Energy policy and pricing
“Government policy such as fuel standards and greenhouse gas emission regulations, as well as support for the development of advanced technologies, plays a key role in supporting our product and technology pathway for a more fuel-efficient future.” –Sue Cischke, group vice president, sustainability, environment and safety engineering at Ford Motor Co.
Sue Cischke at Ford Motor Co., gave an interesting speech the other day – talking about how not just how government energy policy is going to affect vehicle development choices by automakers, but how energy pricing decisions need to be made to guide those choices as well.
“There’s a critical link between energy prices and purchase decisions as a driving force in the need to implement a comprehensive national energy policy,” Cischke said. “It is imperative that government also address the need for lower carbon fuels, consumer incentives and price signals to adopt the technologies that will deliver a more fuel-efficient, greener future. Price signals matter.”
In short you can mandate lower emissions and fuel efficiency improvements all you want, but without pricing incentives – and especially disincentives, such as increasing the cost of fuel – those policy goals will be almost impossible to achieve.
Now, it isn’t easy – and Cischke stressed that very point, especially when it came to reducing emissions.
“That is why we support a comprehensive, economy-wide, upstream national carbon cap and trade program that can slow, stop and reverse the growth of U.S. emissions while expanding the U.S. economy,” she said in her speech. “Ford recognizes the need for a comprehensive approach to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to address climate change concerns. While cap and trade for carbon emissions remains a complex challenge, we still need to employ an integrated approach that would include contributions from all of the key stakeholders.”
Yet one more viewpoint to chew on as the U.S. tries to figure out how to reduce emissions and energy use while keeping our economic might in top fighting trim.
August 14th, 2009 at 5:28 am
Something I don’t understand here. Ms Cischke talks of incentives and disincentives. By promoting the higher cost of fuels that automatically equals less driving equals less petrol sales equals less taxes. The government has already shot itself in the foot over that one so I don’t expect it to happen. Taxes are going up anyway so to say we have to go even higher?
The other thing that maybe I understand too well is the cap & trade. It looks to me like you can create all the carbon emissions you want as a corporation you will just have to buy credits (pay a penalty). That will again be immediatly be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices (a tax by another name).
I may be misunderstanding her statements and somebody can set me straight but it looks to me like the only people gaining in this whole post is big money financiers and carbon emissions will still be carbon emissions.
Now if I could only get these folks to buy the carbon credits from me, I would get behind this.
August 17th, 2009 at 11:11 am
A better solution for the trucking industry then the generic Cap and Trade might be an industry sculpted requirement.
A carbon tax could be placed on the sale of diesel that would immediately be returned to the industry through IFTA (International Fuel Tax Agreement). You would be taxed according to the number of gallons you purchased, and the refund would be based upon how many miles you reported to have traveled in your IFTA filings. The better your fuel mileage, the greater the refund.
While there would still be problems with this suggestion (heavy haulers will always get worse fuel mileage on average, and someone dedicated to light freight hauls will always exceed the average) the problems presented would be preferable to a generic cap and trade placed on the industry.
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Trucks at Work: Sean Kilcarr comments on trends affecting the many different strata of the trucking industry -- light and medium duty fleets up through over-the-road truckload, less-than-truckload, and private fleet operationsAdvertisement
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