Trucks Costing Us Billions Per Year?
A Commercial From CSX Boasts Impressive Statistics


A TV commercial from the train company CSX is promoting the "transportation of tomorrow". In this commercial they trumpet their efficiency statistics which are rather impressive:

[Our] Trains can move a ton of freight 423 miles on a single gallon of fuel.

I would be interesting to see under precisely what conditions these statistics hold true and how often this level of efficiency can be maintained. Those nittty gritty details will have to be researched more thoroughly in the future. However, this does make semi trucks look like money pits in comparison. According to Robert Clarke, president of the Truck Manufacturers Association, and the Department of Energy, increasing fuel efficiency of freight trucks 10% from 5.5 mpg to 6.5 mpg would save the US approximately a billion gallons of gas. And all of this could be be obtained by adding aerodynamic skirts, side mirrors, and gap enclosures to semi-trucks:

if every tractor/van semi-trailer combination truck in operation in the US adopted these technologies and improved fuel efficiency by 10%, it would translate into nearly one billion gallons per year of fuel savings. These small improvements collectively could make a huge difference in reducing fuel use.

At $3 a gallon this means that we could save $3 billion dollars a year by simply adding some plastic pieces to the sides of semi-trucks. Now imagine if we switched over to trains which are not only vastly more efficient but have lower equipment and labor costs than semi-trucks. I haven't come across an in depth study on this topic but I would love to know how many billions of dollars would be saved per year. It would seem the number would be incredibly large.

Source:

• CSX, Environmental Stewardship
• Green Car Congress, Study: Improvements in Large Truck Aerodynamics Could Save US Nearly One Billion Gallons of Fuel Annually, November 14 2006
• Department of Energy, Leading Truck Manufacturers Unite with U.S. Department of Energy to Improve Fuel Efficiency in Tractor-Trailers November 15, 2006

To Slay the Vampire:
A cost that is borne by customers


Would you believe me if I said your microwave uses more electricity just sitting there as an expensive clock than when it's actually cooking food? No? Well get ready to be shocked. When you turn off electrical devices they don't always go off. Many of them go into standby mode and continue to burn electricity. Some devices can burn as much as 20 watts when in standby. Sometimes the standby mode is to provide you with a "quick start", run a little clock, or wait for a signal from a remote. And many electrical devices will use far more energy than what is needed to perform these functions. Other times it's simply cheaper for the company to force you to burn electricity than to invest a few more pennies and add a proper off switch. One prime example is a cellphone charger. According to Treehugger only 5% of the electricity used by a cellphone charger is from actually charging the phone. The other 95% of the electricity is being burned when the charger is just sitting there attached to the wall with no cellphone. Basically there is a ratio of 19:1 for waste versus actual use of electricity. The Economist has even jumped on this story and interviewed Dr. Alan Meier, a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley:

"The worst offenders consume more than 20 watts in standby mode. But nearly all standby functions, Dr Meier insists, can be performed with a power consumption on standby of one watt or less."

Equipment-makers do not have any incentive to use more efficient components, after all, since the cost (in higher power consumption) is borne by their customers.

That is why regulators around the world have started to introduce rules designed to encourage manufacturers to make their products less power-hungry. Most of these rules are voluntary: examples include the international Energy Star programme, the European Union's codes of conduct agreed with electronics manufacturers, and the standards laid down by the Australian Greenhouse Office.

The Economist continues on: "Strange though it seems, a typical microwave oven consumes more electricity powering its digital clock than it does heating food." Dr. Meier claims $3 billion is wasted from electrical devices sitting in standby. As Meier said before this problem has an easy solution. One such solution is commonly referred to as a vampire slayer. These are devices that use one watt or less of energy per hour when in standby mode. Dr. Meiers says that simply adding a vampire slayer (or meeting vampire slayer standards) would have the same carbon-dioxide emission reducing effect as removing 18 million cars from the roads. As far back as June 2001 president Bush made public statements addressing the problem. In 2002 Bush signed an executive order requiring government agencies to purchase "low-standby-power devices as long as it’s practical and economical for them to do so". That's a good start. However, that was five years ago and little to nothing has been done since then. Although the average American citizen can get tax credits to improve the efficiency of their home there's no real incentive to encourage companies to make more efficient products. The only only encouragement they get is the ability to put the energy star sticker on products that meet the EPA's standards.



Source:
Treehugger Treehugger Homework: Unplug Your Cellphone Charger November 26, 2005 2:28 PM
Economist: Pulling the plug on standby power Mar 9th 2006
Digg: Pulling the plug
Free version of the Economist at Lawrence Berkeley Labs
Whitehouse: Bush Administration Takes the Lead on Energy Conservation
Al Gore: Unplug your charger
GCN, As promised, Bush orders less standby power use, Patricia Daukantas, August 27, 2001 issue
Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Standby Power Usage