Chris Abraham emailed me overnight asking me to
blog about the Energy Bill issue as discussed in http://www.energybill2007.org
The Energy Bill is a US environmental focussed bill and the energybill2007.org site Chris links to, urges US politicians to:
protect America’s energy, environmental, and economic security by ensuring that the final Energy Bill that goes to the president includes the Senate-passed 35 mile per gallon fuel economy standard AND the House-passed 15 percent renewable electricity standard.
The 35 mile per gallon fuel economy standard referred to is an aspiration to have a 35 mile-per-gallon fuel economy target by 2020!
Good God, my current car, which is a standard ’02 Renault Megane Scenic typically gets 35mpg today. By 2020 I want cars to be achieving at least 100mpg!
As for 15% renewables, the Irish government, which has an appalling environmental record, has committed to 33% renewables by 2025!
Yesterday, the United Nations Environment Programme released its fourth Global Environment Outlook report. The report says
climate change is a “global priority”, demanding political will and leadership. Yet it finds “a remarkable lack of urgency”, and a “woefully inadequate” global response.
Several highly-polluting countries have refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. GEO-4 says: “… some industrial sectors that were unfavourable to the… Protocol managed successfully to undermine the political will to ratify it.” It says: “Fundamental changes in social and economic structures, including lifestyle changes, are crucial if rapid progress is to be achieved.
No prizes for guessing what it is referring to there.
If you are US-based, by all means head over to http://www.energybill2007.org. Agitate to get those first steps in place but believe me when I say you will be re-visiting those targets sooner than you think to get them revised upwards.
The US has a different measurement for ‘gallon’ for some reason so 35mpg (US) is around 42mpg (UK) as you can see here: http://www.markporthouse.net/rangie/fuelconsumptionconversion.htm
But you’re right, we should be looking at at least 70mpg+ in the next few years.
Two things, SUV’s and Van’s in the U.S. are not classified as autos, and usually escape the ‘auto’ MPG requirements, these typically average 10 to 17MPG (u.s gallon) and Pickup trucks, the fastest growing segment of the ‘auto’ industry and ARE NOT REQUIRED to comply with even the current MPG requirements and average 8 to 15 MPG (u.s. gallon) The loop hole here is that requiring automobiles to average 35 will not cover SUV’s and Pickup trucks and hence has no real impact on fuel consumption in the U.S.
The second is that the current law is written that that average has to be applied across the manufactures product line, not across the volume of the sales per model, so a vendor can sell 100 SUV’s and one economy car so the SUV can average 15MPG and economy model 55MPG and the dealer would be in compliance with the 35MPG even though the real average is only 15.39MPG per volume of sales
Thanks so much, mate. These numbers are fleet, so they include light trucks such as the Tundra in the case of Toyota, so 35 mpg is the average for the entire line of cars and light trucks. So, I guess one 100 mpg car can “offset” (I hate the word) a Land Rover or Lexus super-car, eh?
Yes, and 15% renewable is low compared; however both of these are much more aggressive than the auto and oil industries fancy us to have, and that’s sad but true — so thanks for your support!
Isn’t there the danger that car manaufacturers will sacrifice safety aspects of their vehicles to meet these emission requirements. Remember reading an article in the Irish Times about the extra energy required due to the added weight that saefty features contribute as a result of NCAP standards