Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the fundamental premise is wrong. My wife
is old Prius
had half the EVMT of a conventional car of the same size
using today
'
'
is gasoline. A vehicle with a diesel engine is
about
cient than a gasoline engine because
it runs at higher compression and temperatures, so a
diesel will reduce EVMT by
% more ef
%, all other things being
equal. The national CAFE standard of
mpg in
and
mpg in
will lower the average EVMT
by much more than
%. Plug-in electric vehicles have an
EVMT that depends on how electricity is produced, and
averaged over the country
is electric system is already
better than required by the LCFS. All of these are ready
for large-scale implementation now and reduce emissions
far more than an LCFS. Ef
'
ciency improvement can
dwarf the emissions reduction coming from an LCFS, so
why not focus on the big rewards rather than on a very
complicated little thing?
The advocates of the LCFS argue that there are some
fuels that make emissions worse and we should force them
out. An example is corn ethanol produced where there is a
lot of fossil fuel used to make the electricity that runs the
factories. Everyone knows that, and I am sure that the
politicians who mandated today
'
s ethanol subsidies to
agribusiness will
find a way to cancel anything attempted
on a national scale to do away with the subsidies. LCFS
fans also don
'
t like oil from the Canadian tar sands where
it takes from
% of the energy content of the
fuel to get it out of the ground and through the re
%to
nery.
Some people that I respect are enthused about an
LCFS, but they have never been able to make clear to
me why California or the nation should be doing it now.
Having read the
-page volume de
ning the California
