Environmental Engineering Reference
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[mandated] consumption of 16 billion gallons of ethanol-equivalent cel-
lulosic biofuels is unlikely to be met in 2022.” 50 h e reason was simple:
advanced biofuels remained considerably more expensive than fuels pro-
duced from oil, and there was lit le hope for a major change in sight.
Meanwhile regulators in Washington kept relaxing the biofuels standard,
providing lit le incentive for anyone to comply.
m
m
m
Wherever you looked, the questions invariably came back to govern-
ment. In 2007, George W. Bush signed a new law to raise U.S. fuel
economy by 40 percent, to a target of thirty-i ve miles per gallon, by
2020. In 2009, Barack Obama tore up those rules, announcing that auto
companies would need to hit the same target by 2016 instead. Two
years later he announced an even more ambitious goal: U.S. cars and
light trucks would be required to deliver 54.5 mpg by 2025. 51
h is is a staggering number. When the rules were i rst announced
in July 2011, only seven cars for sale in the United States were get ing
more than thirty-nine miles per gallon. 52 Only four models—all of them
small electric cars—were capable of hit ing the 54.5 mpg target. 53 Even
the Prius, at i t y miles per gallon, fell short. 54 To come anywhere close
to meeting the new targets, there would need to be massive changes in
the cars that Americans drove.
“When we talk about the future fuel economy targets,” Ford's Viera
told me, “between now and 2022—I think we have a good feel in terms
of the technology. . . . Where frankly it becomes challenging is from 2022
to 2025, which is a pret y big jump at that point. I can't tell you that we
have a roadmap that gets us to the 2025 number.” Many people predict-
ing the future of energy assume that the details of the fuel economy
standards are set in stone. h ey are anything but.
To the contrary the standards explicitly create opportunities for
future revisions. “We as an auto company, which in the past we would
never do, agreed to a standard that we don't have an idea of how we're
going to meet it,” Viera explained. So they made a deal: in exchange
for the companies agreeing to the target, the government agreed to
review it in 2018. “We don't know,” he coni ded. “I mean gas prices are
 
 
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