Five Percent: Conserve Energy

Friday, it appears that some additional congressional talking was done about CAFE standards, leading glacially towards a bill that seems to be more likely to pass, despite the car companies’ claims of how badly it would harm their businesses. My observation is that they seem to be more culpable themselves of harming their businesses than any past or present government actions have ever been. (more…)

Friday night, after a long week of work, we settled down to sleep, alarm off, a little extra sleep envisioned in our rapidly approaching dreams. Saturday after 7AM, our dreams were broken by the sounds of leaf blowers. Three men, three leaf blowers, an an idling truck all running continuously between 7:15 and 8:15 were clearing fallen leaves from across the street. The machines were loud. They were stinky. Nothing new here. Except one thing: wind. (more…)

If you are on the road this Thanksgiving, consider this fact from the US Department of Energy: “Idling gets you 0 miles per gallon”. In fact, idling for more than 10 seconds uses more gas than turning the car off then on as needed. So if you are waiting in long lines of traffic approaching tolls, or waiting in line for fast-food, consider turning off the engine. Be safe, and don’t gun the engine (more…)

A while back, I was dismayed by the incredibly lame increases in light “truck” corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards put forward by the Bush administration’s Environmental Plundering Agency (EPA). Later, Environmental Defense helped win a victory in California courts. Today, another big victory, this time lead by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NDRC).

Today, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals rejected the Bush administration’s weak fuel economy standard for sport-utility vehicles and other light-duty trucks. The court upbraided the administration for setting zero value on reducing the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming when setting fuel economy standards. The court also faulted the administration for leaving a gaping loophole that has allowed auto manufacturers to classify passenger cars as trucks subject to weaker fuel economy standards.

Go NRDC and all the others that made this happen. In your face, EPA!

As I was in a cab, along with a mass of other vehicles moving out of Chicago on Thursday I noticed a gas station changing $3.97/gallon. Oh my god — it’s still at around $3/gallon here in the Boston areas. This explained why the driver had all the windows open and no A/C on a 93 degree day.

I asked my cab driver about high gas prices and he said he was not making enough money to keep driving, and that many other drivers had quit. He showed me an article in a paper in which cab drivers had requested a fare increase to City Hall, which they had denied. Yes, the free market is working, as it usually does. Slowly, and brutally. (more…)

U.S. Gasoline prices are back up over $3.00 a gallon, near the record high price set after the Katerina hurricane in 2005. The cause this time is, again, a shortage of refinery capacity. But this time there wasn’t a storm. According to A Reuters reports today

AAA said it was “alarming” that gasoline prices were rising so high without the backdrop of a major geopolitical or natural event to disrupt supply, like a hurricane or a new military flare-up in the Middle East.

Good thing geopolitical or natural events that disrupt supply never happen. Like a hurricane or a flare-up in the Middle East.

This makes me and ExxonMobil happy. (more…)

As I was trolling around, I came across a page from the Briggs & Stratton website: you need to use different gas in a snowblower than in a lawnmower … because gasoline sold in winter is formulated to combust at a lower temperature. So if you must, make sure you buy gas in November or later for Winter.

But must you? (more…)

Sometimes it’s easy to see that your tires need more air, but it’s far from obvious in many cases. We recently noticed a drop in mileage in Theresa’s car, and I was ready to chalk it up to different gasoline composition in winter that reduces mileage. But I noticed one of Theresa’s car’s tires was noticeably low, so we filled it up. As it turned out, all the tires were under-inflated, even the ones that looked fine.

Then, one cold day I noticed a tire symbol on my dashboard. I thought it was the below-freezing warning light, but I read the manual, and it turned out my car was telling me my tire pressure was low. I have no idea how it knows that, but it was right (I believe my Prius is smarter than I am), so I pumped up my tires.

So check your tire pressure. Both cars are getting significantly better mileage after this simple effort!

Cold weather is a cause of lower tire pressure (and other other things that reduce mileage). (more…)

The distance from my home to work is about 7 miles. Every day I do ride my bike to work, I do not drive my car there or back.

So, I do not use 1/50th of a gallon of gas every time I do not drive a mile.

Over the last few months since we moved our office to Cambridge, MA (a city openly hostile to cars) I have not driven about 50 times.

So I calculate that I have not used 7 * 2 * 1/50th * 50 = 14 gallons of gas. My only regret is that I was not driving my Prius, since if I were not driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD, I would have not used 5 times as much gasoline, or 70 gallons!

Conclusion, I should be not driving a Grand Cherokee!

We’re wrapping up what turned out to be a really nice weekend with a niece and two nephews, plus our own boy and girl — seven of us all together. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law took a nice and well-deserved weekend for themselves. It was a lot of kids in a not-so-big house, but we did just fine.

None of the kids got a lot of sleep, except during our ride to the beach when they all conked out within the first 15 minutes of the ride. Aunt K. and Uncle P. (names withheld to protect the innocent) left their Nissan Quest mini-van and yes, we were able to get all seven people in the van. There were three things we realized on our drive to the beach.

First, (more…)