On the one hand… Washington style

Do you ever wonder if anyone in Washington remembers what they did yesterday?  Are you one of the many who believe that those in our nation’s capital simply jump on whatever bandwagon is expedient at the moment?  If either question has ever crossed your mind, I might be able to help you with the answers.

As you know, the administration has ordered new rules for motor vehicle fuel efficiency.  By 2016, automakers’ combined fleet of new cars and trucks must attain an average of roughly 35 miles per gallon.  The current requirement is 25.3 miles per gallon.  If my math is correct, that would be a decrease in fuel consumption of approximately 27% to drive the same number of miles.

Forgetting for the moment whether that type of technological leap is even feasible in approximately six and one half years without making the vehicles out of balsa wood, there is one other major problem with that edict.  It crashes (no pun intended) headlong into another federal edict that I remember reading about a few weeks ago, that is, the ethanol mandate.

Last month, [before the new fuel efficiency standards were announced] an ethanol trade group petitioned the EPA to allow the ethanol levels in gasoline blends to be as high as 15%, up from the current 10%. Without the increase, the group said the U.S. won’t be able to meet a congressional mandate requiring some 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel to be blended into the domestic fuel supply by 2022.

However, by increasing fuel efficiency, we will be using less fuel, and thus, less ethanol than we are today to drive the same number of miles.  And, as we are not even close to the 36 billion gallon ethanol mandate today, we will be considerably further away from that mandate in 2016, and further still in 2022.

I’m a simple person.  Whatever the plan is, is it to much to ask that Washington be consistent, or, to go back to my opening comments, to remember what they did yesterday?

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SoundOffSister

The Sound Off Sister was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and special trial attorney for the Department of Justice, Criminal Division; a partner in the Florida law firm of Shutts & Bowen, and an adjunct professor at the University of Miami, School of Law. The Sound Off Sister offers frequent commentary concerning legislation making its way through Congress, including the health reform legislation passed in early 2010.

1 Comment

  1. Dimsdale on May 20, 2009 at 3:12 am

    There is a simple answer to this issue: Diesel engines.  Look at the cars Europe and the rest of the world have available to them.  They are real cars you can fit in, drive better than their gasoline counterparts, and get, on average, 50 – 80% better fuel mileage.  Go drive a VW TDI or a modern Diesel from Mercedes Benz or BMW, and see what the rest of the world knows.

    Oops!  One problem: the enviroweenies that have their hand up Howdy Doody's, er, Barack Obama's back don't like Diesel.   Nevermind.



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