Fuel Freedom Staff

Four reasons why fuel choice is good for the environment

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There’s a lot to love about fuel choice — lower gas prices, reduced dependence on foreign oil, and of course helping the environment. That’s right: Bringing competition to the pump isn’t just good for your wallet, it’s good for your planet.  When you support fuel choice you’re helping make a cleaner world. Here’s how:

  1. AIR POLLUTION: It’s the most important thing we do every day, and we do it thousands of times a day without even thinking about it. Breathing. Yet for 44 percent of the nation, according to the American Lung Association, breathing isn’t simple. These 44 percent live in areas where the air quality is dangerous. Where every breath brings toxins like hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and particulate matter. Where do those toxins come from? Mostly, from dirty transportation fuels like gasoline and diesel.
  2. DANGEROUS TRANSPORTATION: The increased oil production in the United States in recent years has put more pressure on the U.S. rail system to move around all that oil, and that has led to a string of derailments and spills that have polluted groundwater and threatened wildlife. Between 1975 and 2012, 800,000 gallons of crude oil was spilled in accidents in the U.S. In 2013, 1.15 million gallons were spilled. In 2014, another 57,000 gallons were spilled from a record 141 “unintentional releases,” which also caused $5 million in damage. By displacing some oil and using more ethanol, the risk would come down considerably, since the fuel is less volatile than petroleum and dissipates quickly in water.
  3. CLIMATE CHANGE: The average American car releases about 6 tons of carbon dioxide into the environment every year, and oil is responsible for 43 percent of the fuel-related CO2 emissions in the United States. These emissions inflict great harm on the climate. Imagine how much cleaner our environment could be if we added more fuels like ethanol and methanol into the market. Embracing fuel choice will allow consumers to have access to cleaner fuels, while decreasing our carbon footprint.
  4. OIL SPILLS: Our oil addiction has hurt more than our wallets – it’s hurt our environment. Oil spills, like the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the Santa Barbara pipeline spill in May, devastate wildlife and ruin livelihoods. Breaking our oil addiction and ushering in an era of fuel choice will reduce demand for oil, and the potential threat of leaks and spills.

There are many ways to clean up the planet, but opening the market to cleaner types of fuel is too important to ignore. Want to help us make fuel choice happen? Together, we can move toward fuel choice and a cleaner environment: Join the movement today by visiting: Fuelfreedom.org/take-action.

Landon Hall

Former Shell Oil chief: U.S. must become more oil independent

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Just in time for the Fourth of July weekend: Our very own John Hofmeister speaking words of wisdom about the need for the United States to wean itself off oil as its dominant transportation fuel.

“It’s incumbent upon the United States of America to become more oil independent,” Hofmeister said at a security conference in Israel in June. “Because it still relies on nearly 7 million barrels a day of imports, and in a nation that uses 18 and a half to 19 million barrels of oil per day, the loss or the risk of 7 million barrels a day of imports puts that nation at about two-thirds of independence, and that’s not enough for the world’s largest economy.

“So there remains an interdependence, until the U.S. can find independence, and it has every right and every responsibility to pursue independence. As does every other nation.”

Watch Hofmeister’s full talk at the Herzliya Conference in Tel Aviv:

Hofmeister knows of what he speaks: He was the president of Shell Oil Co., the American subsidiary of oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, from 2005 to 2008. The author of “Why We Hate the Oil Companies” now travels the world talking about the need for alternatives to oil. He’s not only on the board of directors and advisors at Fuel Freedom, he founded a nonprofit called Citizens for Affordable Energy.

U.S. crude prices closed at $56.96 a barrel Wednesday, down $2.51 or 4 percent, the biggest one-day drop since April 8. Compare that to last summer, when the price was above $100. But the market remains volatile, and Hofmeister said having oil at an affordable price long-term is necessary for national security.

“If you’re not taking care of yourself, no one else will,” Hofmeister said.  “And so nations should look to their security — not just to their defense forces, but to their energy supplies — which in the United States, is why I’m almost entirely focused now on transitioning natural gas to transportation fuels, as well as biofuels, as well as electricity for transportation. Because the future of oil is simply limited. We’re not running out. It won’t disappear. But it simply won’t be available at this price for an indefinite future.”

Hofmeister expanded on another of his major themes: that natural gas, which is cheap and plentiful in the United States, could help the U.S. and other nations reduce oil consumption. Natural gas is used as a fuel in its gaseous, compressed form — as CNG and LNG — and it can also be processed into liquid alcohol fuel, ethanol or methanol.

“Over the next decade, nations like the United States, or like Israel, or like much of Europe if not the whole of Europe, that are not transitioning at least a third of their oil demand away from oil and toward natural gas will only look back in regret.”

(Photo credit: Poet Biorefining plant in Macon, Missouri. From FarmProgress.com)