Less for the oil companies, more for you

I promised a piece on saving energy, oil in particular, at the end of my piece on the decline of the Cantarell oil field. There is a lot of information out there on how to save energy, and a lot of it is obvious. What is less obvious is what you can do that gives the biggest bang for the buck, or for the effort.

In 2005, the U.S. used about 20.6 million barrels per day of crude oil. Of that,

9.1 million went to gasoline (44%)
4.1 went to fuel oil (20%)
3.2 went to propane/LPG (15%)
1.6 went to jet fuel (8%)

That is 87% of our use. The rest goes to petrochemicals, asphalt, lubricants, kerosene, and the like. I’ll concentrate on the top four. Consider: Completely eliminating our use of petrochemicals (0.68 million bpd), which is impossible without decades of intense R&D and conversion, would be the equivalent of reducing our gasoline consumption by 7.5%, an attainable short term goal.

Motor fuel is the biggest use, and mercifully the easiest to deal with. There are a number of absurdly simple things you can do to cut your gasoline use, without shelling out for a new Prius hybrid.

Drive slowly. I'm serious. The energy required to push your car through the air goes up by the square of the speed. This doesn't mean driving around at 15 mph. Just obey the speed limit, ok? How about 60 on the highway instead of "Oh, they give you five mph anyway"? To quote the government fuel economy site, “As a rule of thumb, you can assume that each 5 mph you drive over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.20 per gallon for gas.” Regular gas is around $2.93 at my local pump. Do you like paying $3.33 for regular at 70 mph? No? Added benefit: you stop getting that sudden pang of fear when you see a cop car.

Check your tire pressure. Studies have found that most people's tires are under inflated. This can cost you 3-4% in gas mileage. Multiply it by $2.93 and save ~$0.10 a gallon.

Next time you buy tires, check out Consumer Reports for the ones that have the lowest rolling resistance - another couple of percentage points for no more money than you were going to spend anyway.

Go easy on your accelerator. You are blowing somewhere between 5% and 33% of your gas mileage when you tromp on it.

Don’t let the car sit there idling. You are getting zero miles per gallon, fouling the sparkplugs, and contaminating the oil. As a rule of thumb, starting the car takes the same amount of gasoline as ten seconds of idling.

So far you have done the equivalent of saving at least $0.60 a gallon with the expenditure of a little restraint, a few minutes every two weeks to check your tires, and $2.99 for a tire gauge. Your wallet is benefiting immediately, and you are doing your part to reduce our oil dependence.

Check out: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/drive.shtml

Carpool, even if it is just one day a week. One day a week in your car with one other person cuts gas consumption for the two of you by 10%. Two days, 20%,and so on.

If you live in a northern state, get an electric block heater and a timer. In the winter, set the timer to start heating your engine block early in the morning. Watch your winter gas mileage jump by 10-20%. Most of your winter mileage loss comes from the first ten cold minutes of driving, when your oil is like jello and your engine is dumping in the gas. The electric energy you use will be far less than the gas you were wasting. Your engine will always start.

The next time you are in the market for a vehicle, buy one that gets at least 5 mpg better than your last one. Think hard about how much vehicle you really need. Think about getting a Toyota Prius, a Honda Civic Hybrid, or if you really want to ignore the gas pumps, a Honda Insight. Go to http://www.fueleconomy.gov/ and look for the highest mileage vehicle that will do what you need to do.

What if this kind of behavior, short of buying all new cars, became widespread in the U.S. driving population? Let’s say we get 20% compliance. That means one out of five people does all of these things, or everybody does one-fifth of them, or something proportional. That would drop our national oil consumption by around 5.6%, and world oil consumption by 1.4%. That’s half of the oil now produced by Nigeria. The price of oil would drop, our trade deficit would drop, and we would be on our way to compliance with the Kyoto accords. And that’s without even reducing the number of miles we drive.

Next time, some tips on quick and cheap ways to save fuel (and your share of the planet) at home.