Forum: Saving Money, Oil, and the Climate
Using non-fossil energy sources to power our vehicles
by Michael B. McElroy
The United States is in urgent need of a comprehensive, rational, and—above all—honest policy to guide its energy future, a policy that addresses two key, interrelated objectives: reducing dependence on vulnerable sources of imported oil and reducing emissions of the critical greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2). Failure to address the first objective would imply that we are willing to accept possibly serious risks to our national security. Failure to tackle the second would confirm the increasingly prevalent international view of the United States as an irresponsible environmental citizen.
I shall argue that by changing the way we fuel our cars and light trucks—by switching from continued reliance on hundred-year-old, internal-combustion-engine technology to a combination of oil and electrically powered transportation—we could reduce our dependence on imported oil and lower our emissions of CO2, and we could effect this transition at a net savings for the U.S. consumer. The key is to build on the success of the hybrid technology introduced by Japanese auto manufacturers (notably Toyota and Honda) in the 1990s.
The United States imported 12.4 million barrels of oil per day in 2006, a slight decrease from 12.5 million barrels per day in 2005 (reflecting reduced demand attributable to a warmer winter and a cooler summer in 2006). Imports in both years accounted for 60 percent of domestic consumption. At an average price of $66.05 per barrel, the bill for imported oil in 2006 totaled $299 billion—39 percent of the nation’s trade deficit. With oil prices in early January 2008 climbing above $100 per barrel, the debt for the coming year could well exceed $450 billion (more than 3 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, potentially more than 50 percent of its international trade deficit, assuming values for 2006, the last full year for which these data were available at the time this article was written).
Combustion of oil in 2006 accounted for 44 percent of U.S. emissions of CO2 (2.6 billion tons of CO2, from a total of 5.9 billion tons), with 33 percent of the total (2.0 billion tons) attributed to transportation (cars, trucks, trains, ships, and aircraft). Gasoline-powered cars and light trucks were responsible for 40 percent of total oil consumption (18 percent of CO2 emissions), with diesel-powered vehicles responsible for another 10 percent.
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