RMI Outlet
Plug Into New Ideas
U.S. Transformational Trucking—Environment and Efficiency in Freight Mobility
The American trucking industry moves 60 percent of America’s goods using 3.5 million tractors and 5.3 million trailers. Yet despite their ubiquity, tractor-trailer designs have…
Assessing the Electric Productivity Gap and the U.S. Efficiency Opportunity
It is commonly known that energy efficiency implementation has not achieved its technical or economically feasible potential in the United States, and many have attempted…
Nuclear Power: Climate Fix or Folly?
This semitechnical article, summarizing a detailed and documented technical paper (see “The Nuclear Illusion” (2008)), compares the cost, climate protection potential, reliability, financial risk, market…
Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles and Environmentally Beneficial Load Building: Implications on California’s Revenue Adjustment Mechanism
Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are poised to allow, for the first time, large-scale interaction between the transportation and electric utility sectors. Electricity is a more…
Transformational Trucks: Determining the Energy Efficiency Limits of a Class-8 Tractor Trailer
Feasible technological improvements in vehicle efficiency, combined with “long combination vehicles” (which raise productivity by connecting multiple trailers), can potentially raise the ton-mile efficiency of…