Fleets encouraged to use alternative fuels
When you think of the Indianapolis circuit your focus may be on the high-speed racing, but for executives meeting at the motor speedway venue, the emphasis was on alternative fuels.
Members of the trucking and transit industries met with Indiana bio-energy representatives as interest in alternative fuels appeared to be waning due to rising costs. However, the message from the Central Indiana Clean Cities Alliance (CICCA) was that the initiative should remain strong.
Kellie Walsh, executive director of CICCA, said: “We’ve invited 40 key companies such as transit agencies, trucking companies and fleets to introduce them to CICCA, educate them and let them know how we can help them and their customers implement alternative fuels.”
The Indiana Motor Speedway has been using a 96 per cent ethanol blend for more than two years in its race cars. Walsh believes that bio-fuels are still a great option – and that the rising cost of conventional diesel means that the gap in pricing is making bio-blends all the more attractive.
However, for those who still feel priced out of the biofuels market, there is still an alternative – natural gas.
“Fleets can run on compressed natural gas; the diesel gallon equivalent price is about $1.70,” Walsh said.
See also:
- Could natural gas be the future for fleets?
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Recently, Jacques Diouf, who heads the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, and other world leaders released a report asking leaders to rethink biofuel policy and called its economic, environmental and energy benefits “at best modest and sometimes even negative.”
The need for more effective alternatives has Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) growing in popularity. Many cities are beginning to convert their existing fleets to accept CNG.
UPS leads the pack by operating the transportation industry’s largest private fleet of alternative-fuel vehicles. UPS has been using CNG for more than 70 years and earlier this year, they announced the deployment of more CNG trucks because Natural Gas is the cost-effective, cleanest-burning, and readily available solution for fleets and passenger vehicles alike.
