Slow economic growth, rising fuel prices, and security threats make headlines every day. The complicated web of problems facing modern society can seem daunting at best, unsolvable at worst. For many individuals, fear and apprehension for the future has replaced hope for a better tomorrow.
But charting a course for the future needn’t embrace this gloomy outlook.
In 2004, Rocky Mountain Institute released Winning the Oil Endgame, an independent, peer-reviewed roadmap for getting the United States completely, attractively and profitably off oil by 2050.
Rather than pursue a single substitute, the study employs a range of strategies working in concert to displace oil.
The first, and most important, step is to use what we have at least twice as efficiently. Fully applying today’s best efficiency technologies in a doubled-GDP 2025 economy would save half the projected U.S. oil use at half its forecast cost per barrel.
The second step is to substitute biofuels, saved natural gas, and (optionally) hydrogen where appropriate. These non-oil substitutes would also cost less than oil in 2025.
All the comparisons conservatively assign zero value to avoiding oil's many "externalized" costs, including the costs incurred by military insecurity, rivalry with developing countries, pollution and depletion.
Furthermore, vehicle improvements and other savings required needn't be as fast as those achieved after the 1979 oil shock.
With the help of market-oriented, innovation-driven public policies, Winning the Oil Endgame explains how this transition can be led by business for profit.
The benefits to society are myriad. The study found that a $180-billion investment over the next decade would:
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yield $130-billion annual savings by 2025;
- revitalize the automotive, truck, aviation, and hydrocarbon industries;
- create a million jobs in both industrial and rural areas;
- rebalance trade;
- make the United States more secure, prosperous, equitable, and environmentally healthy;
- encourage other countries to get off oil, too;
- and make the world more developed, fair, and peaceful.
Click here to download or read the full report.
