Let's look at fuel savings and electric savings in turn. Between 1973 and 1986, the United States cut the energy intensity of the economy by a fourth, its oil and gas intensity by a third, and OPEC's market share by half. Oil imports fell from 46 percent of 1977 consumption to 28 percent five years later. By 1985, Persian oil imports were only one-tenth their 1979 peak. By 1986, U.S. energy savings, chiefly in oil and gas, had become a national energy source two-fifths larger than the entire domestic oil industry.
Transportation burns nearly two-thirds of U.S. oil and is the key to cutting oil dependence.
The U.S. household vehicle fleet now averages 20 miles per gallon. Improving that to an average of 23 mpg could displace all of the oil the U.S. imported from Iraq and Kuwait before the hostilities of July 1990. Increasing the vehicle fleet average by another 10 mpg would displace all of the oil we import from the Persian Gulf. We almost displaced Gulf oil imports anyway. From 1977 to 1986, the rise in U.S. oil productivity averaged 5 percent per year 80 percent faster than needed to keep up with both economic growth and the decline in domestic oil extraction.