How much fuel do we really save?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Cheap! @ May 2 2007, 01:32 PM) [snapback]434121[/snapback]</div>

The truck still delivers the same amount of gas to the station. It is just that someone else is buying it. My answer is that only you are saving.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JimN @ May 2 2007, 08:57 PM) [snapback]434510[/snapback]</div>

Makes little sense, Jim! If the same amount of gas is delivered, and the same drivers begin to use less of it, then it takes longer to sell it - meaning the next truck load is delayed, etc.

Let's say that presto! Everybody is driving an EV tomorrow. The gas truck pulls up and fills the tanks at the station, same as always. But now nobody buys it. Cheap's point is that we aren't just not using THAT gas. There is tons of energy input to make the next tanker of gasoline that we also aren't using. Sort of a snow-ball affect.

What would we do with all the healthy/alive people that we're so used to making sick or killing though? That's the big question in my mind!

 

I agree with Darell.


A lot of people use your reasoning to justify buyings say conflict diamonds or fur coat coats or whatever. They say "The animal already died so what does it matter who buys it?"

The problem with this statement is it completely forgets about basic supply and demand. If you buy that fur coat it creates profit for someone and now a market so more animals are killed to supply the demand.

Darell summed it up nicely for gas.

 

If the market consumes less gas, less deliveries are made, the refineries slow down, the prices go down.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Cheap! @ May 2 2007, 01:32 PM) [snapback]434121[/snapback]</div>

1. I don't use 400gal of gas a year with my old corolla, so I can't save that much.
2. There are no less SUV or Hummer in the world because of those 1 million hybrids. Think about it. Which one has more sales every year? SUVs or hybrids? Not to mention that, even if people switch from SUVs to hybrids, there are people buying those used SUVs. So no real gain exists. All we are doing here is just slow down the melting of the earth, or narrow-minded like us Americans, we are just slowing down the addiction/dependency on foreign oil.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(mcsj @ May 3 2007, 08:26 AM) [snapback]434662[/snapback]</div>

Man, you are pessimistic!

Yes, some feel "life sucks, then you die". A few even let their health go or worse commit sucide. Lance Armstrong would be dead if he bought into that thought process.

Let's support hybrids and other green technologies, and over time others will finally "get it". SUV sales are down, Shell and Exxon finally have acknowledged global warming, so I definitely think things can turn around.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Delta Flyer @ May 3 2007, 08:34 AM) [snapback]434671[/snapback]</div>

No I am not. But most of us (i guess, roughly 90% Americans?) still think that we need big vehicles for this and that. How fast can Americans change their mind?

And my point is real: We are not trashing our used SUVs, we just sell those to others ourselves or trade those in.

Speaking of that, why Europeans don't mind packing 5 people in a little VW Golf or a little Fiat? I am not saying that those are clean cars or fuel-efficient cars. But why Americans think we need a SUV or Minivan to seat 5? Put it another way, why we don't want to pack 5 people in a vehicle at all?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Cheap! @ May 2 2007, 02:32 PM) [snapback]434121[/snapback]</div>

I'll answer this the way economists would. If you're looking for a simple answer, by the way, stop now because you will be unsatisfied with what I'm about to say. It's an inherently fuzzy question, and the farther away you get from the simple model (400 gallons is 400 gallons), the fuzzier it gets.

So when I'm faced with a question like this in a professional context, I answer it as completely as feasible then list out the caveats. You never get to the ultimate answer.

There are at least two dimensions to the complete answer: can you capture the energy of the intermediate goods and services used, and can you capture the effect of the "behavioral responses" to your reduction in gasoline use.

Yes, for intermediate good, but no, there's a lot of guesswork for the second.

So, the first question is, can you get an estimate of the energy required in the intermediate steps. Note that the *cost* of that energy is already worked into the cost of the gas. Lot of people (and my guess is this includes the CNW study) make that mistake. You just want to know literally the quantities of fuel sucked up at all the stages.

That number is known. Darned if I can find a reliable reference, but the figure that sticks with me is that the well-to-tank energy adds about another 20% to the energy of the gasoline itself. Found some crappy references to say that, but not the Argonne Labs one I was looking for. So, provisionally, depending on how those folks did their studies, you could tack on another 80 (20% of 400) gallons for the extraction-refining-transport costs. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody came up with a modestly larger or smaller estimate than that.

Even then, you know, you can get yourself tied up in knots of infinite regression when you start asking things like "what about the rubber for the truck tires that don't get used up now that less gas is being shipped" and so on. And the trucks that would have delivered those truck tires to the truck tire store. And so on.

Usually, my reading of the tank-to-well studies is that they don't include those costs.

Believe it or not, economists have a way (I'm not saying an ideal way) of getting at that overall grand total including all the inputs-to-the-inputs-to-the ... It's an infinite series, sure, but it converges -- it damps down as you move further back in the chain -- the rubber in the tires in the trucks is a small cost, the rubber in the tires of the trucks that delivered the tires an an even smaller cost, and so on.

But economists take a shortcut using the US GDP accounts and the Census of Industry. Basically, imagine a matrix with industries listed down the side (e.g., agriculture, autos, coal mining, retail sales, hospitals ... ) and the same industries listed across the top. Populate the cells with each industry's purchases of all the other industries outputs (including its own). Each cell is the dollar figure for how much each guy on the left bought from the guy at the top. Or vice-versa, I forget. In theory, the accounting prevents duplication (e.g., for cost of goods purchase for resale). Once you have the data in that matrix, it's then just a bit of matrix algebra to "step down" all the costs and end up with the ultimate values. That assumes a "fixed proportions technology", which is not worth explaining, but is a singificant simplifying assumption that may or may not be true in any particular case. Anyway, for energy cost of making a car, say, after the "step down", you end up not only with the energy directly purchased by carmakers, but also a pro-rata share of the energy purchased by glassmakers, steelmakers, etc. All done simultaneously, so that the glassmakers energy included all the energy used to mine the sand, and so on. The final product tells you, for a given industry, the total contribution of each other industry, to that industy's output. It sounds complex but actually is not hard to do, once you have the data. Those are all dollar weights, but you can get some reasonable approximation of physical quantities from them if you work at it.

Because energy is so important, I think the tables for ultimate energy use get published on the web. The only time I tried to use them was to validate the concept that producing and distributing food requires a lot of fossil fuel. They can be hard to make sense of.

So, that's that. The simple analysis says add 20%, and in theory, if you wanted to do the work, you could get at a more complete analysis.

Finally, on the behavioral issue, you have to specify a lot of stuff even to get a clear idea of what the question is. And it's not worth it because what data you can get will support only the crudest of answers.

My two cents. Economists talk about "elasticity of demand", meaning, how much does a price rise depress gas purchases, for example? Given the right observed data, you can make some attempt to meaure the average value of it (percent change in quantity for a given percent change in price). But of course that not only varies depending on the size of the change, but on the time period as well.

For what it's worth, In the short run, gasoline demand appears hugely inelastic (duh). Big price changes, small changes in quantity demanded. So there's no evidence to suggest that if you don't burn the 400 gallons, somebody else well. Not this year, any way. But (almost) all commodities show greater elasticity of demand over the longer run, at least when you talk about large changes in price. For 400 gallons in isolation, if I had to guess, I'd still guess that the long run effect on other drivers' gas consumption is essentially nil, but I have no data to back that up. ANd if you're talking 4 million gallons, well, that would be yet another story -- yes, then you'd probably expect some modest behavioral offset to your savings as lower prices led to increased use by others. But certainly not one-to-one.

So, probably add 20%. With some caveats.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(mcsj @ May 3 2007, 08:51 AM) [snapback]434678[/snapback]</div>

I'm only saying we do what we can and slowly build momentinum for a greener lifestyle.

I don't buy the mindset that a used land barge will still be used so don't even try. Used vehicles wear out - Detroit ones wear out faster.

 

Well let see, I traded my 03 Toyota Sequioa for a 07 Prius Touring Edition as an everyday commuter car. I usually fill up once a week with the sequioa and it costs me approx. $68.00, with the prius I fill up once every two weeks and it costs me approx. $25.00 so figure in a year I would have spend $3536.00 for the Sequoia and $1300.00 for the prius. Thats a savings of $2236.00!!!

So if you ask me I save quite a bit of fuel and dollars!!!


Wayne