The Oil Drum

31 comments on That saying about a picture and 1000 words...

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Anonymous on August 23, 2005 - 10:52am

I did some calculations a few days ago (they're available on my blog here, it includes some fancy graphs) about how much oil we would save if we increased our fuel efficiency in the transportation sector. If only cars doubled their fuel efficiency (the equivalent of everybody driving a diesel Golf for example), the US oil consumption would go down by 20%. If the entire transportation sector increased their fuel efficiency by twice, then the US would save 40% of their daily oil consumption. There is an optimal fuel efficiency increase though, if you're just focusing on cars, then anything more than a 7 times increase in fuel efficiency wouldn't help. If you're focusing on the entire transportation sector, then it's not worth it to increase your fuel efficiency by more than 10 times (at which point you'd be able to reduce US oil consumption by 50%). The calculations were based on the fact that the 60% of US oil goes towards transportation and another 60% of that goes towards fueling cars.

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benk on August 23, 2005 - 10:55am

Woops, I'm not actually anonymous

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Anonymous on August 23, 2005 - 11:07am

Inelastic demand works in both directions.

Prices are high, so the advantages of buying hybrid cars are quite large. Even if we could replace every car in America in the next three years, we don't have to. Americans are going to buy lots of smaller cars and hybrids over the next two years - sorry Detroit - and that will reduce oil demand a few percent.

And, because the demand is so inelastic, that few percent will do a lot to hold down prices.

Silent E

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Anonymous on August 23, 2005 - 11:42am

Transportation is not only cars. There are also trucks and other vehicles. But everybody doesn't not need to buy a new diesel Golf. They could just drive less or use that smaller car they maybe already own. But they don't bother to do that yet.

And do you think the Europeans would manage the Peak Oil better with all their effective diesel cars? They will just drive less. Increasing fuel efficiency will help you in the beginning, with oil supply down 10 -20%, but it costs a lot and changing all cars will take much energy, so the net effect is not so great. But don't worry. Oil crisis ususally bring recession, recession brings unemployment, unemployed stop commuting and use less gas. Statistics show that even a mild recession cuts fuel usage effectively. The rest will buy smaller cars because many can't afford bigger - if they have money for a new car. This is the easy part. The difficult part is coping with the recession.

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Ben on August 23, 2005 - 12:55pm

If they manage more easily, it would probably have as much to do with geography and infrastructure that was laid down long ago.

Just one aspect: As far as I can tell, you can still get around many cities and towns by walking. In my town half of our workforce lives more than ten miles away (guessing) and 95% of the town was laid out and built after the automobile took over, so everything is sprawled all over. No such thing as a neighborhood grocery or other services, and while we could probably push zoning changes through in ten years or so, if the economy tanks it would be virtually pointless as there won't be anybody left but Wal-Mart and the like anyway.

We are 100 miles from a big town (over 200,000 people) in any direction, our groceries, mail, etc. all depend on trucking to get here (no rail except for bulk goods like rock and chemicals, passenger service ended years ago) and it might actually be easier and/or more economical for people to move to the bigger towns than it would be to secure services here.

That's the pessimist in me talking, btw.