Italy has a number of bike sharing programs. I found a lot of useful information about this program at the MetroBike LLC. Blog (http://bike-sharing.blogspot.com/2010/06/turin-introduces-italys-2nd-largest.html).
The second largest
bike-sharing program in Italy started today. [TO]Bike of Turin began opening the
stations to its 1,200-bicycle and 116 station service. It will be completed and
fully operational by the end of the summer. [TO]Bike will be second in size to
Milan's very successful and expanding 1,400-bicycle BikeMi system. [TO]Bike is part of the Bicincittà , which has bike-sharing programs
throughout Italy and Switzerland. In Turin, the annual subscription to the
system is very reasonable at €20 ($24 USD). There is a weekly pass at €5 ($6
USD) and a daily at €2 ($2.40 USD). As with most bike-sharing systems, the
first 1/2 hour of usage is at no charge and then each 1/2 hour thereafter
escalates in price. Posted by Russell Meddin
bikesharephiladelphia.org June 6, 2010
Castle
Square in Turin has some nice artwork including a bicycle on a street post,
with two small playful figures frolicking nearby (can you find them). Interestingly,
I have not been able to find the name of the artist that installed this
sculpture or the name of the artwork. Also the Royal Theater has an interesting
metal sculpture that makes up part of the entrance wall to the theater.
I flew
in to Milan and at the baggage claim, they had a display board showing the
variety of public transportation options including a car share program. I was
very impressed with the public transportation options.
Flying
out of Venice, I found a bill board at the main entrance that showed the amount
of clean energy produced at the Marco Polo Airport. I assume that this is from
solar energy, but the billboard does not say how the energy was generated.
Dr.
Daniele Castignari took me on a tour of the Dolomite Mountains in the Eastern
Italian Alps. We visited Cortina
D’Ampezzo which is the seat of the Regole d’Ampezzo which are the Rules of the
Ampezzo people which are a functioning collective land ownership that was
established in AD 1225. The heads of the families gather on a regular basis to
make decisions about the forests and pastures and individual parcels cannot be
sold off. They are passed down from one generation to the next and if there are
no heirs, the land goes back to the community. This location is 175 km (which
is just over 100 miles) south of Innsbruck.
I was not aware that it was so close and I had only been there a few
weeks prior (see a previous post). Because of its proximity to the border, this
land was under Venetian rule in AD 1420, came under Austrian rule in AD 1521,
Bavarian rule in AD 1806, part of Napolean’s empire in AD 1810, back to
Austrian rule in AD 1813, occupied by Italian troops in AD 1915, back to
Austria in AD 1917, and becomes a territory of Italy in AD 1918. Through all of
this time, the Regole d’Ampezzo worked to maintain collective ownership and use
of the land. This is an excellent common land use model that has been
sustainable for almost 800 years through much political strife.
One of
the plots in the Ampezzo area had small greenhouses and cold frames in a
personal garden to extend the season.
I saw
evidence of a couple of different cooperatives including the Cooperativa di San
Vito di Cadore which seems to be a health insurance cooperative that was
founded in AD 1893 and a workers union “Society of Mutual Aid” and has expanded
form there (http://www.coopsanvito.it/ita/cooperativa.html).
Ipercoop
is another cooperative hypermarket (as they call it) which would be a
supermarket in the US that offers a great variety of items from food to
household items. These stores also tend to be much larger than the average
Italian grocery store.
I had
the opportunity to visit a provincial park outside of Turin. It was nice to see
a public nature preserve in Italy. This concept seems to be a normal part of
Italian culture as I saw with the common property ownership associated with the
Regole d’Ampezzo. Dr. Motta also pointed out a number of older stands of trees
above many alpine villages that where preserved for avalanche protection. These
areas where not necessarily set up as nature preserves, but they played that
role because of the need and awareness of their utility in protecting against
avalanches.
I only
observed on wind turbine during my travels in northern Italy, but I saw solar
panels all over the place. I imagine that they have more wind turbines along the southern portions of Italy similar to those in Greece along the coast line. Dr. Renzo
Motta (of the University of Turin Tree-Ring Lab – see a previous post), told me
that the Italian government had passed laws that provided tax breaks to install
solar power on individual homes and many people took advantage of this
incentive program. Because of these incentives, the use of solar power has
greatly increased over the past 5 years.
Much of
Italy’s electricity still comes from fossil fuels with natural gas, coal, and oil
generating 68% of the fuel that they burn in power plants. Italy closed their
three nuclear power plants in 1990 following the Chernobyl melt down. The
Italian citizens voted to not build nuclear powerplants within their country,
but instead have a purchase agreement for power from nuclear power plants that
where installed in France. About 10% of
their energy demands comes from imported nuclear energy.
In 2012, gross electricity
generation in Italy was 296 billion kWh. Of this, 136 billion kWh (46%) was
from gas-fired generation; 47 billion kWh (16%) from coal; 19 billion kWh (6%)
from oil; 44 billion kWh (15%) hydro, 19 billion kWh (6%) from solar and 13
billion kWh (4%) from wind. Per capita electricity consumption in 2011 was 4970
kWh. From http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-G-N/Italy/
Interestingly,
France produces 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy, is the largest net
exporter of nuclear energy in the world, and has 58 nuclear power plants (stats
for 2012 from the World Nuclear Association).
Along
the streets, I saw large self-sort recycling bins that seem to have been around
for quite a while (not a new development). I saw similar (although newer) bins
in Switzerland as well.
The
University of Turin’s agriculture campus has worked on hybridizing poplar trees
that grow quickly to produce wood for industry. Throughout the fields around
Turin, we saw many poplar stand that are being grown like an agricultural crop
for it wood products.
The
highways had high barrier walls for sound protection for the neighboring
populations and the walls had high windows. Every one of these windows had
predatory bird silhouettes to discourage birds from flying into these glass
windows. We observed this in Greece as
well as in Italy.
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