I’ve been spending a lot of time recently thinking about lighting, because I’m writing a book about green lighting, which will be out this fall. I’ve been busy approving layouts. Green lighting is a very exciting set of technologies, because it provides some of the quickest paybacks of any energy efficiency upgrades, it is easy to do, and it can improve productivity and comfort.

There’s been a lot of excitement about LEDs (light emitting diodes) recently, and some hot new bulbs are due from major manufacturers in the near future. They are roughly 90% more energy efficient than regular old incandescents, they last for tens of thousands of hours, and they produce less waste heat, meaning they don’t contribute to summer cooling loads. LEDs also can come in many colors, and they can be rapidly switched. In fact, chances are good that you are looking at them right now, since many serve as backlighting in computer displays.

LEDs are awesome, and their prices are dropping, though right now CFLs and other fluorescents are a better buy for most homeowners who don’t have super-heavy lighting needs. Yes these bulbs have some mercury in them, but that is dropping, and there are precautions you can take, and do be sure to dispose of them properly. However, also don’t panic. There is much more mercury in other common products (thermostats, thermometers, electronics, switches), and I interviewed experts in the book who calculated that you’d receive more exposure from eating a seafood meal than is likely from a broken CFL.

So all of this explains why I am excited that WellHome has made a new infographic on green lighting. WellHome is a company that offers home energy audits, then helps customers start saving money. Energy audits are generally very worthwhile, and they may get even cheaper if HOME STAR passes:

Hoboken’s Ian Sacs (right) and Juan Melli with a Corner Car. (Jim Motavalli photo)

HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY–Fresh off the $1.75 PATH tubes from Manhattan, I am standing on a pleasant residential street lined with brownstones in downtown Hoboken, New Jersey with the boyish Ian Sacs, head of the city’s transportation and parking bureau. In front of me is a Toyota Prius, just like any other except for the fact that it is parked in a green-lined space…and just about anyone in Hoboken could drive it.

Welcome to Corner Cars, Hoboken’s municipal car-sharing program, undertaken in conjunction with the mainstream player Hertz Connect. Residents pay $25 to join, but they get a $75 credit which can be applied to reserving cars on a per-hour basis. The program, just a few weeks old, has 200 members and 42 cars (two-seater Smarts are the cheapest at $5 an hour) in the first wave. Corner Cars claims that three families so far have given up their cars (and four more have made inquiries about it), but as many as 750 could take that step soon, the program estimates.

With a light rain falling, Sacs swiped his smart card across the Prius’ windshield and it unlocked. They let me drive, so we cruised the dense downtown (45,000 people in 1.3 square miles) and saw Corner Cars (Toyota Yarises, Priuses, Smart cars) all over the place. We drove past Carlos’ Bakery, across from City Hall, and saw a line two blocks long. For cupcakes? It all became clear, when I learned that the bakery is the setting for the Cake Boss food reality show.

We even encountered a young bike rider who’d recently moved to Hoboken, with easy mobility being a factor. He was accessing a Smart car for his friend who was late for a job interview, and loves the program–especially the $75 credit after a $25 payment. Here’s the view from the street:

Fashion designer Lara Miller goes green beyond recycled cloth.

I have seen the future of EV charging, and it’s really cool looking. ECOtality just emailed me a photo of its station, which will be unveiled at the Plug-In 2010 trade show in San Jose on the 27th. I can’t show it to you until then, but it’s proof that we’re in a designer race with these babies. ECOtality’s Jonathan Read says its’ “way smarter and easier to use than any other similar product. It makes it very easy for consumers to switch over to electric driving.”

Soon, we’ll be buying EV chargers in big-box stores, and they’ll be competing to make them visually appealing. Maybe Apple will have one, too, and Steve Jobs will be up there in his jeans introducing it. Stranger things have happened.

EVs have arrived, and they’re not yesterday’s super-clunky nerdmobiles. If even the chargers are getting cool, we’re on to something. I was watching a video of an old-technology solar EV charger in action, and the thing was so boxy, so ugly, so poorly labeled (dozens of confusing buttons) that it’s no wonder they didn’t take off back then. Just look at the thing:

I can’t show you the newest charger, but this was a week for innovation in the space. I got a first look at the pretty sleek Coulomb ChargePoint charger in New York this month, when Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduced it to his city with HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan in attendance. The station is one of 200 coming to New York, paid for with a $15 million Department of Energy grant.

Bloomberg plugged in a Smart car, which like most coming EVs is “smart” in more ways than one–it can interact with the grid and charge itself only at night when the rates are lower and demand is down. ECOtality’s station offers “smart phone appliations for status charges and notification of completion or interruption of charge.” That means you’ll get a text on your phone letting you know your charge is complete.

It is possible to plug in an electric car to an ordinary wall socket and, a mere 10 or 12 hours later, is will be fully charged. Wow, that’s a long time! But Britta Gross, lord and master of everything for the “range extender” Chevrolet Volt (she’s the director of global energy systems and infrastructure commercialization for GM) tells me that the company’s research predicts that 40 percent of the car’s charging will be on 110 (Level One charging). That means just plugging into the wall and not into a 220-volt charger (which is Level Two charging, estimated to charge a car in four to six hours).

Seconding that, Pamela Fletcher, the Volt’s chief engineer, told me, “You can go home and while you’re sleeping you’ll be filling up your tank. A lot of the time, you’ll be traveling to grandma’s house and want to top up the batteries, but she won’t have a charger.”

Never thought of that. It’s also true that 110 charging will be cheaper, and incredibly simple. Do you know how to plug in a toaster? You can do the same for an EV. The main advantage is that you save in buying the 220-volt charger itself, an expense that starts at $2,000 plus the hassle of having it installed and inspected (it can take weeks). If you have an electric dryer, you’re in luck (they’re 220), but if you went with gas or have older wiring, you’re looking at larger bills.

If you think about it, does it matter if it takes 10 or four hours to charge the car if it’s just sitting in the garage? Maybe we’ll just set it and forget it.

I was pondering this as two companies made EV charger news this week. General Electric rolled out its ultra-cool 220-volt WattStation (designed by Yves Behar of Fuseproject, who also gave us the $100 laptop). And a competitor, Coulomb Technologies, was in New York unveiling its first ChargePoint 220-volt public charger, part of a $37 million program (funded in part by the Department of Energy) to put 4,600 free chargers around the U.S.

It is possible to plug in an electric car to an ordinary wall socket and, a mere 10 or 12 hours later, is will be fully charged. Wow, that’s a long time! But Britta Gross, lord and master of everything for the “range extender” Chevrolet Volt (she’s the director of global energy systems and infrastructure commercialization for GM) tells me that the company’s research predicts that 40 percent of the car’s charging will be on 110 (Level One charging). That means just plugging into the wall and not into a 220-volt charger (which is Level Two charging, estimated to charge a car in four to six hours).

Seconding that, Pamela Fletcher, the Volt’s chief engineer, told me, “You can go home and while you’re sleeping you’ll be filling up your tank. A lot of the time, you’ll be traveling to grandma’s house and want to top up the batteries, but she won’t have a charger.”

Never thought of that. It’s also true that 110 charging will be cheaper, and incredibly simple. Do you know how to plug in a toaster? You can do the same for an EV. The main advantage is that you save in buying the 220-volt charger itself, an expense that starts at $2,000 plus the hassle of having it installed and inspected (it can take weeks). If you have an electric dryer, you’re in luck (they’re 220), but if you went with gas or have older wiring, you’re looking at larger bills.

If you think about it, does it matter if it takes 10 or four hours to charge the car if it’s just sitting in the garage? Maybe we’ll just set it and forget it.

I was pondering this as two companies made EV charger news this week. General Electric rolled out its ultra-cool 220-volt WattStation (designed by Yves Behar of Fuseproject, who also gave us the $100 laptop). And a competitor, Coulomb Technologies, was in New York unveiling its first ChargePoint 220-volt public charger, part of a $37 million program (funded in part by the Department of Energy) to put 4,600 free chargers around the U.S.

I divide beverages into two categories:

Water
Everything else

1. We are water. Literally. So we need to be drinking a fair amount of it daily. I say in The Conscious Kitchen what many in the environmental movement – including writers on this website – say: drink tap water in reusable bottles. Unless there is something very wrong with your municipal water or you know your well water is contaminated, there is no reason to drink bottled water. Bottled water is a farce. It usually is the very municipal water you think you’re avoiding by buying tap. So you’re spending several dollars on something that is free – and less regulated than municipal water, I might add. A total rip off. And then there are all of the eco-implications and repercussions of the actual bottles. Think of the energy used to make those bottles, fill them with water, and then transport them all around. Sure, most places recycle the plastic most water bottles come in (PET #1) but many of those bottles wind up in the trash or in the gutter, not in the recycling bin. And they take 1,000 years to break down in a landfill. Spending money on something that is free and then drinking out of virgin plastic for maybe an hour that will then sit in a landfill for 1,000 years doesn’t sound like good common conscious sense to me. So I don’t do it.

I divide beverages into two categories:

Water
Everything else

1. We are water. Literally. So we need to be drinking a fair amount of it daily. I say in The Conscious Kitchen what many in the environmental movement – including writers on this website – say: drink tap water in reusable bottles. Unless there is something very wrong with your municipal water or you know your well water is contaminated, there is no reason to drink bottled water. Bottled water is a farce. It usually is the very municipal water you think you’re avoiding by buying tap. So you’re spending several dollars on something that is free – and less regulated than municipal water, I might add. A total rip off. And then there are all of the eco-implications and repercussions of the actual bottles. Think of the energy used to make those bottles, fill them with water, and then transport them all around. Sure, most places recycle the plastic most water bottles come in (PET #1) but many of those bottles wind up in the trash or in the gutter, not in the recycling bin. And they take 1,000 years to break down in a landfill. Spending money on something that is free and then drinking out of virgin plastic for maybe an hour that will then sit in a landfill for 1,000 years doesn’t sound like good common conscious sense to me. So I don’t do it.

San Diego Comic-Con is the genre fan’s dream come true, where the latest in comic books, movies and TV shows converge for one mega-celebration of all things geek. We asked our friends at UGO.com to help us mine this mecca of nerdom for the best comics with environmental themes.

I’m often accused of being a cheap-fake — instead of a cheapskate — when people find out how much I’ve traveled the world. To quote my favorite Johnny Cash song, “I’ve been everywhere, man. I’ve been everywhere.”

Well, not really, but I have traveled in all 50 states and nearly 30 different countries — not bad for a spending-challenged guy like me. Of course, traveling-on-the-cheap is the only way to go, in my opinion, since it’s the best way to get a real sense of places and the people who live there. It’s all about thinking locally while you travel globally, as I like to say.

Get the 7 rules of budget travel.

A big part of successful cheapskate travel is deciding what to pack, and, even more importantly, what to leave behind. Traveling-on-the-cheap means packing as light and compact as possible, not only to avoid extra baggage costs, but to enjoy the trip more and maintain maximum flexibility, which can save you a lot of money when you’re traveling. Many of my travels have been under my own steam — bicycling or hiking, or, at the very least, traveling by public transportation. That’s usually the cheapest and greenest way to go, but it all depends on keeping your traveling kit to a minimum.

Here are some tried and true tips for cheapskate packing I’ve developed over the years:

* Worst Case Scenario: Before packing anything, ask yourself: What’s the worst thing that will happen if I don’t bring this with me? Unless the answer is you could die or suffer some immeasurable degree of pain or discomfort, think twice about packing it. Most often, the answer will be something like, “If I need it, I’ll just have to find one along the way,” in which case it’s usually best to skip it.

* Run a Shopping Mall Obstacle Course before You Travel: It’s easy to convince yourself that your backpack or suitcase isn’t soooo heavy before you leave home. Don’t be fooled. Once you have it packed, take an hour or two to tote your luggage around a local shopping mall — stairs, escalators, elevators, crowded aisles, etc. After that little exercise, I bet you’ll find a way to shed a few pounds off your Samsonite.