Addition to Fossil Fuels
Again, I’m much more interested in the behavioral side of climate change and fuel usage arguments than the actual point of the arguments.
I read another one of those bitter hippie comments on CNN this morning to the tune of “Go ahead and enjoy your air conditioning and SUV” while the world burns, etc., etc. I know I just put a value judgment on that statement, and I apologize for that, but sounding hateful on the internet like that is really repugnant to me, no matter what the topic.
As people who work with me in the office might know, the most interesting debate to me is not the cause of the problem, but rather what we might be able to change or do to correct the problem. It follows that, normally, if you are causing a problem by doing something, stopping doing that probably would help slow the problem. So, my argument reduces to the standard argument in the normal case, but I feel it adds some context when the cause is not inherently correctable. This is a problem I have encountered frequently in the Turkish work environment.
With this in mind, I set about using publicly accessible, independently gathered government data to analyze exactly how much of the problem is things like air conditioning and SUVs.
Given the beautiful cornucopia of transportation data available, I like pointing my little water gun of research at that subject.
So, let’s look at AC quickly: first off, air conditioning is generally electric-powered, which means all our great alternative energy technologies could fill this need no-problem if we could find a way to scale them up sufficiently. Nuclear would be fine as well.
This figure, which looks like somebody got out a spirograph after a heavy dose of heroin, says we use around 40% of our total energy load on electricity, everywhere (not household usage).
About 31% of household electricity usage is for HVAC systems, and 50% of HVAC usage is air conditioning. If all central heating in the whole country were done by electricity, of course the percentage of household energy devoted to AC would drop significantly.
And, remember, heating oil, used so heavily in the northeast, is not lightweight stuff, it’s similar to diesel but a bit denser. Nothing like natural gas.
While I didn’t find or look for commercial data, given the heavy intensity of lighting in office and retail environments, and heavy energy requirements of technological and manufacturing equipment, etc., I would assume commercial AC usage intensity is similar in terms of proportion.
The report from above suggests to me that efficiency has probably overcome any over-usage on the part of long-time users, and the growth in usage is more from new users. Given the number of elderly people who die each summer from overexposure to heat, I think we can say a higher penetration of central AC (or even modular units) is a general growth in the standard living of our society. Plus, it’s fueled by a relatively clean, potentially renewable, and highly efficient source. So, while keeping it down at 68 F might not be the most responsible, let’s say AC is a valid and well-proportioned part of modern life.
So, for the fuel usage, I busted out more numerical data.
To start off (and this is really critical), we can conservatively say the US population (1970 to now [neat Google query response, by the way]) has grown about 50%. All my transportation data is coming from here.
From this, we can see that passenger vehicle fuel usage has grown by 5% since 1970. Of course, the warming arguments date far before 1970, but my point is that we haven’t exactly switched from lines to eight-balls of car-fuel petroleum addiction in the recent modern era.
Over the same time period, passenger car share of vehicular fuel usage is down from 74% to 42%, driven by a significant up-ticks in “other 4-tire 2-axle vehicles” (397%) and big rigs and tractor trailers (224%).
Big rigs and tractor trailers have increased their share from 12% to 22%.
While it’s really hard to break down that “other 4-tire” category, their increase in usage share went from 13% to 36%. We can probably assume SUVs and commuter tough-guy trucks are falling into this “other” category (it’s at least a conservative assumption).
In all, per-vehicle fuel usage has generally dropped a bit while miles per vehicle have skyrocketed. We see an interesting little bump in fuel usage per vehicle in the late-90s to early-2000s, which might actually be SUV-related, but who knows for sure.
It’s important to remember that pickups and SUVs in some cases actually have utility, as you can assume GM’s “We Are Professional Grade” in some way suggests that pickups and utility vehicles are actually being used for constructive commercial purposes, maybe most often construction and farming.
We’re in a standard of living corner again, because fuel usage per vehicle has remained flat or decreasing over my period of study, but the share of these heavy vehicles has increased significantly. This leads me to believe that, while SUV and pickup fuel efficiency may be lower than the current average passenger car, and despite their increasing share of penetration in the overall market, generally their unit impact is mitigated by across-the-board efficiency improvements.
To me, this suggests that, while every little bit matters, the only way you’re going to really make a dent in the overall picture is to stop people from buying and driving vehicles. Overall efficiency will continue to improve at a decent clip, and a relatively wealthy segment of the population (increasingly wealthy as fuel prices continue to increase in excess of GDP growth) driving fancy low-efficiency vehicles will only slow the rate of improvement slightly (as evidenced by my theory about the 10 years surrounding 2000, if it’s correct).
A big surprise for me was the relatively small fuel usage on the part of airplanes. I thought this would be more shocking, although it has increased by 67% since 1970.
I’d be really interested on people’s comments and corrections regarding this data. For now, I need to get out of this hotel room and catch our taxi!