Half the Oil? UCS looks at driving down petroleum usage on the US West Coast

Weakness in the report?

One glaring weakness in the report. The authors considered four different strategies — vehicle efficiency, electrification, alternative fuels and improving transportation options and land use planning. However, they lumped vehicle efficiency into the electrification case but never into the alternative fuels or transport planning case.

So, for example, the electrification case in California was loaded with 7 measures that had nothing to do directly with electric cars, such as Phase 2 engine efficiency standards, fuel efficient replacement tires, and platooning.

And, the Half the Oil Scenario — included “Implemented additional regional transportation planning measures, achieving a weighted average reduction of 8%” that were excluded from the “high biofuels case”.

Had both measures been added to the high biofuels case, that case would have achieved a 7% improvement compared to the main Half the Oil scenario.

The complete report is here.

Meanwhile, a visual guide to the underlying data is here in our 8-Slide Guide to the Half the Oil report.