Articles by Clark Williams-Derry

Clark Williams-Derry

Wonder no longer: oil and gas get subsidies out the wazoo. Here's the latest example from British Columbia...

The province will spend $408 million over 15 years to bolster northeastern B.C.'s oil and gas industry, Minister of Energy and Mines Richard Neufeld said Tuesday, which includes new or expanded support for resource road construction, community infrastructure, education and the reclamation of abandoned natural gas wells.

Of course, this sort of subusidy is just the tip of the iceberg: in much of the US, oil and gas extraction get special tax treatment -- and, some would argue, privileged access to public lands; gas & automobile taxes don't pay for the full cost of roads; the health costs of car accidents and smog aren't included in the price of highway fuels; and the risks associated with global warming are borne by everyone across the globe, not just by those lucky enough to be able to afford to drive.

To me, this puts the subsidies for, say, wind power in perspective. Renewable energy subsidies probably don't give an unfair advantage; they're just a way of levelling the playing field, so that--given all of the subsidies that already go to fossil fuels--wind and solar can compete on something approaching even footing.

States of grace, states of confusion

Which states use the least gasoline?  Which ones have the best gas-conservation trends? Probably not who you'd think, at least for the latter question.

Based on Federal Highway Administration data covering 2001 through 2003, residents of New York State use the least gasoline, person for person, of any U.S. state: about 0.8 gallons per person per day, vs. the national average of 1.2 gallons per person. That's to be expected: New York City--which makes up a sizable chunk of the state's population--is among the densest cities in the country, which allows many of its residents to get by perfectly well without cars, except for the occasional taxicab.

The runners-up to New York were: Hawaii--with high priced gas and surprisingly dense Honolulu--at .9 gallons per person per day; Rhode Island--dominated by urban Providence--at one daily gallon per capita; and Illinois--which has a significant share of residents in urban Chicago and its dense inner suburbs--with 1.1 gallons. Oregon, Washington, and Idaho rank 8th, 12th, and 17th, respectively, in per capita gas consumption; but all three states are close to the national average.

The states that use the most gas are either predominantly rural, have particularly sprawling cities, or both. Wyoming residents use the most gasoline (1.8 gallons per person per day), followed by residents of Georgia, South Carolina, and Vermont at about 1.5 gallons per capita.

Now, for the trend lines -- over the long term, which states are going in the right direction? If you guessed Nevada, you hit the jackpot.

Fuels rush in

This Eugene Register-Guard editorial -- cautioning Oregon's politicians to take a sober, hype-free look at biofuels before launching a program to subsidize them -- is definitely worth reading.  But it makes one point that, while not clearly out-and-out wrong, at least deserves a closer look.

According to the editorial, legislative action to promote biofuels in Oregon would be unnecessary ...

... if biofuels could compete with other forms of energy in the marketplace. The fact that ethanol and biodiesel need the Legislature's encouragement is evidence that these fuels suffer an economic disadvantage, have environmental costs or both.

Hold on, there, buckeroo.  Petroleum gets huge subsidies of its own, ranging from special tax benefits for oil companies, to the mammoth military costs for defending access to overseas oil supplies, to the environmental and social costs of air & water pollution, greenhouse gases, etc.  So just because ethanol needs subsidies to compete with petroleum, doesn't necessarily mean that ethanol is inherently uncompetitive; it could just be that petroleum's massive subsidies outweigh those to ethanol.

The liter of the pack

I didn't know this: In Canada, automobile fuel economy is expressed as gallons per mile, not miles per gallon as it is in the U.S. (Well, really, it's liters per hundred kilometers, but if you're south of the 49th parallel and a metric-system-phobe, gallons per mile is essentially the same thing.)

Now, I don't mention this just to expose my lack of cultural knowledge of my northern neighbors. I mention it because it seems to me that liters-per-kilometer is a much better way of expressing the fuel efficiency of autos.