In fact, millions of Americans already drive vehicles such as the Ford Taurus, the Dodge Caravan and the Chevrolet Silverado truck that can use alcohol fuels (ethanol or methanol) to reduce dramatically, if not eliminate, their consumption of gasoline.
It would cut down on millions of gallons of gasoline consumption and millions of tons of the emissions that environmentalists care about.
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On the verge of a four day rally, oil futures have gained on the prospects of an OPEC-IEA stand-off, falling stockpiles in the U.S. ahead of peak gasoline consumption given the Fourth of July holiday, and the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, Tropical Storm Arlene, hitting the coast of Mexico.
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So the fuel consumption reduction with the EDIE with 10% of the fuel supply coming form ethanol would yield a gasoline consumption reduction of 33%.
So that is a 28% reduction in gasoline consumption with a supply of ethanol equalling only 5% of the total fuel supply.
Again if the goal is to reduce gasoline consumption then the economics of diesel make more sense than the economics of alcohol.
Latest monthly figures on gasoline consumption show a decline of 1 percent.
President Bush, in his State of the Union address this year, announced an initiative to cut U.S. gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next 10 years through a combination of alternative fuels and more efficient automobiles.
While windmills cannot power cars directly, motor gasoline accounts for less than half of the consumption of petroleum products in America, so if wind reduces only non-vehicular use of petroleum it will still reduce reliance on petroleum products from the Middle East.
In 2007 annual gasoline consumption was about 140 billion gallons per year, with forecasts of rising demand.
That breaks down to 2.5 million bpd of ethanol blended with 0.4 million bpd of gasoline (which would be an 82% reduction in gasoline consumption).
Airlines find themselves in a difficult situation, having to juggle high gasoline prices with low pricing power given the weak state of consumption in a fragile economic environment.
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