10/18/2026
Notes from Climate Action Mendocino - Ian Monroe put together this synopsis:
Gasoline & diesel aren't expensive. They're dramatically underpriced.
Our Etho Capital & Climate+Positive Investing Alliance teams did a preliminary full
accounting of what gasoline & diesel really cost our society:
⛽ Gasoline FULL COST ~$31 / gallon | ~$8 / liter [~5.2x the pump price]
🚛 Diesel FULL COST ~$52 / gallon | ~$14 / liter [~8.7x the pump price]
The pump price covers just 19% of gasoline's true cost & 11% of diesel's.
➡ See attached infographic for data sources and assumptions + stay-tuned for a
more detailed research paper soon...
The full bill for these fossil fuels we all pay every year via
🌍 Climate damage, including black carbon soot from diesel engines
🫁 Premature deaths and illness from tailpipe pollution
🔥 Wildfire smoke made worse by a warming climate
🪖 Wars and the military cost of protecting oil supply lines
💡 This is why "cheap" fuel is one of the most expensive things we buy. We just pay
most of it through 🏥 hospital bills, 📈 insurance premiums, 🏚 🌊 disaster recovery
and 🏛 💰 tax dollars, instead of at the pump.
⚡ 🚗 On the positive side, the societal savings of shifting to EVs ASAP are MUCH
higher than reported in other studies! More on this soon...
🤔 What do you think? How should the price of fossil fuel reflect its true cost? 👇
Ian Monroe
1w
🚙 ⚡ 💰 What's the full benefit of shifting to electric vehicles? : $87k to $5M+ USD
per EV
Every EV car and SUV saves society at least $87,000 to over $132,000, according to
new initial analysis from our Etho Capital and Climate+Positive Investing Alliance
research teams. The largest savings from avoided climate and air pollution, including
wildfire smoke, followed by avoided fuel costs and avoided military conflict.
For diesel trucks the societal savings are even bigger, mainly from avoided black
carbon:
🚛 ⚡ 💰 >$950k societal benefit for each medium-duty EV truck
⛟ ⚡ 💰 💰 💰 >$5 MILLION benefit for every heavy-duty EV truck
See infographic below for more details on this analysis, which is connected to our full
cost accounting for avoided gasoline and diesel use detailed in this post: https://
lnkd.in/p/ggstCCUW
While these calculations are still preliminary, and they're based on higher end (and I'd
argue more accurate) values for social cost of carbon (SCC) and the value of human
life, I think these full-benefit-accounting values for EVs may actually still be
underestimates, since we haven't yet accounted for avoided harms from fossil fuel co-
products, like toxic petrochemical-linked cancers and microplastic pollution. Ping me if
you're interested in contributing feedback for our peer-reviewed white paper that's in-
the-works.
Hopefully this research contributes to the understanding that every government,
company and individual should prioritize a shift to EVs ASAP wherever possible, as full
life cycle assessment accounting shows the direct and secondary societal benefits are
MUCH bigger than any EV sticker price or existing EV subsidy
