Going The Distance

How far can you travel on a gallon of gasoline? For decades the big automakers have thwarted efforts to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) standard. They thought they were safe from the winds of change when George W. Bush was elected. They miscalculated and are now, because of their stubborn recalcitrance to improving vehicle fuel efficiency, being told they can expect requirements for significant upgrades to the CAFÉ standards!.

Four factors have caused them to come under the spotlight:

1. A large increase in crude oil and transportation fuel costs


2. The loss of political control in the Senate


3. A miscalculation about their former allies in Congress and the administration, and


4. The awakening of the electorate to the reality of global climate change.

Suddenly before Congress are proposals for cars to achieve 30 to 35 mpg and the trucks to get at least 23 mpg within the next five years. A competing Senate proposal goes further in calling for a 27 mpg rate for trucks in 2011. Dick Durbin (D-IL) has proposed an across-the-board legislation to increase CAFE standards to 35 mpg on both light trucks and cars by model year 2017. Current standards only require an average of 27.2 miles per gallon (MPG) for cars and 21.6 mpg for light trucks.

Meanwhile, an independent fuel economy panel is reported to have concluded that SUVs and trucks can be built with substantially better fuel economy, and that U.S. competitiveness would not be impacted by increasing the standard. Auto companies were shocked with that news. Although the panel did not reach a conclusion as to level of the achievable mileage standard, the report said that existing technologies could add as much as 12-14 mpg to cars and 11-13 mpg to trucks.

The auto manufacturers may have been shocked (hardly), but probably not their network dealer owners that hear complaints on the sales floor that customers want to get better mileage. How big has been the outcry? Consider that Hummer dealers are now offering to perform unauthorized modifications to their new vehicles to boost MPG even though doing so violates their own warranty

So what is the average consumer to do while we wait again for Congress to catch up with the needs of the nation? Buyer options are wide.

» Buy a more fuel efficient vehicle such as the hybrid Toyota Prius. Find and compare cars!
» Drive more efficiently.
» Maintain the existing vehicle for optimum efficiency
» Take fewer trips by consolidating trips.
» Move closer to the user’s typical destinations so as to reduce commute and shopping time and distances traveled.
» Stop using the inefficient automobile and either walk, bike, ride-share or use mass transit whenever available.
» Reduce the weight of the vehicle. This is primarily how auto manufacturers have been improving mpg. They’ve gone to thinner windows, aluminum, magnesium and plastic components, lighter frames, and smaller primary and spare wheels and tires. Drivers can keep their vehicles empty of extraneous junk, including those sand bags and concrete blocks used last winter for improved real wheel traction. For every extra 100 pounds you carry in your vehicle, you reduce gas mileage and fuel economy by roughly 2%.
» Buy or lease a hybrid vehicle.
» Already have a hybrid? Convert it to a 150 mpg plug-in hybrid or wait for the anticipated OEM version.
» Retrofit the vehicle for biodiesel or electric use.

You can make a difference in global warming and save money by using transportation fuels efficiently. Every gallon of gasoline saved cuts emissions of carbon dioxide, the key greenhouse gas, by about 25 pounds.

The Ameren Monopoly

Jim Syler (aka Calion), Chair of the fringe Southern Illinois Libertarians recently wrote in Carbondale Bytelife about ‘Electricity, markets and monopolies”

In classic Libertarian-speak Syler asserts, “The only way out of our electricity problem is to cut Ameren loose from its state-privileged status, to fly or fall on its own.” He says this will benefit consumers because Ameren”will be afraid that if their price is too high or their service too poor, other companies will come in and try to undercut their business.”

I’m convinced that Libertarians want utilities to rain havoc on consumers. From the flames of the resulting chaos, they have an expectation that some Phoenix-like, benevolent, natural order (and Wal-Mart style ‘Falling Prices’) will spontaneously sprout from the ashes.

The Illinois Libertarian Party takes the position that:

“Allowing the free market to set electricity rates is the best way to get reliable service at competitive rates. The Libertarian Party of Illinois opposes legislation that controls prices for any market service, including electricity.”

Libertarians simply choose to ignore both distant and recent history of scandalous abuses by utilities that were unregulated monopolies. I’ll be the first to admit that understanding utility regulation is not an easy task. There are so many federal and state laws that have distorted the market. Many of the laws were actually written by the utilities, handed to legislators, and hastily passed without decent analysis. It should come as no surprise that the electric industry sought to improve the profitability of its monopoly standing by giving “more than $40 million to Congress since 1999 (more than two-thirds to the Republican Party) and spent an additional $260 million lobbying the federal government over that same time period. The crisis we are in now in Illinois over deregulation and high prices was nurtured in the utilities and sold to the ICC as a universal panacea for Illinois energy problems. Everybody was tricked into or bought-out by the plan. Just follow the money!

Most of the disastrous utility laws now on the books began with deregulation brought about by the Energy Policy Act of 1992. That’s the same complex act (393-pages) that, in its infinite wisdom, designated Yucca Mountain as the ‘permanent disposal site’ for used nuclear fuel and other radioactive materials from commercial nuclear power plants and U.S. Department of Defense activities. The act distorted alternative transportation fuel development leading to uneconomic subsidization of ethanol from corn. It’s the same act that also failed to significantly raise automobile fuel economy (CAFE) standards.

The latest incarnation of AmerenCIPS is one of nine public utilities in Illinois that are retailing monopolies regulated by the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC), a state agency established to “to pursue an appropriate balance between the interest of consumers and both emerging and existing service providers in accordance with applicable statute and rules.”

Essentially, when it comes to electric utilities the ICC has repeatedly blown numerous opportunities since the 1980’s when I helped argue before the ICC that Ameren needed to invest far more in sustainable energy solutions such as conservation and renewables. First, the ICC failing to foster significant demand reduction and demand management solutions that would reduce the need to build more polluting coal and nuclear power plants. Then it failed to guide acquisition of renewable energy supply sources, and most recently, it miserably failed to protect the electorate from an artificial purchasing process where the new “retailing Ameren” gets to buy power from the old “power generation Ameren” company at unnatural prices.

No, sorry, I cannot see cutting “Ameren loose from its state-privileged status, to fly or fall on its own.” Not when there are so many opportunities for the company to leverage its unregulated monopoly status to pillage its customers’ bank accounts. There is no quick easy solution. The solutions I see working best in the long run are those that turn every home and business into both an energy demand reduction engine and a distributed energy producer using renewable sources such as wind, solar, geothermal and other clean fuel technologies.