Energy use is the key to becoming a world economic heavyweight

There’s a lot of unhappiness about gas prices all across the country. But I want you to know there’s so much we can do about it and we are!

For starters, we’re generating more domestic energy supplies than ever before. It’s shocking how much natural gas we’re producing thanks to new extraction techniques. Ditto on the oil front. In fact, we are like the OPEC of natural gas!

We can generate massive amounts of natural gas to provide energy for homes, businesses and vehicles. Years ago, I had a natural gas Honda Civic. The thing was great, cheap to run and I bought it used so it was cheap to buy.

GM and Ford leading the way to reduced fuel use

Now the opportunity coming because of technology is great. For example, GM is building pickup trucks that are bi-fuel, meaning they can run on either natural gas or traditional gas.

Right now, if you buy one of these things, the savings for a typical trucker can be between $6,000 and $10,000 annually if you do a lot of driving, or $3,000 to $5,000 if you don’t drive as much. It costs more to put in conversion kits, but the savings for business are really large.

There’s so much of this kind of stuff we can do. Both GM and Ford have vehicles coming out that get better economy vs. the old models. GM has midsized vehicles that average close to 30 miles per gallon city/highway combined. And that’s still early innings in what we can do. Ford has new hybrids that average 47 mpg for midsize cars.

As we sit here today facing high gas prices, we are no longer sitting ducks. On one side we’re creating new energy supplies that we didn’t know we could, and on the other side we’re steadily reducing consumption.

I’m a way outlier on this. I have my Prius hybrid that I converted into a plugin. With the tank I’m on now, I’ve driven 234 miles — and it’s still registering as a completely full tank! Almost all those 234 miles have been run on electric rather than gas at a very low cost per mile. Then I have my Nissan Leaf that is all electric. But that one is so expensive to buy that it is not a practical consideration for most people.