Least cost end use.
As outlined in our book Natural Capitalism (www.naturalcapitalism.org), RMI knows that least-cost end-use includes the significant improvement of public transportation, as well as alternatives to actual transportation, such as intelligent community design, smart growth, and telecommuting among others. On this note, our Green Development Services unit works on making communities and real-estate developments less mobility-hungry and more transit-friendly. Many organizations already advocate these issues, which RMI fully supports.
For when we have to use a car, however, a big part of the least-cost end-use solution, RMI believes, is the Hypercar strategy—a radically cleaner and more efficient vehicle concept that we developed from 1991 to 1999.
The strategy would radically decrease our need for imported fuel supplies and thereby increase our national energy security —drilling in ANWR would become unnecessary.
At RMI we get many inquiries asking us which is the most efficient car to buy today whilst we wait for Hypercar vehicles to become readily available. RMI does not keep this information, but many other organizations do. The best site to find the answer to this question is the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE)'s Green Book (wwww.greenercars.com). Information on converting your car to an alternative fuel system can be found at the Alternative Fuel Data Center (AFDC).
