Beyond a Billion
Posted By RichC on October 15, 2005
October 14, 2005 was the day the US Department of Energy’s Clean Cities Program and the 80+ community-based coalitions celebrated the displacing of one billion gallons of petroleum across the nation. Kim Lahman (photo right), Tri-State Clean Fuel Network’s Coordinator, organized the local Cincinnati area event with many key participates at Cincinnati’s Ault Park. (what a wonderful historic city park … worth talking about on its own)
Yours truly represented CinciTDI at this event in my daughter’s 2001 VW Jetta TDI. (she is away at college and we traded cars for the week) I’ve been running blends of biodiesel in two tractors and our two cars for the past several years and have yet to experience a single problem. Our VW TDI and Griffin Industries’ Jeep Liberty CRD represented the biodiesel powered personal vehicles along several hybrid vehicles. Our cars along with tractors, trucks and a city bus were parked ‘quietly’ on the the “Great Lawn” as we listened a few short speeches, met several of the Tri State Clean Fuel Network stakeholders, picked up literature and ate a few cookies.
It was a beautiful morning for Congresswoman Jean Schmidt and Willie Carden (Cincinnati Parks Director) to add the ceremonial biodiesel from a Lykin’s 18 wheeler to a waiting Ault Park tractor.
Interestingly there was a very strong showing of support for biodiesel, with users interfacing with suppliers and producers. There were a couple of hybrids and a Cincinnati Metro SORTA bus that has recently announce it adoption of B30 as its fuel of choice. Of course there were a few ‘lookers-on’ and media types as well. There were several print coverage reporters and the Fox19 / Ohio News Network reporter Alana Ballard filming for TV. (For those of you with the DIVX codec on your media player desiring to download the video coverage right-click and save this 16meg AVI file.)
I’d like to personally thank Matt Jopson and his family for driving down from Xenia and joining me at this event; your support is appreciated. (some of you might know him as ‘your connection’ to B100!)
Clean Cities, part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office, builds strong, self-sustaining partnerships with industry, stakeholders, fleets, fuel suppliers, and business partners with the goal of decreasing petroleum use. Clean Cities recently reached the milestone of displacing more than 1 billion gallons of petroleum. The 88 Clean Cities coalitions helped achieve this by implementing alternative fuels and alternative fuel vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, fuel blends, heavy-truck idle reduction applications, and general fuel economy improvements to help reduce the nation’s need for imported oil.
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