Heatwaves, Pollution, and Money to Burn

France is just coming out of a heatwave at the moment. Whenever I think of a heatwave, two things come to mind. The first is the film ‘Grumpy Old Men‘, with Jack lemmon and Walther Matthau. The film starts with the classic Irving Berlin song “We’re having a heatwave”, while they’re bundled up against the snow and ice. We were singing that a lot this winter.

The second thing that comes to mind is the heatwave of 2003, though that was far worse than this one. That one killed tens of thousands of people across Europe, I’m not sure this one has caused any extra deaths yet?

Even if it’s not as strong as the one six years ago, this has still been an unpleasantly hot time. A large part of the south of France has been under yellow or orange alert, meaning that people have been advised to take extra precautions against the heat. Things like staying out of the sun, drinking plenty of water, avoiding strenuous activity in the hotter part of the day. I’ve been playing it safe, and avoiding exerting myself altogether. The only exception has been to water the plants on the terrace. Come to think of it, that’s been hard work, they have needed a lot of water every day this past week!

Several measures were imposed in France to help people cope with the heatwave, from the small-scale to industrial. In some areas, exterior painting with solvent-based paints, and use of petrol-driven garden equipment was banned, while the heatwave ran its course. Industries were told to reduce the amount of pollution they produce, and car-drivers were ordered to reduce speed by 20 mph on major roads, for the same reason. Since the pollution from these sources is made worse by the strong sunlight, this is particularly important at times like this.

But what about when it isn’t so hot? Doesn’t pollution from all these sources matter then? It might be worse in a heatwave, but pollution from cars is dangerous at any time. What if people drove slower all the time, so they always produced less pollution? That’s something easy that we can all do. You can reduce your own contribution to pollution quite a bit that way, and save yourself some money in the process.

Last summer, when petrol prices were high, drivers in France reduced their consumption by 15%. Curiously, that drop in petrol consumption continued into September, even after the price of of petrol came back down again. I don’t know if that trend continues today, I hope so, but I haven’t been able to find out anything.

I know from my own experience that you can save a lot of your fuel costs just by driving gently, and anticipating changes in the traffic around you. My car is 18 years old, but I get on average 48 MPG (UK gallons, that’s 40 MPG in US gallons, or 5.90 l/100km) by driving gently. According to the US government, that’s almost the same as a 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid.

I track my fuel consumption at Fuelly.com, you can find me there among the Opel Astras. Fuelly is very easy to use, whenever you fill your petrol tank you just note the mileage, date, and amount of fuel, then enter it into fuelly and it does the maths for you. It’s a great way to see how much petrol you really are using, and to compare yourself with other people. I can see there that, compared to Honda Civic Hybrids that people have registered, I actually get better mileage than one third of them. That’s not bad for such an old car!

You might think that it’s not worth much effort conserving petrol in an old car, but that’s not true. It’s actually easier to make good gains from an older car than from a newer one. Why? Because MPG is a deceptive quantity, and it’s more instructive to think about the amount of petrol it takes to travel a given distance (Gallons Per Mile, or GPM), instead. The more petrol you use to start with, the easier it is to improve, so drivers of older cars can make bigger gains.

For example, if your car does 20 MPG, you need 5 gallons of petrol to travel 100 miles. If you can improve your mileage by 5 MPG, to 25 MPG, you need only 4 gallons of petrol to travel that same 100 miles. You save one gallon. If your car did 40 MPG instead, you would have needed only 2.5 gallons to travel that same 100 miles in the first place. To make a saving of one gallon with that car, you would have to improve your mileage to 67 MPG, an increase of 27 MPG, not 5. Small savings on high-consumption make a big difference.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t buy an economical car if you can afford it, certainly you should. But if you can’t afford to replace your old banger, you can avoid wasting a lot of money just by paying attention to the way you drive. Why don’t you try it, you might enjoy it? Unless you have money to burn, reducing petrol consumption is a winner all round.