Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
improve enough over ten years or so to really start to take of at er that?
Only if that happened would it make sense for the debate over electric
cars to return to the future of American electricity.
A
ll of this remains in the future. Advances in automotive technology
have already made it possible for Americans to drive ever more
ei cient cars and trucks, and, together with high oil prices, made it
more cost-ef ective for the U.S. government to mandate and otherwise
encourage their adoption. h e move toward more ei cient vehicles is
bringing benei ts for the U.S. economy, the environment, and national
security, even if sometimes overstated. If the trends all continue, the pay-
of s will grow too. Fully taking advantage of the opportunity to cut U.S.
oil consumption would require some support from government—we
have seen that individual car buyers don't fully account for the national
benei ts of more ei cient vehicles when they shop for a new ride—but
markets will do a lot of the heavy lit ing by themselves. Very lit le of
this would be undermined by a simultaneous trend toward more U.S.
oil production, making the two benei cial developments compatible
with each other.
Novel cars and trucks and new ways to fuel them, though, aren't the
only part of the unfolding revolution in new and cleaner energy sources.
h
e change extends to how the United States produces power.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search