TURN
OFF YOUR ENGINE!
As we read about yet another military experiment with
biofuels, one associated with the Navy’s Pacific fleet, it seems as if waste is
never going to be curbed. What has been termed a $12 million cocktail of
biofuels (NYT) has brought Congressional scrutiny and the ire of at least some
members who ignore the fact that this program was undertaken already under the
Bush Administration.
Should the military pioneer the use of alternatives to
conventional fuel? Should the Navy take the lead with its Great Green Fleet
even though the cost is about $27 a gallon as compared with as little as $4 a
gallon for regular fuel?
Instead of worrying about this national program, we may
consider another program just one state away from us that in fact proved to
save energy costs. The only thing they did was stop idling their engines! It’s
that simple, and quite amazing in its effectiveness.
The Kennecott Copper Mine in Utah experimented with this
novel idea in the past three years. This is the second largest copper mine in
the US, and the largest open-pit mine in the world. The experiment included 442
light and heavy trucks.
During a three-year period, 2,281,917 gallons were saved
with a price tag of $7,148,637. So, even if you don’t care about emission
reduction, how about saving over $7 million without affecting your productivity?
Modern engines don’t require warming up as they did some
fifty years ago for optimal functioning. When idling an engine, it burns fuel
at lower temperature than when fully engaged, thereby not burning the fuel in
the same fashion and leaving some residues in the engine’s chamber. These
residues build up and lower the engine efficiency over time, requiring
increased fuel consumption.
When idling, so claim maintenance workers at the
Cripple-Creek & Victor Gold Mining Company, the engine requires maintenance
work twice as often as otherwise; they routinely double the odometer readings
of their trucks and heavy equipment for warranty work, according to Sarah
Martin.
Martin is the coordinator of the Southern Colorado Clean
Cities Coalition, located in Colorado Springs (sarah@cleancitiescolorado.org).
She is spear-heading an effort to educate large fleets managers about the
benefits of reducing idling.
The Department of Energy estimates that 6.7% of all the
fuel used annually is wasted by idling; this is around 2.5 billion gallons. At
$4 a gallon, we are talking about saving some $10 billion. Imagine if we taught
drivers not to press the gas pedal too hard when accelerating?
There are difficult to implement solutions to our energy
needs, such as less reliance on foreign imports. According to the US Energy
Information Administration, we imported about 11.4 million barrels per day of
petroleum in 2011, about 45% of our usage. Any reduction would be a great
relief for our national security.
Then there are difficult choices about how to extract the
billions of gallons of oil and natural gas found on and off our shores—should
we stop “fracking”? Should we license Alaska drilling? How about drilling off
the southern coasts? These choices are complex because we must balance
short-term needs with long-term costs to the environment.
Compared to these looming issues that experts continue to
debate, and compared to the experiments of the Navy, the “stop the idle” program
seems like a simple, rational, financially brilliant, and environmentally
friendly solution. Why won’t everyone sign up?
We can start with our city and county governments, approach
CSU, and focus on every school district we fund through property taxes.
Unfortunately these organizations don’t release their budgets with proper
details—how much they spend on gas, how often they maintain their fleets and at
what cost, and how often they replace their fleets and at what cost.
Have you ever seen two police cruisers whose officers
chat for a long time while their engines idle? How often have we seen utility
trucks idling while their drivers stand beside them? Let’s not focus on the
drivers but on the vehicles, prolonging their lives, reducing our costs by
millions—without reducing services!
Most economic models measure costs and benefits to
discover the advisability of a proposal. This idea seems so simple and reasonable,
it should have our support.
This reminds me of a relative of mine who twenty years
ago suggested we shut the water when brushing teeth or shaving, each one of us
saving a gallon a day. In drought-ridden Colorado this could mean some 5
million gallons daily. Installing dual-flush toilets would do wonders, too, for
water conservation.
Just as we can contribute to water conservation at our
sinks, so we can conserve energy by remembering “stop the idle,” saving
billions along the way.
Raphael
Sassower is professor of philosophy at UCCS. He can be reached at rsassower@gmail.com See
previous articles at sassower.blogspot.com
