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Table gives gas consumption (in gallons), annual BTU, and annual CO2 release for 3 vehicle types in the year 1999. BTU (Wikipedia)=The British thermal unit (BTU or Btu) is a traditional unit of energy equal to about 1.06 kilojoules. In North America, the term "BTU" is used to describe the heat value (energy content) of fuels, and also to describe the power of heating and cooling systems, such as furnaces, stoves, barbecue grills, and air conditioners. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2005 table of most and least efficient vehicles (http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/best/bestworstNF.shtml) and considering only highly popular models, 2005 vehicles miles-per-gallon (mpg) range is bracketed by the Toyota Prius’ 60:51 (highway:city) on the low end and by Chevrolet Suburban’s 11:15. At near average is the Toyota Camry Solara’s 24:33 mpg. The salient transportation calculation (Table 1), demonstrates that, depending on the vehicle model, an American is likely to consume between 1.7 × 10^7 and 6.8 × 10^7 BTU per year for personal transportation. This amounts to emissions of 1.19–4.76 ton CO2 based on the estimated conversion factor of 7×10^-8 ton CO2/BTU derived from the 2003 U.S. total energy consumption, 98.6×10^15 BTU (U.S. Department of Energy 2004a), and total CO2 emissions of 6935.9 × 10^6 ton (U.S. Department of Energy 2004b) |