An article from Reuters yesterday flagged the fact that the US fleet has been averaging more miles per gallon thus reducing gasoline use and fewer carbon dioxide emissions. The President made an announcement on raising the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards last April but the trend to more MPG and fewer GHGs has been ongoing for six years according to EPA.
I was at a very interesting “dialogue” the past couple of days on a major oil source. (I’m embargoed from writing about this event until a White Paper on the series of dialogues that are being held is issued.) It is okay for me to say here that I warned folks that as electric vehicles gain traction – and every indication is that they’re going to skyrocket – and renewables continue to burgeon in a new energy economy, that oil and coal are going to be left behind. We are entering a post-carbon world.
Wishful thinking? GM has already announced that they need to step up their production of the Volt even before it hits the streets for the first time. Reason? “Huge demand.”
More portents? The Electrification Coalition, a group of business leaders from little Mom-and-Pop shops named Cisco, NRG energy, PG&E, Nissan, GE, FedEx, Johnson Controls, Siemens, among others, has just released its Electrification Roadmap.
What’s the bottom line? It’s “…the business case for electric-drive technology adoption among the more than 16 million commercial, corporate, and government fleet vehicles in the United States.”
The radically inefficient internal combustion may, finally, be coming to the end of its life.