Note: Fuel Economy Increase Will Not Result in more Mini Cars

Sometimes, people just know things, even if the evidence shows they're wrong. One example of this is that American conservatives know that increasing fuel economy standards will necessarily cause car companies to stop making big cars in favor of little econoboxes that will kill people. Eric Peters over at the American Prospect, in a post "CAFE Spells RIP for Trucks" says:

The government's pending (2016) 35.5 MPG CAFE fuel economy requirements -- which for the first time apply to trucks as well as passenger cars -- are going to make it very difficult for any automaker to sell trucks in volume in this country.

The problem is that's not true.

Unfortunately, there isn't a bias for more Fiat 500s

On the contrary, in 2006, when Congress was working on the new fuel economy standards [disclosure: I was staff at this time of a Senator helping to write this legislation], they wrote the law to take this concern into account. CAFE miles-per-gallon (MPG) requirements are not based on a strict one-size-fits-all manner that Peters assumes they are. Instead, automakers are assigned a fuel economy standard based on the 'footprint' of their cars. Literally: its measured by the length times the width of the car.

This footprint-based approach actually means that there is a bias in the new standards in favor of larger cars over smaller ones. A study  from the University of Michigan says "that there may be a substantial financial incentive to produce larger vehicles".

So, although Peters' concern may have been true for previous efforts to increase fuel economy standards, it isn't now.

Thoughts on the NRC Mess

This Nuclear Regulatory Commission thing sure is a mess, isn’t it?

I’m pretty confident that the NRC as a whole is going to be just fine – its not just these dysfunctional 5 people, but it is a whole bureaucracy who actually are some of the best federal workers in the government. I know several of them, and they seem to just be going about their job without regard here to fate of Jaczko.

Some people might ask, why doesn't the President just ask some people to resign? But - it doesn’t surprise me that no one will be asked to resign, because the NRC is almost a unique institution here in Washington. It actually is more like the Federal Election Commission than a government agency like the DoE. It is nominally an independent agency of the federal government, so I’m not even sure that the President could fire anyone, even if he wanted to.

It is extraordinary that this is happening publicly, but it seems like that’s a factor of Issa’s releasing the letter, not a desire to fight this in the court of public opinion.

I don’t think this will ultimately mean anything for the big fights the NRC has going on now that you mention, but it may be a symptom of those fights. If Jaczko is a proxy for the anti-nuclear crowd, and the rest of the commissioners get painted as pro-industry, as they seem to be, then it seems that there is some very big fault-lines that need to be worked-out before these decisions are made.

Finally – while it seems like the NRC is having problems – they’re nothing compared to the regulatory problems that Japanese utilities are undergoing right now. They can’t even get functioning nuclear plants back online after routine maintenance, due to public opposition and uncertain regulation. So – we can be thankful for the relative stability we’ve got here.

In which Tom Friedman agrees with Me

Tom Friedman’s column in the NY Times this weekendis about the recently announced agreement struck by the Administration and the Automakers to double auto fuel economy by 2025. I, and the rest of my colleagues at the American Security Project, agree that “This is a big deal” as Friedman writes.

In fact, I agree completely, in exactly the same words. I originally wrote, on July 28 “This is a big deal.” as part of a blog post on ASP’s Flashpoint blog when the deal was signed. This sentence, along with more analysis on how important this deal will be for national security was included in an article written by Mark Clayton in the Christian Science Monitor.

I’m pleased that Mr. Friedman agrees with our analysis: the agreement struck by the Administration and the Automakers to double auto fuel economy by 2025 is a big deal.  It is very important for American national security and foreign policy that we use less oil.

Here’s Tom Freidman:

This is a big deal — a legacy deal for Obama that will make a significant, long-term contribution to America’s energy, environmental, health and national security agendas.

Here’s my blog post:

This is a big deal.

It is very important for American national security and foreign policy that we use less oil. Last year, ASP released a report“Ending Our Dependence on Oil,” which showed how America’s addiction to oil threatens our national security.

It is important that the United States as a whole uses less oil because the sheer volume of oil imports harms American competitiveness and drives down the value of the dollar. The United States sends hundreds of billions of dollars overseas to pay for oil. The United States consumed over $1.45 trillion worth of oil in 2010, of which $680 billion was spent on imports.

Here’s the Christian Science Monitor quoting me:

Energy-security experts praised the new agreement as key to reducing America's reliance on foreign oil.

"This is a big deal," Andrew Holland, senior fellow with the American Security Project, a bipartisan public-policy and research organization, wrote on his blog. "It is important that the United States as a whole uses less oil because the sheer volume of oil imports harms American competitiveness and drives down the value of the dollar."

The US spent at least $680 billion on oil imports in 2010, he writes. Without those imports, the US trade deficit of $497 billion in 2010 "would not have existed.” He continues, “That capital could be used for investment at home, and the export of that capital had the effect of driving down the value of the dollar."