tigerhonaker
10-07-2006, 04:52 PM
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Friday, October 06, 2006
The 'secret' to lowering gas prices
HEIDI TOTH - Daily Herald
Nothing travels faster
than a really good secret.
That is precisely why Provo resident Harry McKinley is telling his secret to as many people as he can.
The secret: Drive slower, plan better and keep that money in one's wallet instead of a hostile country's coffers. His plan is to get 1 million drivers to reduce their fuel consumption, at which point energy companies and oil providers should sit up and take notice. And prices should fall.
"The question I suppose that we would want to answer to begin with is, what can the average citizen do to get energy independence?" he said Tuesday night at the Provo Municipal Council meeting.
The initiative started about five weeks ago, he said, although he's been driving like this for years. Since then, he's talked to almost 900 people and estimated the message had reached between 5,000 and 10,000 drivers.
"I just had a very strong feeling that this could be really, really bad for our country and could cause a great deal of pain for average citizens," he said.
The result is his road to a million grassroots campaign. It starts with simple numbers. If the average American drove slower than 60 mph, he could improve gas mileage by 23 percent and save about $240 a year. Nixing "jackrabbit" starts and stops -- gunning the engine when starting and slamming on the brakes when stopping -- could improve mileage by 33 percent and save $330 a year.
"That is extremely expensive in terms of fuel consumption," he said Tuesday. "You have built that 70 mph up and now you've wasted it all putting the brake on."
Regular tune-ups, keeping tires inflated to the proper amount and reducing the number of trips taken throughout town also can increase mileage and make trips to the gas station less painful. In all, a driver who today is terrible at fuel conservation could save about $1,000 a year; a driver who is already taking some measures to conserve it could save a few hundred dollars annually.
Then he gets to talking. By Thursday morning he'd talked with 880 people. If each of them talked to five, that's 4,400 people. If each of them talked to five more people, that's 22,000 people, and it just goes up from there. A million is difficult for one man, sure, he said, but he's enlisting everyone he talks to. Suddenly a million is a lot closer.
That includes taxpayer-bought gas as well. McKinley addressed Provo city this week and he's met with other mayors and Utah Valley State College President William Sederburg. Since Provo has a fleet of about 600 vehicles, Orem a fleet of about 300 and UVSC a fleet of 120, he's hoping they'll get on board as well.
Plus, he talks about why he really wants this to work. That money going overseas to pay for gas too often goes to countries like Iran and Venezuela, which are hostile to the United States and could be supporting terrorism.
"That's the central issue in this, as I see it," he said.
The next step, he hopes, is action. He drives slowly and combines trips, and he's noticed a difference.
That step, though, is the one most likely to ruin his plan. Mark Showalter, an economics professor at Brigham Young University, said the likelihood of all of those million people following through is low.
"There's a big difference between having people say they'll be willing to do that and having people do that in practice," he said.
So the odds of the 1 million told of the plan actually implementing the fuel conservation techniques are slim. Even if all of them did, however, fuel prices wouldn't automatically drop, for a couple of reasons. One is that fuel is a global commodity and thus prices are set by the global market, so a million drivers in the United States couldn't make enough of an impact. A global voluntary reduction isn't feasible, he said.
The second reason is that, contrary to rumors about high markups on gas, the marginal cost of producing 10 billion gallons of gas versus 11 billion gallons of gas won't change much, and gas typically is sold for about the marginal cost to produce it. There wouldn't be a big reduction in price just because less gas is consumed.
That may be, but McKinley still believes the average American can have a hand in sticking it to the big oil companies, so he'll keep going.
"Believe me, I'm operating this as an average person," he said.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D4.
http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/195373/4/
Friday, October 06, 2006
The 'secret' to lowering gas prices
HEIDI TOTH - Daily Herald
Nothing travels faster
than a really good secret.
That is precisely why Provo resident Harry McKinley is telling his secret to as many people as he can.
The secret: Drive slower, plan better and keep that money in one's wallet instead of a hostile country's coffers. His plan is to get 1 million drivers to reduce their fuel consumption, at which point energy companies and oil providers should sit up and take notice. And prices should fall.
"The question I suppose that we would want to answer to begin with is, what can the average citizen do to get energy independence?" he said Tuesday night at the Provo Municipal Council meeting.
The initiative started about five weeks ago, he said, although he's been driving like this for years. Since then, he's talked to almost 900 people and estimated the message had reached between 5,000 and 10,000 drivers.
"I just had a very strong feeling that this could be really, really bad for our country and could cause a great deal of pain for average citizens," he said.
The result is his road to a million grassroots campaign. It starts with simple numbers. If the average American drove slower than 60 mph, he could improve gas mileage by 23 percent and save about $240 a year. Nixing "jackrabbit" starts and stops -- gunning the engine when starting and slamming on the brakes when stopping -- could improve mileage by 33 percent and save $330 a year.
"That is extremely expensive in terms of fuel consumption," he said Tuesday. "You have built that 70 mph up and now you've wasted it all putting the brake on."
Regular tune-ups, keeping tires inflated to the proper amount and reducing the number of trips taken throughout town also can increase mileage and make trips to the gas station less painful. In all, a driver who today is terrible at fuel conservation could save about $1,000 a year; a driver who is already taking some measures to conserve it could save a few hundred dollars annually.
Then he gets to talking. By Thursday morning he'd talked with 880 people. If each of them talked to five, that's 4,400 people. If each of them talked to five more people, that's 22,000 people, and it just goes up from there. A million is difficult for one man, sure, he said, but he's enlisting everyone he talks to. Suddenly a million is a lot closer.
That includes taxpayer-bought gas as well. McKinley addressed Provo city this week and he's met with other mayors and Utah Valley State College President William Sederburg. Since Provo has a fleet of about 600 vehicles, Orem a fleet of about 300 and UVSC a fleet of 120, he's hoping they'll get on board as well.
Plus, he talks about why he really wants this to work. That money going overseas to pay for gas too often goes to countries like Iran and Venezuela, which are hostile to the United States and could be supporting terrorism.
"That's the central issue in this, as I see it," he said.
The next step, he hopes, is action. He drives slowly and combines trips, and he's noticed a difference.
That step, though, is the one most likely to ruin his plan. Mark Showalter, an economics professor at Brigham Young University, said the likelihood of all of those million people following through is low.
"There's a big difference between having people say they'll be willing to do that and having people do that in practice," he said.
So the odds of the 1 million told of the plan actually implementing the fuel conservation techniques are slim. Even if all of them did, however, fuel prices wouldn't automatically drop, for a couple of reasons. One is that fuel is a global commodity and thus prices are set by the global market, so a million drivers in the United States couldn't make enough of an impact. A global voluntary reduction isn't feasible, he said.
The second reason is that, contrary to rumors about high markups on gas, the marginal cost of producing 10 billion gallons of gas versus 11 billion gallons of gas won't change much, and gas typically is sold for about the marginal cost to produce it. There wouldn't be a big reduction in price just because less gas is consumed.
That may be, but McKinley still believes the average American can have a hand in sticking it to the big oil companies, so he'll keep going.
"Believe me, I'm operating this as an average person," he said.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D4.
http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/195373/4/