The US Clean Cities program has displaced 0.214% of US road fuel demand in 2008, according to figures relased by the organisation which show that a total of 384m gal were reduced from a total of all road fuel of 174 930 m gal in 2006 (the last year for which figures are available) at a cost of $132m. That's $0.35/gal reduction.
Hardly sustainable, but the Clean Cities Program has the equivalent of
Hardly sustainable, but the Clean Cities Program has the equivalent of
a national network of 48 full-time technical sales professionals working to reduce U.S. dependence on oil.equivalent to 48 full time sales professionals across the USThis post is not about disparaging the work that this dedicated bunch of people do, but to point out that it is compoletely inadquate to the task in hand. How many people are there selling oil in the US? How much funding do they get? What i wonder is the total number of people working to reduce oil dependency in the US?
Comments (3)
Simon,
Are you assuming that the demand-price curve for gasoline is elastic? I think that consumers will be willing to pay inelastically till a certain price above which they will begin to cut down their consumption. That said, 35 c on the gallon seems to be pretty promising to me. This is way better than the summer gas price-relief proposals that were floated in the primaries.
Posted by PRADEEP | October 20, 2008 3:07 PM
Posted on October 20, 2008 15:07
Hi Pradeep,
I wasn't trying to be that clever. Though there does seem to be almost as much price elasticity in petroleum as tobacco, alcohol (and possibly crack, but I've not really tried to watch that market). If price elasticity means you can ramp up the price and demand stays constant.
I was just dividing the total amount of funding this year by the reduction in use.
My economics education has been restricted to six hours in my first undergraduate year. It was much more interesting than statistics.
Posted by Simon Robinson
|
October 21, 2008 10:27 AM
Posted on October 21, 2008 10:27
Simon,
"...but I've not really tried to watch that market"
That's funny. Looks like we really need gasoholics anonymous :-)?
Posted by PRADEEP | October 22, 2008 7:08 AM
Posted on October 22, 2008 07:08