by Brian Beutler
Alternet.org

Oil companies know that gasoline expands at higher temperatures and has less volume at lower ones, but they’ve refused to upgrade gas stations with a simple tool that would adjust the price of gas according to its temperature.

It’s probably intuitive to most people that the gasoline in their fuel tank expands in the heat — just like doorframes and cookware and everything else on the planet. What’s probably less intuitive is that, in the United States, this physical phenomenon pumps a nearly $2 billion annual windfall out of consumers’ pockets and into oil company coffers, according to numerous calculations, including a recent House of Representatives study.

The North Carolina-based company Gilbarco Veeder-Root manufactures a device — a temperature’sensitive chamber for fuel — that, if affixed to gasoline pumps across the country, would return that money to consumers and help relieve some of our storied gas-price pressures. The device — and others like it — is simple, functional and, in fact, already in widespread use at gas stations all across Canada. Last month, Democratic presidential hopeful and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, chair of the Domestic Policy Subcommittee, held the second in a series of hearings to investigate why the technology has never made it into the American market.

Temperature is just one of the many variables that determine how much energy one tank of gasoline contains, and therefore how many miles it will pull your car. But the effects of temperature change are easier to calculate than, say, ethanol content or petroleum grade — and are therefore also easy to correct for. Here’s how it works.

read more HERE