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Of course, the Obama Administration had very high, and unrealistic goals, to rapidly improve fuel economy. This was mostly motivated by climate change considerations. If people cared about that, they would simply drive less.
The proposed accelerated fuel standards are shown below
and if they have been put in place in the real world, then consunption of gasoline should go down. So let's look at the real data on weekly gasoline consumption.
There are several points to be made about the data shown above:
- Over the period 1990 to 2007 there is a basic linear increase in gasoline use which averages about. In 1990 weekly gasoline use was about 16,500 barrels a week and that incrased to 21,500 barrels a week in 17 years. So that's a steady increase o about 300 barrels a week meaning that gasoline consumption inf 2007 was about 1/3 higher than it was in 1990.
- Then something happened which caused gasoline consumption to decrease. Did fuel economy suddenly kick in? Did American decide to drive less? Of course not, this is when the price of gas started to rise considerably, heating a peak of about $4.50 in June of 2008.
- The price of gas quickly plummeted after the June 2008 high, and then consumption started to rise again.
- The total reduction in gasoline consumption from the peak was only about 10%; this indicates the American driving habits by and large do NOT depend upon the price of gas.
- As of June 2018, our current gasoline weekly consumption is essentially the same as it was 10 years ago.
The data then strongly argues that we are not reducing gasoline consumption as a direct consequence of increasing fuel economy. But hey, that's just data, and that's fake news ...
Note that very recently, retail prices of gasoline have increased relatively rapidly and these kind of behavior as not really been seen in the recent past. Hence, $4 per gallon gas may be on the near horizon.
Much of this behavior suggests that the number of vehicle miles travelled (VMT) per year increases much faster than average fuel economy, and this is the primary driver of weekly gasoline usage.
The figure above is current to October 2017 and shows some important features
- From the period 1993 to 2008 (the peak price of gasoline) VMT increased by about 40%; In 15 years the average american drove 40% more. Some of this is due to longer commutes associated with the McMansion phenomena in the US in the early 2000s.
- There was a decrease in VMT after the June 2008 gas price maximum. Again this decrease was about 10%.
- From 2009 to 2014 there was unusual plateau behavior in that VMT was essentially constant. If this held into the future then America would see a reduction in greenhouse gas emission associated with transportation. However, during this period gasoline prices were a) relatively high and b) relatively constant.
- By the end of 2014 there were new problems in the international Crude oil market that caused gasoline prices to fall relatively quickly. This behavior can be seen below:
The resulting lower gasoline prices produced a relative strong uptick in VMT such that Americans were driving 25% more in 2017 than they did in 2014. Hence, this would suggest a future of even more greenhouse gas emissions associated with transportation.