What is Your GE (Greenhouse Emission) Quotient?

(As Posted at Progress Ohio)

Hey, it’s Superbowl Sunday so of course it is time for online car shopping. Well, it didn’t start out that way. It started from a Time Magazine article wherein I read a Joe Klein article on the hand-wringing of the GOP at an audience of conservatives convened by the National Review.

Not that this was not entertaining enough, but I saw an argument put forth by former CIA Director James Woolsey that caught my eye. The article sums up Mr. Woolsey’s argument thusly, “As a matter of national security, the U.S. Government should support hybrid technology and alternative fuels”. It wasn’t that it was a particularly brilliant observation, it was just the source and the audience that the argument was made to that I found striking.

Not to be outdone by a bunch of Post-Traumatic Stress-suffering GOP-ers, I set out on trying to find out what our federal government was doing about energy policy. Not much. Increase the strategic national reserve, “environmentally sensitive drilling”, now there is an oxymoron. O.K., so if the government is not doing anything, what can I do?

That is when I stumbled upon a decent government website on car fuel economy. A few statistics:

58% of our oil is imported, domestic resources are waning.
About two-thirds of the world’s oil resources are controlled by OPEC members.
Oil price shocks and price manipulation by OPEC have cost our economy about $7 trillion from 1979 to 2000 cost the U.S. economy—and each major price shock was followed by a recession.

Ultimately, the solution to this problem lies in technological progress:
•Developing advanced vehicle technologies that use energy more efficiently
•Creating new energy sources that can replace petroleum cleanly and inexpensively

But what about today? How can we reduce our gas use “footprint”? By taking an interest in fuel economy, we can reduce U.S. oil dependence now and create incentives for carmakers to produce cleaner, more energy efficient vehicles.
Only about 15% of the energy from the fuel you put in your tank gets used to move your car down the road. The rest of the energy is lost to engine and driveline inefficiencies and idling. Therefore, the potential to improve fuel efficiency with advanced technologies is enormous.

Energy efficient technologies that also reduce greenhouse emissions are available today. I found a nifty “side-by-side comparison” of automobile models that everyone should try out just to see how we are individually contributing to energy non-efficiency. Link

For example, my beloved older model Ford Taurus Wagon seems pretty conservative to me in comparison to the Urban Assault Vehicles that pass me every day on my commute. But when I compared it to a Kia Rio, I was a bit embarrassed. Worse still, I found that buying a Honda Civic Hybrid would reduce my gas consumption by 356 gallons (8.5 Barrels!) per year and reduce my greenhouse emissions by 5 tons/year.

Thus, you will find me during the game car shopping. And if the model comes with lower greenhouse emissions, higher gas efficiency and Sirius radio, in that order, I may just even buy!