Spring cleaning for your car

You’ve been reading lots about how to make your home and office more energy-efficient for the summer. But did you stop to consider how you go from one to the other?

Most North Americans drive to work – it’s just the way things are. While we’re generally aware that driving produces greenhouse gas emissions, we’re not as aware that it could be less.

There are those who believe driving faster is actually better for the environment. Their thinking is that by going faster, the car’s engine is running (and thus polluting) for shorter periods of time. Those people are quite, quite wrong.

While different vehicle reaches optimal fuel economy at different speeds, it’s generally accurate to say slower means greener. Fuel efficiency in most cars decreases rapidly at speeds above 96 km/h, or 60 mph.

Anything faster not only burns more fuel, but more money.

Another way to “green” your car is better planning. The average distance driven per person has increased 36 per cent in the past 15 years. This can be greatly diminished by combining trips. Less fuel is expended on one two-stop shopping trip than two single-stop trips – partly because less distance travelled, but also because cold engines burn more fuel.

Many other easily-adjustable factors affect fuel economy. Generally speaking, slow and steady is not only safer, but greener.

By going easy on the brakes and gas pedal, avoiding hard accelerations, reducing time idling and unloading unnecessary items in your trunk to reduce weight, you can burn much less gas, and produce significantly less CO2.