Winning the Oil Endgame

Innovation for Profits, Jobs, and Security

The U.S. uses 10,000 gallons of oil every second. That giant consumption costs a half-trillion dollars a year (partly paid to unfriendly countries), emits 44 percent of the nation’s CO2, drives global tensions and instabilities, and is dreadfully insecure. In 2004, RMI published Winning the Oil Endgame—an independent, transparent, peer-reviewed Pentagon-cosponsored road map for eliminating U.S. oil use by the 2040s, led by business for profit. We found that redoubling the efficiency of oil, and replacing the rest with saved natural gas and advanced biofuels, would cost only $15 a barrel—less than one-fourth the world oil price. Business and military leaders welcomed our synthesis, so in mid-2005, we launched a multi-year effort to make the journey beyond oil irreversible.

Our strategy aims to influence several sectors, and we are seeing encouraging progress. Wal-Mart’s demand, based on our analysis, for doubled-efficiency heavy trucks will drag more efficient trucks onto the market, ultimately saving the firm billions of dollars and America significant current oil usage. RMI’s superefficient automotive designs are getting their best shot ever at rapid adoption by the auto industry as the foundation of breakthrough competitive strategy. Vulnerable, costly fuel convoys have opened key Pentagon ears to RMI’s analysis recommending tripled-efficiency military planes, ships, and vehicles via technologies such as ultralight materials that can also triple the efficiency of civilian cars, trucks, and planes. Civil/military collaboration can make the Department of Defense the federal leader in getting off oil so oil becomes not worth fighting over.

The Oil Endgame Implementation Initiative is focusing on four main sectors: heavy trucks (more efficient trailers and trucking consortiums to persuade manufacturers to make more efficient trucks), military (research and logistics), light vehicles (research on lightweight auto safety issues and feebate policy implementation at state level), and biofuels (research on efficient production of ethanol from cellulosic feedstock and market potential). This initiative is made up of a number of smaller projects (ranging from $10,000 and up) and will cost $2.2 million over two years.

Please email develop@rmi.org or call 970 927-3851 if you have any questions.

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