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The Big Picture – EPA Emissions Regulations Could Save $Billions

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Emissions Reduction Saves Billions, and Lives!
Emissions Reduction Saves Billions, and Lives!

Over the years, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has been working hard to enact regulations to reduce emissions in the transportation sector.

Of course, the easiest way to reduce vehicle emissions is to improve fuel economy. Improving fuel economy is good for the consumer’s wallet, as well, but big oil companies won’t have any part of it, because it cuts into their bottom line, in spite of being subsidized by the federal government. That being said, big oil has been a major opponent to renewable energy, fuel economy improvements, and emissions reduction measures that the EPA is working to enact.

One of the best tools big oil uses is fuzzy math, to explain that emissions-reduction technology is “too expensive” to make a difference. Actually, real math speaks volumes of the many ways that simply reducing fuel consumption benefits, not only consumers, but corporations and the Nation as a whole. Big oil, like the dinosaur it milks, is going extinct, but it isn’t going down without a fight, apparently.

What does the real math say? According to the EPA’s latest calculations and emissions-reduction measures, the results will be staggering. By 2018, smog-forming pollution will be reduced by 80%, about 260,000 tons, the equivalent of replacing 30 million conventional vehicles with zero emissions vehicles. Particulate emissions, PM2.5 (particulate matter 2.5µm and smaller), or soot, will be reduced by 70%.

Considering the rate at which we currently consumer petroleum, the fuel economy improvements will effect a huge savings in refueling costs. Smog and PM2.5 emissions reduction, however, will have an even more profound effect. Currently, these pollutants, directly related to transportation emissions, account for some 2,000 premature deaths every year, thousands of hospital visits and 1.4 million days of missed work. By 2030, the EPA’s emissions reduction measures could save between $6.7 billion and $19 billion, in health care costs alone, every year.

Photo credit: EnvironmentBlog / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

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1 COMMENT

  1. What this country needs is a good four-place sedan that cost less than $25,000 and will go 150 miles at 65 mph on one electric charge. 

    Oil Companies have always been and still are all about controlling markets.  Right now they are still using their huge money  resources destroying the Planet, mining for hydrocarbons and selling pollution around the World.  But don’t forget, they call themselves energy companies and sooner or later they will try to take over the green energy market as well.

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