When the President took office, the fuel efficiency standards for our cars had been stuck at 27.5 miles per gallon for twenty years – two decades of lost time when it comes to developing new technologies that can get more miles per gallon out of every tankful of gas. That’s why one of the very first actions the President took in office was to direct
Tag:
oil consumption
According to a new study presented by the Renovate Europe Campaign, weatherizing European buildings in an important way could boost local GDP by up to 291 billion Euros ($370 billion) by 2017.
Furthermore, gross annual investments of €41 to €78 billion per year in the EU could bring ongoing annual returns of €104 to €175 billion.
As the economy is tumbling across the continent, these investments represent very profitable possibilities.
With enough ambitions, the European Union could slash its greenhouse gases emissions and fossil fuels consumption significantly and create no less than two million jobs in the process.
Ultimately, deep renovations of European buildings would slash the Union’s oil consumption by up to the equivalent of four billion barrels of foreign oil per year (slightly less than 11 million barrels equivalent per day).
The report shows that for each billion euro invested by governments in renovations can return up to five billion for public finances.
During the conference presenting the report, Günther Oettinger, EU Commissioner for Energy said “Energy efficiency is, for the European Union, the most direct and cost-effective way to achieve our strategic goals”.
The European Union has indeed outlined a goal of slashing its greenhouse gases emissions by 20 percent by 2020 (compared to 1990) and to increase energy efficiency by 20 percent as well.
Recently, the European Parliament has shown it is willing to go even further with up to 30 percent reduction of emissions by 2020.
Achieving such cuts would be tricky and would require drastic changes in rent regulation to allow landlords and tenants to share the gains from energy efficient renovations.
I have been advocating housing insulation as a great way to slash greenhouse gases emissions and energy consumption since the writing my Master’s thesis on the very subject back to 2005/06.
This new report brings further arguments to the ones believing that not only Europe can be more energy efficient but it has to do so, to save money, to create jobs… in other words : to get out of its current predicament.
Not long ago, the Obama Administration raised the federal fuel efficiency standards, known as CAFE, to an average 35.5 mpg by 2016. Yesterday, they announced the CAFE were being raised again to historically high levels. For model year 2025, the average fuel economy for cars and light-duty trucks will be set at 54.5 mpg. This will mean a nearly doubling of fuel
Electric vehicles in general are a great step in reducing emissions that cause global warming. The emissions from a gasoline-powered car are always greater than the emissions created to charge an electric vehicle. However, a new analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) suggests that the “greenness” of electric vehicles is not uniform across
Maine, one of the most oil dependent American states, has passed a law that requires the region’s oil consumption to be reduced by 30 per cent by 2030 and 50 per cent by 2050, based on 2009 levels.
While the law does not seem mainly focused on a shift to alternative energy, it does include it, although
(Reuters) – U.S. federal government and California regulators will coordinate announcements of proposed fuel economy and emissions requirements for 2017-2025, the agencies said on Monday.
California will now release its fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards for 2017-2025 model year cars and
(Reuters) – The Chinese government is said to be looking to prepare at least 10 million car parking spots for electric vehicles by 2020 in a new comprehensive policy due to be announced soon, a top executive at a local automaker said on Thursday.
China relies on foreign oil for more than half of its oil consumption and is looking to
Carbon dioxide emissions dropped significantly in the United States in 2009. The economy played an obvious role; not so obvious was the influence of power generation and its increasing efficiency.
Emissions of CO2 have been trending down for the last decade by about 0.9 percent. But the 2009 drop was far more dramatic — seven percent — the largest decline since the Energy Information Administration began keeping energy data more than 60 years ago.
This tells us a lot about just how bad economic conditions were (As if we needed to be told!).