Whole Travel Blog

The City of San Francisco launched a revolutionary online mapping project last week, Urban EcoMap. The site tracks the amount of carbon emissions by zip code, and even breaks down the information to the source of the greenhouse gases: transportation, energy use or waste. It was announced by Mayor Gavin Newsom on Earth Day, and it’s finally up and running. We’re excited by the many tools this site has to empower you to evaluate and reduce your carbon footprint.

Which San Francisco neighborhood is greenest?

The overall goal of this project is to reveal San Francisco residents’ bad habits and lower the City’s emissions back to 20% below their 1990 levels (as per the Kyoto Protocol). If this takes off, it could provide a great case study for local action providing a global impact. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

Recharging electric cars has always been a bit of a pain to get done, but in the Bay Area, it is about to get a lot easier.  The mayors of San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland have plans to spend up to $1 billion to put up a service network to make charging your electric rig a lot more convenient.

Better Place, a Palo Alto company backed by private investors, will be building the system.  According to SFGate.com, “The firm proposes installing thousands of parking-meter-size plugs in homes, lots, garages, and shopping centers for an electric fill-up.  Also planned are battery swapping spots, where a depleted power package can be switched for a fresh one withing minutes.”

The article is not clear as to whether the electricity used at the recharging stations will come from renewable sources.  To read the full article, click here.