How Cheap Oil Is Undermining Obama's Fuel-Economy Rules
View on Vox website"The question is how much this all matters. One recent discussion paper by Benjamin Leard, Joshua Linn, and Virginia McConnell of Resources for the Future tried to come up with a rough estimate of the impact of cheap oil on CAFE standards. Their bottom line is that it eroded the fuel savings in the short run, though the effect was modest:
'[T]he recent gasoline price decrease had a relatively small effect on the overall fuel economy requirement. The requirement fell by about 0.1 mpg. This decrease eroded about 14 percent of the increase in the stringency of the fuel economy standards between 2014 and 2015, and 8 percent of the increase in stringency between 2011 and 2015'
They do caution, however, that it's more difficult to model long-term impacts of low oil prices on both manufacturers (who may start producing a greater mix of larger vehicles) and consumer behavior. So this study isn't the final world."
