Spring is coming! This is a good time to consider alternative travel such as riding your bike, walking to the store, or maybe even taking the bus! But if you drive a car, like most North Americans, you can use Zumer to find what gasoline company is working hardest to reduce their impacts now and into the future. In this showdown, Zumer asks you to take a closer look at the "pumps" (don't see your local brand/station on the list? Why not add it?) See how they stack up against the other major players in your area.
Too Good to Resist?
Beyond Petroleum? BP has recently announced that it will be entering Alberta's oil sands, a move the former CEO had said BP would not take, as he established an alternative energy division and pledged to take the group "beyond petroleum." Likewise, Royal Dutch Shell, who often promotes itself as an investor in "alternative energy" recently divested itself of a large portion of its solar power investments in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and the Philippines. Read more...
| Did You Know? |
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Canada has 179,000,000,000 barrels of oil in reserves which is equal to 21,005,249,935,000 litres or the equivalent of about 8,402,100 Olympic size swimming pools. (EIA) Only 17% of the energy released by burning a litre of gasoline is actually used to move a vehicle down the road. The remaining energy is emitted as heat through the exhaust and the engine's cooling and braking systems. (Royal Dutch Shell) |
Oil Sands: Great opportunity or great disaster?
The oil sands, located in northeastern Alberta are Canada's largest source of oil (and the second largest reserves in the world), but the extraction process is also the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in Canada. The Pembina Institute, a think tank based in Calgary, Alberta recently issued a report "Under-Mining the Environment: The Oil Sands Report Card" on the environmental performance of the current and proposed sites in the Athabasca oil sands. The report came to alarming conclusions such as: "that with few exceptions, the companies (investing and mining in the oil sands) are failing to reduce their overall environmental impact significantly and have been slow to spend on new environmentally friendly technology." See what companies such as Petro-Canada and Suncor are doing to mitigate their impacts.
BC's Carbon Tax
Governments are starting to take action and British Columbia is home to the first carbon-tax on gasoline and fuel oil in North America, introduced in the BC Liberal's budget last month. This tax has sparked a great deal of controversy both for and against it.
Will countries lead the way?
Israel has developed a plan called Project Better Place and has teamed up with Renault-Nissan to make over 500,000 charging ports in parking spots across the country, along with 200 battery swap stations for electric cars. Israel is also reducing their extremely high automobile tax for electric vehicles. Read more...
Are these solutions the answer? Let us know what you think and contribute to our discussion forum.
Use Zumer to compare Gasoline.