Advocate Summary

Issue:  CAFÉ standards (107th)
Advocate:  American Council for Energy-Efficient Economy - Therese Langer
Date of Interview: 7/22/02

Basic Background
Our organization supports the maximum feasible increase in fuel economy standards in the near term.  And we engage in some amount of advocacy.  We are quite analysis heavy as a whole.  And have been involved in doing analysis of the technological potential for fuel economy increases, for many, many years now.  We also do some analysis of effect on oil supply and so forth, and issues like alternative fuels and so forth.

Prior Activity on the Issue 
[ACE3 generally works on fuel economy at all times.]

Advocacy Activities Undertaken
At the moment, we’re not, you know, at this later stage.  When the bill was in the Senate, I would say there were roughly meetings maybe once every two weeks.  And then those meetings putting together the briefing book.  We often have joint meetings with Congress people and staff, you know, those are really the main activities I would say that we do jointly.  Sometimes two groups will come together for some kind of a publication and release it together and so forth.

I mean, a lot of these groups have had their own separate publications of some sort.  Our group, ACEEE had, in the past year, a pretty significant paper, which is an update of the technological potential for achieving fuel economy improvements for the years leading up to 2015.
	Then we had two publications about the relationships between certain vehicle attributes and their safety, in the context of the fuel economy debate.  One last, late last summer and one this winter.  And prior to that, we had a fairly significant media coverage of a paper having to do with the impact of improving fuel economy on oil reports.  And you are certainly welcome to see any of those papers our press releases available.

You know, the tactics have shifted a lot over the course of debate, sort of in response to things that happened.  And there have been times when we did a lot of visits to the Hill and it was very important.  And I just want to emphasize again that a lot of the stuff that we did was done in coalition.  And a number of groups have been more active on the media front.  And also in lobbying.  Our role in general, in this group, is more the analytical side.  So from our point of view, our very important thing is just to get facts out there in front of people and that includes general public and the Hill folks.
	We also, as a general rule, work quite hard to cultivate relations with the industry.  And in the course of this debate, I guess there wasn’t all that much room for that, with the exception of just a couple of car makers and Toyota has been, I’m sorry, Honda has been, of course, the most receptive among the auto makers, to doing something along those lines.
	We did, along with the other groups, attempt to reach out somewhat to labor and work on the issue. That wasn’t effective in the end.  Not that we’re quite at the end.  But I regard it as something quite important, nonetheless.  And I think, in the long run, it will have been significant, you know, the fact that we did have some discussions with them was good.

Future Advocacy Activities Planned
None mentioned.

Key Congressional Contact(s)/Champions
Sure.  A lot of our context, again, has been in coalition with these other groups.  And we present the same view, generally, of who will be a likely champion for us.  But of course, one of the stalwarts from the earliest part of this round of the debate was Senator Feinstein, who turned out not to be in the lead for this round of CAFE that actually were on the verge of being asserted.
	I mean, she was, of course, one of the original sponsors for the legislation along with Senator Snowe.  But then subsequently, when people, well, after the turn of events on the House side, when the energy bill came up in the Senate, it was determined that, looking for an across the board increase in CAFE standards, had a chance of going forward.  And that was certainly pushed approach and at this point one of the most important champions.  
	But then there are a number of people at that same time that were important players, Hollings being one of them.  But throughout, Feinstein and Snowe were important.  And then, of course, a little bit later, the support of McCain became an important factor.  On the House side, Markey and, Waxman, were all very active and supportive.

Targets of Direct Lobbying
None mentioned.

Targets of Grassroots Lobbying
None mentioned.

Coalition Partners: Names/Participants
Yes we’ve been working with other groups.  In this latest round that is in connection with the energy bill, for the past year and a half, we have worked closely with the coalition of environmental groups and energy groups, has been a participant in that. I don’t know how formal you would think of it.  
	So this is not all the groups that work with us on this issue, but it certainly gives you the sense a lot of the players in this and the energy efficient and environmental status.  So we don’t all have identical positions on the issue, but close enough to do a lot of work jointly.
	At the moment, we’re not, you know, at this later stage.  When the bill was in the Senate, I would say there were roughly meetings maybe once every two weeks.  And then those meetings putting together the briefing book.  We often have joint meetings with Congress people and staff, you know, those are really the main activities I would say that we do jointly.  Sometimes two groups will come together for some kind of a publication and release it together and so forth.

[See big binder from Union of Concerned Scientists, this is the material she is referring to here]

Other Participants in the Issue Debate
We also, as a general rule, work quite hard to cultivate relations with the industry.  And in the course of this debate, I guess there wasn’t all that much room for that, with the exception of just a couple of car makers and Toyota has been, I’m sorry, Honda has been, of course, the most receptive among the auto makers, to doing something along those lines.
	We did, along with the other groups, attempt to reach out somewhat to labor and work on the issue. That wasn’t effective in the end.  Not that we’re quite at the end.  But I regard it as something quite important, nonetheless.  And I think, in the long run, it will have been significant, you know, the fact that we did have some discussions with them was good.

Well, I think there has always been some difference in the position taken by the UAW from that taken by the industry whenever CAFE comes up.  But in fact, when the UAW testified at the CAFE testimony, they presented, at one of the sessions of the National Academy of Science panel on CAFE, last spring or summer.  And they said, as I think they always do, that they were in theory open to an increase in the fuel economy standards.  But it would have to satisfy certain conditions, obviously among them that there wouldn’t be any significant loss of jobs.
	And I think that that does differ in a somewhat fundamental way from what manufacturers have said, mainly that CAFE doesn’t work.  Now it’s been kind of hard to translate the UAW’s openness in principles to CAFE till they’re actually supporting something, which they have yet to do.
	But the fact is that they were interested in discussing it.  And I think I can’t actually say what their thinking was, and where they ended up, as a result of those discussions.  Because those discussions were confidential and it’s still not entirely clear to me what people want to make public about that.  So I would just say, in general terms, that it was sort of a positive direction, even though it didn’t produce support in the end.

I think some think tanks have very strong opinions about that, and I don’t know whether you want to regard those as a separate constituency or not.  Well, I shouldn’t say constituency… something.  So there are, for example, groups like Resources for the Future.  And Insurance Institutes for Highway Safety; that’s another type of group that has a very different perspective.
	I’m actually thinking right now of people that were represented on the National Academy of Sciences panel.  And their position is definitely, well, they, just those two, actually between them, have different positions.  But they’re nowhere near either the basic environmental/energy advocacy position, or the manufacturers, I wouldn’t think.
	Then, well, you know, people like Cato Institute or whoever, I think, put out very strong statements about CAFE, but I don’t regard them as necessarily very significant players in the debate on the Hill. The more conservative think tanks, I think, made some very strong anti-CAFE statements.  CAFE hasn’t worked in the past.  Regulation is not the way to do this.
	And by the way, I have something interesting, I think, that has come up as an undercurrent for just about everybody’s position, with the possible exception of the environmental groups.  This notion that regulation is the wrong way to handle this, fuel tax is the right way to handle it.  
	And that’s kind of interesting, because even the manufacturers say that in a very strong way.  And it would be interesting to know if that ever became a political possibility, which seems very unlikely, whether they would make such a strong statement that the right way to do this is fuel tax.  But anyway, I’m bringing that up because there are a number of think tanks, I think, that made that point very strongly and the National Academy report also made a very strong statement.
	I regard that somehow as being either disingenuous or pretty naive, but on some level, it’s a very reasonable thing to be trying to bring it into the debate and to find many people saying that’s the best way to handle it.

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence
That’s hard.  Because I don’t think, even for a single group of these many groups that have gone to the Hill on the subject, that we would want to say that there’s one issue above any other.  If you mean by that, what would we say is the reason that we need CAFE standards? Given who we are, our interest in the subject is reducing energy consumption in the transportation sector in the United States.  We are, of course, interested in the sort of, in the issues that are directly associated with that.
	On the one hand, reducing oil consumption.  On the other hand, reducing CO2 emissions.  And when we present the current state of affairs to people on the Hill, we would typically provide some analysis of both of those issues.  And not in sort of abstract terms of energy consumption in the transportation sector, which is probably not a great interest on the Hill, but in terms of the oil picture and the CO2 picture.  And I would say, in recent times, the oil picture has been at the top of the list.
	But now, so that would be sort of how our presentation would go in terms of the motivation for CAFE standards.  But then, then there was a host of issues that we would get into in any discussion with a Congressional office, having to do with why we think that a certain increase in CAFE standards is appropriate.  And we, along with other groups, have for many months the position that the proper thing to do, this time around, was to raise standards to a compliant level of 40 and 50 mpg.  
	And that’s, in fact, the conclusion of this analysis that I mentioned before about, this is sort of a summary about what that paper was about.  And it concluded that you could reach, under a fairly aggressive scenario of implementing technologies, you could reach an average of 41 miles per gallon in this kind of range, at a reasonable cost.
	But now, so having made that as the pitch to the Congress people, we would, as a matter of course, get into discussions about what would be the cost of doing that, what the safety issue, what would be the oil implications of doing that, to some extent what would be the job implications for doing that.
	And I wouldn’t put any of those, I don’t think, higher than any others on our agenda in talking with these people.  And those are each areas in which we’ve done a fair amount of work.  So we would expect them to rate all of those issues and for us to have something to say about them.

This is, the paper that this summarizes is a very detailed engineering analysis and it was actually done, the various components that you would need to raise fuel efficiency were put together and, not using a car but using a simulation model.  So part of that was each of those fuel economy improvement technologies, and then combined.
	And I would say, in general terms, the cost that we attributed to each of those pieces is quite similar to what the National Academy did in their study.  So in terms of, just where do the numbers come from, that is based on something very specific to each of the components of the package of fuel economy improvement.
	But in terms of how the argument goes, basically, there are maybe three different ways that that can be approached.  One is to say that, and let me say, by the way, that one of the main points, at least of our analysis, and to a large extent to other people’s analysis as well, is that, what we’re calling for in the near term, to get a fuel economy in the order of 35, 40 miles a gallon, is not some major market penetration of advanced tech stuff.  We’re certainly not talking about.  In fact, we’re not even talking about hybrids here.	
	So I bring that up because, although those are very promising technologies, and obviously hybrid’s already here, they’re pretty expensive still.  So to come back to my main point, to get to 35, 40, we’re not talking about these really expensive technologies.  And the fuel savings, in a fairly short period of time, pay back the incremental cost of the technology.  So it would be required to (inaudible) to raise the fuel economy.
	Another thing that was emphasized in our analysis that I think is important, and was not really played up so much, is there’s always a disagreement.  One of the difficulties about using this argument that you make it up, you make the money back in fuel savings, is that people never quite agree on how, at what rate you should discount fuel savings over time.  
	And you know, various people claim that well, people who are buying a vehicle are not going to look at more than three years of fuel savings in trying to decide whether it’s worth paying a little more for an efficient car.  
	But one of the conclusions of this paper, actually, which is shown here, is that if you look at the real numbers and cost in dollars of vehicles over time, they are increasing at a fairly predictable rate here.  I mean, there’s a trend of course, but there is a trend towards more expensive vehicles.  Vehicles are, in sort of an absolute sense, becoming fancier.  And it’s safe to assume that they will continue to do so.
	In fact, with the increasing sort of electronic content of vehicles, it’s especially certain that they will continue to increase in price as they have more capabilities.  And the point here is just that, if you look at the increase in price that we’re talking about to make a more fuel efficient car, in that context, you’ll see that we’re talking about something that’s an increase in price that’s below that kind of trend in price.
	So these are, these shapes here are, in 2010, what the price would be for an average car under various scenarios.  This one up here, which is above the trend line, has a lot of hybrids in it.  These two down here are a more and less aggressive scenario of, what we would call, conventional technologies, basically using no hybrids or whatever.
	And the point is, again, just that while there is an increase in price, relative to current vehicle prices, that increase is significantly less than what you would just expect over that period of time to be the sort of trend in vehicle prices.  
	And you know, you can say, well, all right.  So does that mean that we’d have to pay this price, this increased price, and then on top of it the fuel economy improvement price?  But that’s not really the way to think about it, because the situation actually is that there are going to be a bunch of advances in vehicle technology.  And the manufacturers have to decide, are we going to apply this, basically making a car more powerful to lower the zero to sixty acceleration time, or are we going to make the cars more efficient?  Because in many cases, it’s the same technology that can be applied to either that end or one of these other ends.
	So it’s really a question of, I think of this more, and this is what the vehicle’s trend prices are going to be.  We can either, at that point, have cars that have still more power than today’s cars, or cars that are a little more fuel efficient than today’s cars.  So to think of it as to say, it’s just a question of adding to vehicle price to make them more fuel efficient doesn’t really capture the situation.

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence
And I think there are two major components or how we’d respond to the safety argument by industry.  One is that there is huge potential for increase in fuel economy that is unrelated to changing vehicle size.  And I think that’s well, documented, and not only by our work and other advocates’ work, but one of the main conclusions of the national CAFE of scientists report.
	But then we would go beyond that by saying that, in fact, one of the primary safety concerns at this point is the discrepancy in weight between the smaller vehicles and the larger vehicles.  And that, although it’s true, we could raise fuel economy significantly without making any changes in size and weight, that what we would actually recommend is that the heavier vehicles be made somewhat lighter.  Not smaller, but lighter.  And other various ways that we could recommend doing that, so as to reduce the weight differential between the heaviest and lightest vehicles.
	And that’s actually the focus of some of the safety work that we had put out in the course of the CAFE debate.  And actually looking at the consequences of that weight differential.  And you know, I think, the second of those two reports showed something I think was quite interesting and overlooked in the CAFE debate, really overlooked.  
	Which is that it’s one thing to make an argument about safety and vehicle size or weight.  And by the way those are two very different things, the size and weight issues.  Which only had the effect on a person in a given vehicle.  Well, you know, how do you respond to somebody who wants to buy a bigger vehicle to ensure their safety, if it required a different thing to look at the societal impact of a larger vehicle on the road.
	And one of the, the second of these two papers I mentioned, that we put out earlier this year, looked at the fatality rates of vehicles in different size classes.  And that was looking not only at the fatalities to the occupant of the given vehicle, but the fatality rates of the occupants of the vehicles with whom they collided.  And the results are quite interesting.  And they show that well, they show a lot of things.
	But one of the interesting things is that, sort of a mid sized car is maybe a little bit safer than a typical SUV or mini van in terms of the fatality rates for their driver.  If you look at the fatality rates to people in a collision involving one of those vehicles, the mid sized car is much, much lower than the light truck, whether it’s a van or an SUV.  Pickups are, by the way, off the map, both in terms of danger for their driver and the person they collide with.  They’re both very, very high.  And mini vans are actually quite low.  SUVs are sort of between those two.
	But the point is, they’re not significantly safer than cars.  In fact, there may be a little bit more dangerous to their occupants but moreover they inflict a whole lot more damage on people in smaller cars than the mid sized cars do.  Anyway, so that’s maybe more of a detailed answer than you wanted, but in fact, typically what we do is get involved in the safety issue or the technology issue and so forth.  
	Anyway, so where does that leave us for the fuel economy debate?  So we were saying, so our basic thing was that, it would be, that an average fuel economy of let’s say 40 miles per gallon could be achieved, A, at reasonable cost, B, without changing the size, meaning dimensions of any vehicle.  This analysis, by the way, assumes that nobody changes their class of vehicle that they purchase.  The same percentage of people as today would be buying SUVs or pickups or whatever.  So we could achieve this 40 plus mpg as an average at mild cost, with no change in the size of vehicle.  And with a safety benefit, and that safety benefit will be largely a result of some fairly modest down-weighting, not downsizing, of the heavier vehicles.

[Is not changing the size an important point?]
	It is.  Although, well, maintaining the size of vehicles in sort of general terms is something that’s advisable for safety reasons, because of the, again just very generally speaking, the larger crush zones that a vehicle with a greater length or width would allow.  So we did not want to be reducing size dimensions, first of all because that could have safety implications, and secondly because we want to make changes in vehicles that would be, that would not affect the comfort or utility of the vehicle, so that everything would be any less appealing to the public than they are.
	And of course, it’s also true that the thing that determines the impact on another car with which one of these cars collides, is the weight of the vehicle much more than the size.  And in fact, a larger crush space in either vehicle could be protective for both, the occupants of both vehicles.  So for all those reasons that we didn’t want to change the size.

Targeted Arguments, Targets, and Evidence
None mentioned.

Nature of the Opposition
It’s the auto makers.  There are other people who got dragged in, but I don’t really think, for the most part, that anybody was all that interested in the vote to change the standards, other than the auto makers.
	Now auto makers brought with them the unions, at a pretty late date, by the way.  I mean, when the House debate started, the unions were nowhere to be seen till the very last minute.  And then they came in and they make a huge difference in the debate.  
	And then, on the Senate side, by that time, the unions were already engaged, but the suppliers start to be brought in somewhat.  And that makes a big difference because not every Congressman has a manufacturer in his or her district, but everyone has a supplier in their district.  So that’s something significant as well.
	There are other players.  I think some think tanks jumped in.  But I really think this is, you know, the influence and the interest of the auto manufacturers is a huge magnitude above anybody else’s.

Well, I mean, their legendary supporter is (John) Dingell (D-MI).  But all the other people who have manufacturers in their district were very heavily affected.  And I don’t say that in a pejorative way.  They have to be paying very close attention to them.  And so that meant they were under intense pressure.  You have (Carl) Levin (D-MI) .  Sorry, I’m mixing up House and Senate here. But anybody, (Dick) Gephardt (D-MO), (Joseph) Biden (D-DE).  It’s very clearly and closely tied to whose got a major plant.  So that puts the Michigan people at the top of the list as people who have to protect those interests.  And then, to some extent, you have Ohio, Indiana and Delaware with one plant, Missouri.  
	And then a separate set of people who are worried about the unions, partly because, being supportive of labor is a major credential for them.  You have these Democrats who might otherwise have stayed out of this battle, or gone with the enviros.  In fact, that was a major issue for many people, especially Democrats, that they were really in a bind to have to choose between labor and environmentalists.

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition 
Well, you know, I think the sophistication of the opposition varied a lot according to, well, which part of the opposition, but what the circumstances were.  And I think the opposition on the House and Senate floor was a very naive, well, naive is too generous.  I think it was basically a scare tactic.  On the House side, as I recall, it was a bogus safety argument.  
	And on the Senate side, it was largely the claim that it couldn’t be done.  That is, you know, the Senate side is where they were talking about the purple people eater or whatever they were.  That if we had higher fuel economy, and that was the time in which a, I don’t know, 35 mpg bill was being debated.  Yeah.  That everybody would end up with golf carts.
	That’s not really the argument that you heard from the auto makers.  I think they had a more sophisticated argument, a little bit.  Now safety continues to be something that they raise.  I think it was actually kind of interesting to see that the claim was not really made by people who were making a serious debate here, that it couldn’t be done.  I think there was sort of an acknowledgment that it could be done.
	So I think the cost issue became very important to the opposition, as an argument.  And as I say, safety continued to be an issue.  Of course, for the unions, the jobs were the issue.  And again, that was a question of whether the foreign manufacturers would have an advantage if there were across the boards increase in CAFÉ standards.

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition
Let’s see.  And then there was another argument that came up, I think sort of late in the game, which was, and it wouldn’t do any good.  And that argument, it went like this.  You know, you make more fuel efficient cars, people’s driving costs go down, they start driving more, so in the end they’d be consuming the same amount of oil.  And I don’t know.  I’m not sure that that’s an argument that actually played so much with the public, but it was one I heard a lot in the later days of the debate.

Targeted Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition (and Targets)
None mentioned.

Described as a Partisan Issue
No.

Venue(s) of Activity

Action Pending or Taken by Relevant Decision Makers
Energy bill is still in conference.

Policy Objective(s) and Support for/Opposition to the Status Quo
Opposed to the status quo, working to increase CAFÉ standards.

Advocate’s Experience: Tenure in Current Job/Previous Experience
I’m relatively new here.  I came in early 2001.  And I previously was working in the New York metropolitan area on, actually on a different side of transportation policy.  Maybe more to do with demand management and reducing vehicle travel.  Increasing transit use, interpreting land use.  But I also have a pretty technical background, so I actually came here to do a combination.  This program has traditionally focused very heavily on vehicle technologies and fuel economy policy, which we continue to do now.  But I’m also bringing in these other elements of what we would call system efficiency.  So making improvements to the alternative transportation in America, seeing what the opportunities are to move people in a way that would improve the overall efficiency, as well, as the more technological side of things.	

Reliance on Research: In-House/External (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
We do a mix.  We do a lot of collaborative stuff with, well, let’s see, universities in some cases.  As a matter of fact, the two safety studies that we published were done by people at the University of Michigan and others.  And we do sometimes have consultants.  I would say most of our stuff is done in house.
	We would not typically be using, I don’t know what the proper term is but, private commercial consultants.  But we would fairly frequently have something, some direct work with or work done on a consulting basis with a consulting basis with the university person.  Or one of the people at one of the labs maybe.

And we’re a small organization so we would, that would be basically the same people doing the advocacy and the analysis. Well, that’s not quite true.  We also, I mean we produce this book, which is a review of all the new model cars of the year, in terms of their environmental qualities.  And this is also the kind of thing that clearly distinguishes us from other public interest groups that you might be talking to.  This is very, sort of hard core, nitty gritty analysis on vehicles.  
	And it’s not, in any sense, a kind of advocacy piece.  It’s just used as the facts produced by EPA to assess what the environmental attributes are of all the new cars.  And one of the people here in the transportation program spends half of his time just making this book every year.  He would not be involved typically in advocacy.
	But the rest of us spend maybe, I don’t know, twenty percent of our time doing advocacy of one kind or another, and then do a lot of writing and some research, analysis.  Well, I prefer to call it analysis.  It’s not basic research, like I would be doing at a university.  And we don’t, for example, have to test cars ourselves.  We use data from other people, typically, and sort of synthesize it in some way that’s useful to people.

Number of Individuals Involved in Advocacy (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
Unclear.

Units in Organization Involved in Public Affairs/Policy (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
Well, I don’t know exactly, maybe 22. Between 20 and 25. And we have some remote people. So we have, well, there’s three people who do transportation.  And then there is a group in utilities, a group in industry, a group in national policy, but there’s overlap when they do something like cafe.  But they wouldn’t be working very hard on the energy bill.  They have a larger advocacy component than the other groups.
	Let’s see, the utilities, who am I forgetting?  We have recently added a human factors person, sort of decisions of consumers and how people make their decisions.  

Advocate’s Outstanding Skills/Assets (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
None mentioned.

Type of Membership: None, Institutions, Individuals, Both (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)
Individuals 

Membership Size (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Organizational Age (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Miscellaneous
I guess I would also mention that the other transportation related piece of the energy bill that we’ve been active in is tax credits for fuel efficient technology vehicles.  And the interesting thing that happened in that, in the development of that piece of the bill was that Ford, Honda and Toyota came together, with the environmental community and some of the alternative fuel folks to agree on a bill.  
	And it’s not quite clear how that will come out in the end, either, but it did represent something of a break between those three auto makers and the others.  And unfortunately, our discussions with auto makers didn’t translate into anything that positive on the CAFE front, but I wouldn’t regard that as something that’s out of the question in the future.

[Mentioned the National Academy of Science’s report from the panel they held is publicly available, that panel was headed by a guy from Resources for the Future, but she said members of the panel we’re necessarily speaking for their organizations, Adrian Lund (male) weighed in a lot on the safety angle]

[She also noted that there has been talk of increasing the fuel tax, which would in time result in decreasing fuel consumption, the environmental community however recognizes that such a measure could not be implemented without “serious economic dislocation” but “it would help if introduced slowly, there is evidence of its effectiveness in Europe, but it still wouldn’t be a compete cure”]