NHS should be required to provide that complete cradle to grave care. Preferably in the same bed, fed on a minimal drip.

Aha there we have it – the real co2 polluters are people – not cars, boats & planes. Tax ‘em out of existance! Oh, I think the government is already trying