The James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy released a major study yesterday on the consequences of an emerging US carbon management policy. There are lots of strands in the report to be picked over. The one I found most interesting was that electric cars hold greater promise than establishing a national Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) in reducing carbon emissions and lowering US oil imports. This is from the report:

The single most effective way to reduce US oil demand and foreign imports would be an aggressive campaign to launch electric vehicles into the automotive fleet. In fact, mandating that 30 per cent of all vehicles be electric by 2050 would both reduce US oil use by 2.5m barrels a day beyond the 3m barrels-per-day savings already expected from new corporate average fuel efficiency standards, and also cut emissions by 7 per cent, while the proposed national renewable porfolio standard would cut them by only 4 per cent over the same time.

This finding underlines the potential for the US to make good use of its natural gas boom to supply this growth in electricity usage.