The nation's passenger cars and light trucks may have to average 75 miles per gallon by the 2030s, a top federal environmental official said at the SAE International World Congress. Margo Oge, director of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Transportation and Air Quality, said Monday at the SAE International 2008 World Congress in Detroit that's the level of fuel economy needed to meet a widely backed scientific-community proposal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 80 percent by 2050 from 2000 levels.
Congress has mandated automobiles and light trucks average an industry fleet-wide average of 35 mpg by 2020, a 40 percent increase over current requirements. To meet the low end of the 2050 proposal, automakers would have to average 75 mpg in the 2030s, Oge.....EPA is studying the effect of different types of renewable fuels in light of the congressional mandate to hike the number of gallons of biofuels and renewables to 36 billion gallons annually by 2022 -- more than five times the current levels. By 2013, all gasoline will be blended with 10 percent ethanol, Oge said.
source detnews