All Posts Tagged With: "fuel efficiency"

I ran across these notes I made from my own reading of “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” last fall. Two stories illustrate Friedman’s point about the importance of incentives and also of standards and regulation. We usually hear the side of the equation that regulations are going to cost the consumer more. This is not necessarily true, because when you are innovating, you can often design something to be manufactured more cheaply.

One example is from when the EPA issued the Tier 2 emission standards for locomotive engines in the early 2000s. It was a standard for NOx, not CO2. It had to do with air quality; carbon was not on the radar back then, although it should have been.

G.E. is the world’s largest maker of locomotives, and they do it in Erie PA. They could have just tweaked their engine design. Instead they looked at it as a clean slate. They went to the drawing board and designed an engine that met those emission standards, was much more fuel efficient, and much more reliable in terms of maintenance. The CEO of the locomotive division openly admits that it was that EPA regulation that caused them to innovate.

By having the standard, your competitor also has to meet the standard. There’s no more guesswork if you put all this time into R & D whether there is going to be a market for your innovation. It turned out that, because the G.E. locomotive was more fuel efficient, it also had much less CO2 emissions. G.E. sells all over the world – to China, India, Europe. Those countries were already starting to put carbon regulations into place. G.E. was ahead of the curve in curbing CO2. Their engine is still one of the only ones that meet the new regulations being passed around the world, including in China.

Another story comes from the early 1970s. Some of us are old enough to recall the brouhaha over the catalytic converter requirement passed in California. The Big Three automakers went to Congress and claimed that if they had to do this, it would cripple the entire American economy. Continued

This was sent by my someone who works for Kinder Morgan. It was written by a petroleum engineer and sent throughout his company. I thought it was extremely interesting.

I don’t know what you guys are paying for gasoline…. but here in California we are also paying higher, up to $4.oo per gallon or more. But my line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money’s worth for every gallon..

Here at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline where I work in San Jose , CA we deliver about 4 million gallons in a 24-hour period thru the pipeline. One day is diesel the next day is jet fuel, and gasoline, regular and premium grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 gallons.

Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening….your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.

for more tips read on….

Continued

A message from the Sierra Club. . . .

Memorial Day Weekend is coming and — in spite of gas prices — more Americans than ever are planning to get away by car. (1) But that doesn’t have to cost as much as you think.

There are lots of ways to save gas (checked your tires lately?) but the easiest and most effective way is to slow down (just a little bit). When you add up the savings, it’s like getting paid to relax.

So before you get behind the wheel for the upcoming holiday, show us what you’re made of. Pledge to Drive 55 (or whatever the speed limit is on the roads you’re traveling) for Memorial Day Weekend. Poor Sammy Hagar can’t do it, but we bet you can. After all, even jets are slowing down to save money!(2)

The Union of Concerned Scientists tells us that dropping from 70 to 60 mph improves fuel efficiency by an average of 17.2 percent. Dropping from 75 to 55 improves fuel efficiency by 30.6 percent!(3)

Put another way, in a family sedan, every 10 mph you drive over 60 is like paying 54 cents per gallon more for gas you bought at $3.25 a gallon. (4) That extra cost is even higher for big SUVs and other less-efficient vehicles.

And the time you save by going easy on the accelerator may not add up to as much as you thought. On a 300-mile trip, driving 65 instead of 70 mph would cost you only 20 minutes — but save money and spew less carbon.

Is driving to your destination more fuel-efficient than flying? Take our "How Green Is My Getaway" quiz. You might be surprised.

Our April 29 post about driving the speed limit in our Green Life blog led many to share the wisdom of their personal road trip experiences. You can read all of them here, and share your own.

Have a great Memorial Day,

Greg Haegele
Director of Conservation, Sierra Club