The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) is forecasting that annual gasoline consumption will finish slightly higher in 2022, then continue rising in 2023. The recent spike in gasoline prices reduced road travel during the summer months, but the EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook for September indicates that the savings will not be enough to offset significant consumption increases from earlier this year. Tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions are directly related to gasoline consumption, and the agency’s projections are consistent with a discouraging long-term trend.
Motorists in the United States torch about 9 million barrels of gasoline every day. The EIA projects that consumption will drop from 9.14 million barrels per day (bpd) in the third quarter of 2021 to 8.88 million bpd in the third quarter of 2022, due in large part to this year’s unusually high gasoline prices. Unfortunately, consumption during the first quarter of 2022 was considerably higher than it was in the first quarter of 2021 (8.47 to 8.04). The annual figure for 2021 was 8.82 million bpd, and the EIA is now forecasting that the average for 2022 will be slightly higher, reaching 8.83 million bpd before rising to 8.94 million bpd in 2023.
While the projected consumption figure for 2023 is well below the all time monthly high of 9.83 million bpd set in August of 2019, it represents a disappointing rebound from the recent monthly low of 5.87 million bpd set in April of 2020, when the onset of the COVID pandemic put the brakes on road travel. Short-term fluctuations due to unusual circumstances like the pandemic fail to mask the consistent long-term trend. U.S. gasoline consumption has been increasing for decades. Starting in 1950, the EIA’s figures for the first January of each decade are 2.10, 3.41, 5.25, 6.32, 6.64, 7.65, 8.52, and 8.72 million bpd.
The relentless rise in gasoline consumption is largely due to the increasing number of vehicle miles traveled by the collective U.S. fleet and our increasing preference for larger, more powerful vehicles. Efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency to improve the efficiency of light duty vehicles (LDVs) have been severely undermined by these consumer trends and have not been sufficient to counteract the increasing amount of road travel. According to the EIA, the U.S. fleet drove a combined 5.88 billion miles per day in 1990, 7.51 billion miles per day in 2000, 8.13 billion miles per day in 2010, and 8.94 billion miles per day in 2019, just before the pandemic hit. Collective road travel fell by one billion miles per day in 2020, but the EIA projects that it will rise to an all time high of 9.24 billion miles per day in 2023.
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics provides reliable data on the average fuel economy of LDVs. From 2009 to 2019, LDVs with a short wheelbase improved from 23.5 to 24.1 miles per gallon. LDVs with a long wheelbase improved from 17.3 to 17.6 miles per gallon during the same ten-year period. These slow, incremental efficiency gains are far too meager to offset the increasing number of vehicle miles traveled.
It is no surprise that the EIA is also predicting that annual carbon dioxide emissions from petroleum and other liquid fuels will increase dramatically between 2020 and 2023, rising from 2.04 to 2.29 billion metric tons.
