A year ago, Oklahoma Natural Gas Company offered what they called a Voluntary Fixed-Price Plan, under which you would pay $8.393 per dekatherm for the next twelve months, regardless of the actual price of natural gas. I passed, noting that gas, at the time, was about a buck and a half cheaper than that.

It didn't stay that way, though, as the numbers show:

• November: 2.4 used at $11.044; total price $26.51; VFP price $20.14; loss of $6.37.

• December: 4.4 used at $11.550; total price $50.82; VFP price $36.93; loss of $13.89.

• January: 9.7 used at $12.012; total price $116.52; VFP price $81.41; loss of $35.11.

• February: 6.4 used at $9.589; total price $61.37; VFP price $53.72; loss of $7.65.

• March: 7.6 used at $8.455; total price $64.26; VFP price $63.79; loss of $0.47.

• April: 4.6 used at $8.660; total price $39.83; VFP price $38.61; loss of $1.22.

• May: 2.0 used at $8.781; total price $17.56; VFP price $16.79; loss of $0.77.

• June: 1.2 used at $8.486; total price $10.19; VFP price $10.07; loss of $0.12.

• July: 1.1 used at $7.520; total price $8.55; VFP price $9.53; gain of $0.98.

• August: 1.0 used at $7.566; total price $7.82; VFP price $8.67; gain of $0.85.

• September: 0.9 used at $7.577; total price $7.06; VFP price $7.82; gain of $0.76.

• Cumulative: 41.3 used at $9.939; total price $410.49; VFP price $346.89; loss of $63.40.
  

(Rounding errors lurk.)

It's not on their Web site yet, but the flyer with the new bill contains the details of next year's VFP: it's $9.25 per dekatherm. I have until the 20th of October to either sign up or start whining for another year.

Bring me back something in a 91-octane, wouldja please?

(Found at MSN Autos last night; reformatted for narrower screens.)

Update, 8:30 am: This shot was taken by Steve Gooch for the Oklahoman:

Dayum.

A letter in this morning's Oklahoman:

It's been thirty-six years since I last set foot in a chemistry lab, but it seems to me that there's no particular reason why you couldn't.

Okay, we've had twelve months of this, and it cost me sixty dollars and odd.

To recap: Last October, with gas prices in flux, Oklahoma Natural Gas Company offered to sell gas to its customers for a Voluntary Fixed Price of $8.393 per dekatherm, which struck me as a fairly crummy deal, inasmuch as gas was selling in the $6.50 range at the time. So I passed, and gas promptly jumped off the farging scale, as follows:

• November: 2.4 used at $11.044; total price $26.51; VFP price $20.14; loss of $6.37.

• December: 4.4 used at $11.550; total price $50.82; VFP price $36.93; loss of $13.89.

• January: 9.7 used at $12.012; total price $116.52; VFP price $81.41; loss of $35.11.

• February: 6.4 used at $9.589; total price $61.37; VFP price $53.72; loss of $7.65.

• March: 7.6 used at $8.455; total price $64.26; VFP price $63.79; loss of $0.47.

• April: 4.6 used at $8.660; total price $39.83; VFP price $38.61; loss of $1.22.

• May: 2.0 used at $8.781; total price $17.56; VFP price $16.79; loss of $0.77.

• June: 1.2 used at $8.486; total price $10.19; VFP price $10.07; loss of $0.12.

• July: 1.1 used at $7.520; total price $8.55; VFP price $9.53; gain of $0.98.

• August: 1.0 used at $7.566; total price $7.82; VFP price $8.67; gain of $0.85.

• September: 0.9 used at $7.577; total price $7.06; VFP price $7.82; gain of $0.76.

• October: 1.1 used at $7.665; total price $8.71; VFP price $9.54; gain of $0.83.

• Cumulative: 42.4 used at $9.887; total price $419.20; VFP price $356.43; loss of $62.77.
  

This year's VFP is $9.25 per dekatherm. I'm still debating whether I want to commit myself to this program or not. (Deadline is the 20th.) Clearly, if we're going to have $11 or $12 gas, I need to lock in this price. But are we going to have $11 or $12 gas? If I knew things like this, I could quit my job and live off the stock market.

Batteries of one sort or another bedevil me, as I suspect they do all of us. (Aside to any Amish readers: No, I didn't mean to include you, and how are you reading this, anyway?) Often as not, they're not even included, which means, often as not, a second trip to the store. Before I took delivery of my car this summer, I requested (well, actually, demanded, since I had it added to the contract) that a new battery be installed, as I had no faith in the one already there.

But lesser batteries can cause grief of their own. At the suggestion of my dental hygienist a few years back, I bought a Sonicare turbocharged toothbrush, which has generally served me well, even though I couldn't figure out how the charger gizmo worked, inasmuch as it has no metal connections of any kind other than in the wall plug. (Eventually I learned that it was some form of transformer: primary winding in the base, secondary in the handle, and magnetism does the rest.) A good thing, I suppose, since you're likely to plunk it down in the base while it's dripping wet. Originally, a full charge would last a couple of weeks; now it's down to a couple of days. This is fairly typical nickel-cadmium behavior, but there's no way to replace the cells, which means that shortly this thing will become a small, irregular rolling pin. Maybe the recyclers will take it as is, so I don't have to throw it away. (Cadmium is nasty stuff.)

Replaceable cells aren't always an improvement, especially if the device has a prodigious hunger for them. I have a speakerphone on my desk. The phone line powers the speaker, but the Caller ID subsystem takes three AA cells, and it takes them about every two months. (If you fail to feed it, the machine responds by killing the contrast on the LCD screen until you can only read it while hanging from the chandelier, a problem inasmuch as I don't have a chandelier.) Perhaps newer models have lower battery drain; I have an 18-month-old Olympus digital voice recorder that's still on its original set of AAAs.

Of course, if all this stuff ran directly off the grid, God knows what would happen to my electric bill.

Hybrid-vehicle owners have already figured out that they get better mileage in town, when the electrickery is working harder, than they do out on the highway. You might think, therefore, that there's no market for eighteen-wheeler hybrids, and so far there isn't.

On the other hand, local haulers and municipal works with smaller big rigs might find this useful:

The neatest thing about the 335 is that the power takeoff is integrated with the rest of the electrics; at full charge, the PTO can run on batteries alone for up to 25 minutes before restarting the diesel engine.

I wouldn't be surprised to see one of these snatching Big Blue up off the curb in the near future.

Last fall, with natural gas prices on the rise, Oklahoma Natural Gas offered to lock in a fixed price for twelve months for any of its residential customers who'd sign on. Noting that said price was almost $2 per dekatherm higher than the price then current, I declined the offer, but for the next twelve months compared the bills I got to the bills I could have had, and wound up $62 and change in the hole. (Painful details here.)

The same sort of deal was offered this year, though prices were easing and the proffered fixed price was a buck more than last year. At the time, I wondered:

Last year's peak price for those of us not on the lock was $12.012 per dekatherm; the 2006-07 fixed-price offer was for $9.25.

The Oklahoman reports this morning that there's no general consensus as to where prices will end up:

Bruce Bell of the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association sees things going higher:

Of course, if you have the correct political stance, you simply accuse everyone of price manipulation, and you don't have to worry about stuff like this.

A comment of mine on the November blizzard:

Note to self: You are wrong, dekatherm-breath. The guy didn't come to read the gas meter until the 4th of December, so I got to pay for 34 days' worth of service, including those wretchedly-cold days, on this month's bill, which exceeds last December's bill by ten percent or so despite a one-third drop in the price of gas.

None of these figures, of course, will include the service charges, delivery fees, and all the other neat stuff they have to increase the take, inasmuch as they're not allowed to turn a profit on actual sales of gas.

The last time the Environmental Protection Agency tinkered with their gas-mileage ratings, back in the 1980s, they didn't do anything about the methodology; instead, they applied a fudge factor "to account for factors not included in the tests".

Beginning in 2008, they will improve the quality of that fudge factor. From deep within the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers' new Your Mileage Will Vary site, the nature of the changes:

Of course, no two people drive exactly the same way, so you still may not reach the numbers on the label.

The following minor bits of historical data may be of interest:

• Sandy: EPA 22 city, 28 highway; actual over 55k miles 23 city, 29 highway.
  
• Gwendolyn: EPA 20 city, 28 highway; actual over 5k miles 21 city, 28 highway.
  

Of course, I drive when it's cold, with the A/C on, and with the pedal in close proximity to the metal.

I don't think I'm in the target market for a plug-in electric car: I can see owning one as a second vehicle for short jaunts around town, but my garage accommodates only a single car, and it's got to cover most of my conceivable needs.

That said, I think they'll sell fairly well eventually, and while I have my doubts about them, at least they're not going to kill the power grid.

They're not going to save any money, either, but that's not the issue:

I've always suspected that the main reason the Toyota Prius dominates hybrid sales is its unquestioned hybridness (hybridity?): there is no non-hybrid version to dilute the branding. Previously in these pages:

Honda will happily sell you a hybrid Civic or Accord, but apart from the smallish Hybrid badge, it's indistinguishable from its gas-powered brethren. People want to be identified with this sort of thing, and inasmuch as I have an OG&E Wind Power placard in my front window, I'm hardly in a position to make fun of them. If what you want is the cheapest possible personal transport, you ignore all of this and buy something like a Scion xB, which hauls tons (well, kilograms) of stuff, sips fuel abstemiously, and costs thousands less than a Prius, but you won't get that warm green feeling inside.

Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy is selling off all of its West African operations, about four percent of its proved reserves. The properties are located in Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Côte d'Ivoire. Whatever Devon gets for the sale, they say, will be used to pay off commercial paper and repurchase company stock.

Motivations, according to the press release:

• Tighter geographic focus,
  
• Lower overall portfolio risk,
  
• Improved capital efficiency, and
  
• Improved financial flexibility.
  

For "lower overall portfolio risk" I read "no more having to deal with the president of Equatorial Guinea," who is a bad egg of Mugabean magnitude.

There is considerable amusement value in the current dust-up between TXU Corporation, which has announced plans to build a number of coal-fired power plants in northern Texas, and various opponents, including the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality and something called the Clean Sky Coalition, among whose mostly-Texan members you'll find Oklahoman Aubrey McClendon, chair of Chesapeake Energy.

The DEQ concern is specific:

TXU says the air will be cleaner when all is said and done:

And McClendon plays the "global warming" card:

Chesapeake vends natural gas, which produces lower carbon dioxide levels than coal, although natural gas, which is primarily methane, would be a pretty potent component of the greenhouse mix all by itself, were it running around loose.

But TXU says they're using too much gas already:

This might be an easier sell for TXU were they to throw another wind farm or two — they already have about 580 MW at their disposal — into the mix.

According to 18seconds.org, residents of Oklahoma City have purchased and presumably installed 122,731 compact-fluorescent light bulbs since the first of the year, which is calculated to be the equivalent of 948 cars off the road and upward of 59 million pounds of carbon dioxide that won't be going into the atmosphere.

Among the states for which they have some sort of data, which means everyone except Alaska and Hawaii, Oklahoma ranks fifth highest for CFL use, with 328,157 bulbs in place this year. The top four are Arkansas, Wyoming, Kansas and Missouri. I suspect that the motivation in these areas is more the potential energy savings than any ostensible greenhouse effect, but actions have always spoken louder than motivations. (Massachusetts and the District of Columbia are dead last.)

At the moment, six CFLs are installed at the palatial Surlywood estate, although this is motivated primarily by the desire to avoid changing bulbs so damned often.

(Previous bulb discussion here.)

For model year 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency has revised its test procedure for determing vehicle fuel economy, making it somewhat closer to real-world driving and perhaps somewhat closer to what real-world drivers actually achieve. In general, I applaud this action: if we're going to do this sort of thing, we ought to at least try to do it accurately.

The EPA now has an online tool whereby you can look up your pre-2008 car (if you already have a 2008 car, I'm impressed) and see how it would rate under the 2008 test. I duly punched in Gwendolyn's numbers, and was presented with this:

The "combined" figure is 55 percent city, 45 percent highway. I note that EPA lists this car as running on "Regular Gasoline"; Nissan specifies premium. I'd expect it might get poorer mileage on the lower-octane stuff.

My own figures so far: city 21 (over 5000 miles), highway 28 (900). Pretty close to the old numbers, and way better than the new ones.

I went back to my previous car, on which I had over 55,000 miles of data, and here's the chart:

Actual numbers obtained: city 23, highway 30.

I'd like to think that the reason why I do at least as well as and sometimes better than EPA's numbers is because I'm such a spectacularly good driver, but I don't believe that any more than you do. What I think is happening here is that the cars I have driven were not specifically engineered to get good numbers on the test: there were no characteristics intended to exploit the test conditions. For example: Chevrolet's "skip shift" on manual-transmission Corvettes would, um, encourage a 1-4 upshift, leaving the car in a tall fourth gear for most of the test, enough for GM to avoid the dreaded gas-guzzler tax.

Still, this doesn't explain everything. Sandy, my late Mazda 626, had only average mileage ratings and below-average acceleration for her class. However, I drove the living whee out of her and still got better-than-EPA numbers. Gwendolyn weighs 13 percent more and packs nearly 75 percent more horsepower (227 versus 130); then again, she doesn't have to work so hard.

No way any American airline would dare make a pitch like this:

British environmentalists, unlike our dour domestic scolds, seem to have retained a sense of humour.

(Via Autoblog Green.)

GM's Maximum Bob Lutz was complaining this week that the Bush administration's plan to tweak fuel-economy standards upward would ultimately raise the price of a motor vehicle by $5,000.

"This technology does not come for free," said Lutz, and of course that's true, but how much technology does come for free?

Besides, there are plenty of other upward pressures on vehicle prices: the demand for new gadgets; new safety gizmos, some useful, some perhaps less so; the rising price of raw materials; the rising price of labor.

Me, I'm not worried so much. I owned, in succession, two Mazda 626 sedans. The 2000 model weighed about 200 lb more than the 1993, had a dozen more ponies under the hood (from a mostly-identical engine), and offered about 8 cubic feet more interior room. I got 23 mpg from the '93, and 24 mpg from the '00. Small incremental improvements, while they don't necessarily make for good ad copy, really mount up after a while.

Or I could look back at my old '75 Toyota, which struggled to get 19 mpg from its 2.2-liter 96-hp four-banger (with a stick, yet), and compare it to my current car, which weighs 700 lb more, boasts 227 hp from a 3-liter V6, and gets 21 mpg. With an automatic. Not to mention vastly cleaner exhaust.

Or I could simply mention that Honda and Toyota and friends aren't grousing in public: they're simply handing out new specifications to the engineers.

Plug-in hybrid research continues apace, and it's reached The New York Times, which has added to its fleet a Dodge Sprinter van with an experimental powertrain using lithium-ion batteries, a small five-cylinder diesel engine for backup, and a 220-volt power cord.

A similar van has been tested in Paris by FedEx [link to PDF file] with a gasoline engine; it's been averaging 25.4 mpg, not bad at all for a delivery vehicle which travels essentially no highway miles. The batteries can run the van for up to twenty miles before the engine kicks in. There's also a bus version, which is currently under trial by the Kansas City Area Transit Authority.

The Times experiment is co-sponsored by Con Ed, the New York Power Authority, the Electric Power Research Institute and DaimlerChrysler.

Now available from Julie Neidlinger: carbon-offset offsets.

Here's how they work:

I'm tempted to send her something like $8.75, just to see what happens.

I made some noises last spring about trying out compact-fluorescent bulbs, and in the interim I've installed six of them: two in the bedroom (one in each lamp), two in the kitchen (over the sink), and two in the garage. I don't know how well they perform under really adverse conditions, such as below-freezing conditions, since this isn't, God willing, going to happen in the house, and the garage has never gotten below about 34 degrees no matter how cold it was outside, but there have been no failures so far, and as I noted in February, after mounting the last pair, my primary motivation is "the desire to avoid changing bulbs so damned often." Since lifespan is not always consistent on these things, at least not yet, I figure I'm either not working them too hard or I'm having better luck than some folks.

In a comment to this piece, Mister Snitch suggests that I'm something of a trend-sniffer, perhaps even ahead of the curve.

More or less simultaneously, the InstantMan gets a letter from a reader:

Now set the Wayback Machine to the first week of October 2006:

I was in fact quoting from a letter to the editor of the Oklahoman, but still, you heard it here first, or at least less late.

Let it be said that I have stood on the shoulders of, if not giants, certainly some rather tallish types.

WiseGeek calculates that the extra 0.9 cent tacked onto the price of a gallon of gas mounts up quickly:

I think it's interesting that they rounded up the number of barrels to the next integer, but still, we're looking at $1.7 billion or so for an entire year, just from that nine-tenths of a cent.

They took it one step further: what if the price were jacked up, not by $0.009, but by $0.0099? Another $14 million for the month, another $170 million for the year, and besides contrarian cranks like me, hardly anyone would even notice.

Personally, I get annoyed when I see prices like $2.99⁹: it's three dollars, dammit, and you should have the stones to say so.

(Via Outside the Beltway.)

Once a year, OG&E, like other electric utilities, prepares a Fuel Procurement Report for the Corporation Commission. (There's also a monthly report that goes to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.) This year, due to "more favorable natural gas market conditions," OG&E expects about a 19-percent drop in typical residential electric bills during the summer. A customer who uses 1450 kWh in a month will pay $125.50 for service plus fuel adjustments this year, versus $149.43 for the same month in 2006. (The most I used last year in one month was 1297 kWh.)

Wind-power customers, according to OG&E's standard calculator, will fork over an additional $2.11. And incidentally, if you aren't already buying off the wind farm, you can no longer subscribe to the service: OG&E is persuaded that they've reached critical mass, or something, and therefore no longer needs to sell the package, though existing customers will continue to receive the deals they were promised and everyone will pay about 11 cents a month toward the cost of the Centennial Wind Farm near Fort Supply, which opened in April.

And if I'm going to save around twenty bucks a month — hey, that's half a tank of gas.

Woe betide the Brit whose new house actually has enough power outlets. Why, he's not doing his part for the environment:

My 60-year-old three-bedroom home has a mere twelve, including the 220 line for the range. Seventeen would be a major improvement, 38 a dream come true. Then again, I live alone:

I'd love to blame the children, but I have a television, a DVD player, a clock-radio, a radio without a clock, two lamps and an electric fan in my bedroom.

Still to be answered: how installing fewer outlets is supposed to discourage people from buying electrical gizmos. Are the Power Strip Police going to come and take away your extension cords?

(Via Fark.)

The old-fashioned nonpower reel mower is making a comeback, reports Brian Sargent:

Me, I'm holding out for a hybrid. Then again, my own mower is nominally self-propelled — there's a belt to drive the front wheels — but I hardly ever use the propulsion feature: I just push. Maybe when this thing dies a horrible death....

Let's see: Hybrids get good mileage. Diesels get good mileage. How about — a hybrid diesel?

Assuming these gallons are Imperial, as you might expect from a British writeup, we're looking at 58 miles per gallon from this little Frenchmobile should it ever come to the States. Not that I expect it to: Peugeot bailed out of the US market at the beginning of the 1990s.

(Via AutoblogGreen.)

Putting the "bio" in "biofuels," the Mexican livestock industry and the University of Georgia:

For the last hundred years or so, we've been running out of oil: here, at least, is a commodity which is not likely to be in short supply any time soon.

(Via AutoblogGreen.)

They're called GRAIN, and this is what they're about:

And they take a dim view of the Rush to Ethanol:

And we've heard that word "expropriation" before:

They can, however, play a significant role in pushing up food prices, which doesn't strike me as a particularly useful goal.

When I was still in school, back during the Pleistocene era, they took the trouble to impress upon us the value of crop rotation and the folly of expecting the same land to produce the same stuff year after year after year. But hey, we can't waste time on that sort of thing: we need fuel, dammit.

Sheesh. I think I need a drink. Which, incidentally, would contain ethanol.

(Via Hippyshopper.)

Not surprisingly, it will cost you:

All of which is true. But try this scenario on for size: let's say, just for the sake of argument, that the NIMBY issues could be resolved, that the Sierra Club were to issue a statement calling for more refineries, that various regulatory obstacles were temporarily (or even permanently) displaced. Do you think we'd actually get a sudden upsurge in refinery construction?

I'm thinking we wouldn't, for the simple reason that it would require some major capital investments, and oil companies, all else being equal, prefer to avoid major capital investments, lest the always-volatile oil market take a downward turn. And given the margins on gasoline production, which aren't exactly prodigious, they'd just as soon not bet the farm. Instead, they do things like buy back their own stock.

None of this, of course, is unexpected. And we all know what happens to companies with excess capacity: look at the US auto industry, which has been busy shuttering plants left and right. The "Something Must Be Done" crowd won't be happy about it, but I've lived through both of the energy "crises," and I'd rather have high prices and decent, if tight, supplies, than not-quite-so-high prices and hardly any supplies at all.

The Germans build a lot of high-end automobiles. (They also build some bottom-feeders, but those don't get sent over here.) There is, therefore, a chance that they might chafe a bit under a European Union proposal to ban fast cars.

Guido Reinking, the editor of Automobilwoche, has a better idea:

The advantage of this approach is that it makes a certain amount of sense even for us fans of carbon dioxide. (I polished off a bit more than a pint of Dr Pepper today.) And the funds thus raised could conceivably be used for staking out airport restrooms something useful.

Author Mary Stella is going solar:

This will cost a ton of money, at least at first:

The Florida rebate is $4 per watt of installed capacity, maximum of $20,000; there's a flat $500 for solar water-heating systems. The Feds offer a credit of 30 percent of the system cost, maximum $2000.

What's worth noting here, I think, is that she sees this, not as quick relief to massive energy bills, but as a long-term plan to minimize both her expense and her environmental impact, both of which should be considered Good Things.

Or not much, anyway, according to this:

Because we all know how peaceful it is in all those places where there's lots of the stuff. But to continue:

And furthermore:

It occurs to me, sitting here on the edge of the Oklahoma oil patch, that we've been running out of oil pretty much ever since we started using the stuff, and as the phrase goes, when in doubt, predict that the trend will continue.

Adam Gurri, however, thinks this is a load of dingo's kidneys:

Paul Ehrlich, call your service.

I'm mentioning this here mostly because if Mr Gurri is right, I want to double the chances that someone will notice. (And if he's wrong, well, nobody reads me anyway, right?)

Up to now, China's tax on motor fuel has been zero, and the price at the pump, converted to US dollars per gallon, is somewhere in the $2.50 range. Instead, the government has collected a "road tax" (based on vehicle weight) and lots of tolls.

This is about to change:

If the tax is imposed in one fell swoop, it's five bucks a gallon overnight. What are they thinking?

American consumers won't like this any better than Chinese motorists will, since everything we buy from China (which is, well, pretty much everything) will get more expensive, even as demand for gasoline slackens and (theoretically, anyway) American pump prices drop.

(Via AutoblogGreen.)

A couple of years ago, I wrote up a short piece about a Zero Energy Home being built here in town, and I made this observation about the price:

It won't happen overnight, of course: the payback period is measured in years, and anyway we have rather lower real-estate prices here than prevail in, say, the Twin Cities:

Far less energy, no doubt. But "far less expense"? Let's ask Chad the Elder about that:

I believe the technical term for this is "cost-defective."

Of course, the buyer didn't do all this to save money: he did it to set an example for the rest of us poor slobs, which is far more important in the long run, right?

Navistar's International division, after successful trials, is ramping up production on diesel hybrid commercial trucks. Says their press release:

The Hybrid Truck Users Forum, says Navistar, calculates that annual fuel consumption for one of these vehicles will be as much as 1000 gallons less than conventional trucks of this size class. (We're not up to 18-wheelers yet with this technology, but International is working on that too.)

You may remember that a couple of years ago Oklahoma Natural Gas introduced something called the Voluntary Fixed-Price Plan, which would enable you to lock in the rate you paid for gas for 12 months, without regard to market fluctuations. I contemplated it and turned it down, which wound up costing me over sixty dollars during the subsequent year. The following year, the VFP price was higher, but gas prices were lower, so I figure I got it back.

OG&E has now come up with their own variation on the theme, which does both more and less. The Guaranteed Flat Bill, according to the letter they sent me, will lock in my next twelve electric bills at $70.85, regardless of actual consumption; presumably they expect me to run up $850.20 in bills next year and have sliced it twelve ways.

This is the part that gets me, though:

In other words, they're charging me more in anticipation that I'll use more. And they admit it in the next paragraph:

It is, however, 16.7 percent above my actual bills for the last twelve months, which came to $728.52. I'm having a little trouble seeing how this is any advantage over the existing Average Monthly Billing plan.

And in the fine print in the back, it says this:

And maybe that's the whole idea: those of us who signed up for wind power, who realize a price break every time fuel costs go up, need to be pried out of that subscription and into something that won't cost them money.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Last week, I described OG&E's Guaranteed Flat Bill, and decided it wasn't for me.

Apparently these things are catching on all over the place, because someone took one to economist Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, and he wasn't impressed either:

I sent the offer to the shredder yesterday, which should qualify as a decline.

I don't know if OG&E is hoping we're dumb. The first year Oklahoma Natural Gas offered a flat gas rate, I turned it down and paid semi-dearly for so doing, which suggests that perhaps ONG had some motivation other than soaking the customers. But Cowen's general advice makes sense:

What, have they started selling toothpicks at Best Buy?

Two factoids: San Francisco has some 1500 diesel-powered vehicles in the city fleet; San Francisco spends some $3.5 million a year cleaning up the dumping of waste cooking oil, usually from the city's own sewer system.

So this makes sense: the city will pick up the grease from your eatery, no charge, and have it converted to biodiesel, thereby addressing two issues at once.

Which leads to this question: what about commercial grease-pickup firms? Apparently the competition for grease in the Bay Area has been so fierce that most of the firms who used to charge for picking it up no longer do so. A representative for San Francisco's Public Utility Commission says that while any restaurant can sign up for SFGreasecycle, priority will be given to those not currently using a commercial service — which presumably are the ones most likely to be dumping it into the sewers. Next question: will the demand reach a point where restaurants will actually be able to sell the stuff?

(From Biodiesel Blog via Autoblog Green.)

The City Manager has prepared a report to Council on resource-saving measures [link goes to PDF file] undertaken by city government, including biofuels conversion of city vehicles and wastewater reuse for golf-course maintenance, and I spotted this little surprise near the end:

My guess: they would, if the city would pony up the startup costs for the first few. The number of actual electric cars around town can likely be counted on the fingers of one hand, but as Ron Gremban, believed to be the first person to convert a privately-owned Toyota Prius to plug-in operation, once said:

How much it would cost to recharge a vehicle remains to be seen; however, I suspect it's going to be rather a lot less than a tank of unleaded, even allowing for the difference in ranges. I spent $36 just the other day for enough gas to go about 270 miles; an electric with a 30-mile range will come in ahead of the game if it can be recharged for less than $4. It also remains to be seen whether that electric can be juiced up in anywhere near the five or six minutes it takes me to fill up Gwendolyn's tank.

Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Jeff Cloud says they will study the possibility of requiring underground electrical lines in the state:

I'm not sure what I think about this yet. Burying the lines will almost certainly reduce the incidence of outages, albeit at a steep price — and when there are outages, they might be harder to fix.

Brian J. Noggle, noting recent regulatory history pitched as environmental concern — nothing new about that, right? — makes this point over at Tam's place:

Does this presage rebellion? I don't know. But given the typical shape of a compact fluorescent, I think it's a safe bet that we're going to see some "Take This Bulb And Shove It" shirts between now and the End of the Filament.

Automakers are not thrilled with the task of bringing up their Corporate Average Fuel Economy numbers to the 35 mpg demanded by new legislation, but I have decided not to worry about it, for the following reasons:

• The new rules don't demand that everyone have 35 mpg, only that the overall average be 35 mpg;
  
• The numbers juggled for CAFE compliance aren't necessarily the same numbers you see on Monroney stickers;
  
• The current numbers — 27.5 for passenger vehicles, 22.2 for trucks — are mostly being exceeded already, though not by much, especially for trucks.
  

The figures for the 2007 model year are out [link goes to PDF file], and here's how Detroit did:

General Motors: Domestic cars 29.6; imported cars 32.0; trucks 22.5.

Ford: Domestic cars 28.8; imported cars 29.9; trucks 22.2.

DaimlerChrysler: Domestic cars 28.6; imported cars 24.7; trucks 22.8.

Of course, DaimlerChrysler are now two separate companies again, and the bulk of DCX's imports came from Mercedes-Benz, never the most frugal of automakers. Chrysler, on its own, should look better in 2008. (For 2006, DaimlerChrysler got hit with the highest CAFE fine ever: $30.2 million.)

If you're curious, Ferrari has the worst CAFE: 16.2 mpg. The best overall showing was made by Honda: 33.7 on domestics, 39.9 on imports, 24.8 on trucks.

I remain persuaded that this is an ineffectual regulatory mechanism — you want people to use less fuel, you tax it — but Congress loves this sort of folderol, because it looks like it's accomplishing something while not actually inconveniencing those pesky voters.

There is one good thing, or at least one less bad thing, about the new rules: they apply across the board to both cars and trucks, which should result in fewer tortured interpretations of the definitions thereof. (Vans and minivans are considered trucks, generally; most infamously, the Chrysler PT Cruiser was designed to meet the definition of a truck despite its low level of truckitude.) And the numbers above tell me that cars don't need anywhere near as much fuel-economy work as trucks do, which means that I, as a person who tends to buy cars, will not have to fear much in the way of change as the automakers scramble for those last few miles per gallon.

If your ZIP code is anywhere between 90001 and 96199, you might consider stocking up on HVAC thermostats right away before Big Brother gets his fat fingers on the controls.

Come to think of it, given the tendency for dumb California ideas to spread elsewhere, we might all be wise to snag a couple of the old Honeywell rounds while we still can.

(Via Darleen Click.)

Everyone knows the big problem with solar power: it's called sunset.

Perhaps it won't remain a problem much longer:

They're still a few years away, though:

If I remember my circuit theory, it's not the frequency that switches back and forth, but getting things down to 60 Hz doesn't sound like an insurmountable difficulty.

(Via AutoblogGreen.)

It's the Pre-Gouge, says the Fat Guy:

A lot of market activity for nothing happening. But then, there are bigger deals to come:

I note with no small amount of dismay that the Valero at 63rd and Kelley is now asking $3.14 for your basic unleaded.

Besides, it's frickin' dark outside.

Money, your parents told you, doesn't grow on trees. But they didn't say anything about diesel fuel:

This is upward of 1200 gallons per acre, and a single tree will produce for decades. As with most biodiesel, you'll have to filter it before it gets into your tank. Not that it's going into your tank: the tree doesn't flourish outside tropical zones (like, say, North Queensland or Brazil).

(Via Scribal Terror.)

Meanwhile, Rob "Flack" O'Hara is losing service:

That's a lotta leak. Except that it wasn't:

Your basic crossfire hurricane. Sheesh.

Been there, done that, except that my leak was more like $40 a month. Every once in a while I get a whiff of something that might be gas, but then in this neighborhood it might as easily be sewer gas. "Though this be madness, yet there is methane in 't."

In the meantime, Flack worries:

Well, nobody's digging until Call Okie shows up to mark where the lines are. I called in my leak on a Wednesday; it was Friday before all the markers were in place, and the line was replaced Monday. If nothing else, this suggests that the cable might actually remain intact through Saturday.

When gas prices broke through the $1.00 barrier during the French and Indian War, rather a lot of gas pumps were unprepared for the event. The temporary expedient: setting prices to the half gallon. (For example, 52.9 cents per half gallon worked out to $1.058 per gallon. You didn't think they'd lose their precious fractions, did you?)

You might have thought that those days were over. Not so:

So Kim is selling no diesel. Olympia's response:

Everything old truly is new again. Just wait until the $10 barrier is breached.

(Via Fark.)

A company called Hymotion is taking deposits for a Toyota Prius plug-in kit which will make visits to the gas station even rarer:

What's in the box:

You will not come close to paying for this with your fuel savings: the kit, including installation, sells for $9,995 plus $400 shipping. Still, if you've always wanted a plug-in car and you don't have $100k for a Tesla, this is about as close as you're likely to get until Chevy produces some Volts.

I'm on I-44 westbound when I catch sight of Gwendolyn's gas gauge: three-eighths of a tank left. Good, I think. I can fill up and still keep it under $40.

I wheel into the station (NW 39th and Penn) and note that the 91-octane stuff is going for $3.649, which is pricey, but still a dime or so below what it was selling for on the Interstate. I start the flow and go for the squeegee.

Two large glass surfaces later, the click comes. I stare in disbelief: $39.85, despite a very good 22 mpg for the previous tankful. I sigh, squeeze the handle once more, and run the meter up to $39.99. A moral victory, anyway. Or it would have been, had I released the handle fast enough.

Next time, I suspect, I won't be so fortunate.

I suspect the boffins at Chevrolet are pleased with the results of this Popular Mechanics road test, in which a 2008 Malibu with a four-cylinder engine and a six-speed automatic returned almost 30 mpg over a 500-mile trip.

And I was fairly impressed myself — the best I've done on a World Tour was 30.7 mpg in 2005 — until I got to the very last paragraph:

Thirty-seven hundred pounds? Christ on a Krispy Kreme, as Rachel Lucas might say. In 2005 I was driving a Mazda 626, a car in the same size class as the Malibu, admittedly lacking some of the Chevy's features but still with "all the normal power accessories," and it weighed less than 3000 lb. My current ride is replete with electric servants, has ten percent more interior room, and comes in around 3400. Are they putting ballast in these things, or what?

(Via Autoblog Green.)