Will Obama Help George W. Bush Achieve His 10-Year Goal for Gasoline Consumption?

by Maxx Chatsko (The Motley Fool) ... President Bush believed America could reduce gasoline consumption from 142 billion gallons in 2007 to just 114 billion gallons in 2017. The biggest reduction would come from a projected annual production of 35 billion gallons of renewable fuels, which would account for 75% of the goal. It may have sounded ridiculous at the time, but the Renewable Fuel Standard, created in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, got a big upgrade after the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 was signed into law.
The new Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS2, called for 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels to be blended into the nation's fuel supply by 2022 -- five years after the 10-year deadline. Despite the more realistic timeline, there's no debating the legislation helped catalyze the ethanol industry. (RFS2 also spurred the development of the biodiesel industry, but biodiesel cannot be blended into gasoline.)
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In 2011, Obama upgraded the CAFE standards, which now require automakers to achieve an average fuel economy of 54.5 mpg across their fleet by 2025. That's a steep climb up from the CAFE standards mandated by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which required an average fuel economy of only 35 mpg by 2020. The new standards have resulted in a booming investment cycle into new materials and better engines. The new 2015 Ford F-150 offers improvements in both -- dropping curb weight by as much as 700 pounds. Additionally, Ford has invested heavily in smaller vehicles across its fleet, as well as several hybrid vehicle technologies such as the C-MAX Hybrid and C-MAX Energi plug-in hybrid.
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America may not come close to reaching the "Twenty in Ten" goal, but that's not what's important here. President Bush got the wheels turning, President Obama greased them, and the next president will surely lend a helping hand, too. READ MORE