The nation's passenger cars and light trucks may have to average 75 miles per gallon by the 2030s, a top federal environmental official said at the SAE International World Congress.
Margo Oge, director of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Transportation and Air Quality, said Monday at the SAE International 2008 World Congress in Detroit that's the level of fuel economy needed to meet a widely backed scientific-community proposal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 80 percent by 2050 from 2000 levels.
Congress has mandated automobiles and light trucks average an industry fleet-wide average of 35 mpg by 2020, a 40 percent increase over current requirements.
To meet the low end of the 2050 proposal, automakers would have to average 75 mpg in the 2030s, Oge.
“There are a lot of strategies you need to consider — both engines and fuels,” she said in an interview. Automakers “need to be thinking of those investments for the long term basis,” beyond the energy bill, Oge said.
She noted the “political, economic and regulatory landscape in the United States and globally has changed dramatically over the past year. The reality is the pace of change will not be letting up anytime soon.”
Oil use may rise to 120 million barrels a day by 2030, up from the current worldwide average of 85 million barrels a day, as oil demand in China and India is expected to at least double. The transportation sector accounts for two thirds of U.S. oil use and one third of greenhouse gas emissions.
General Motors Corp's director of powertrain systems research J. Gary Smyth said that the world's auto fleet could reach 1 billion vehicles by 2030, up from 820 million today.
Oge said the auto industry should be able to meet the 35 mpg standard by 2018 with the same size fleet, with cost-effective technology improvements, based on an internal EPA study.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is expected to release its proposal for 2010-2015 fuel economy increases as soon as next week, after the White House completes its review of the proposal. Oge confirmed the EPA has sent “a number of comments to NHTSA (on the fuel economy proposal).
“This is typical,” Oge said. “They are constructive comments.”
EPA is studying the effect of different types of renewable fuels in light of the congressional mandate to hike the number of gallons of biofuels and renewables to 36 billion gallons annually by 2022 — more than five times the current levels. By 2013, all gasoline will be blended with 10 percent ethanol, Oge said.
Congress ordered that 16 billion gallons of the renewable fuels standard come from cellulosic ethanol — a technology that is still under development and essentially producing almost no fuel yet. GM announced earlier this year it had purchased a small equity stake in a cellulosic start-up firm, Coskata Inc., which vows to produce at least 100 million gallons of $1-a-gallon cellulosic ethanol by 2011.
EPA is looking the impact of different types of renewable fuels as well as the impact on the food supply of using so many crops — especially corn — to produce fuel. The lifecycle analysis of different fuels will look at direct and indirect greenhouse gas footprint of different biofuels, Oge said.
