ALAMEDA, Calif. – Although Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has sunk more than $17 million into a state fleet of cars and trucks designed to be environmentally friendly over the past two years, the 1,138 “flex-fuel” vehicles have not used one gallon of ethanol – the fuel that was supposed to be better for the environment, reports the Alameda Times-Star.
The state’s flex-fuel vehicles have traveled a collective 10 million miles and burned more than 413,202 gallons of gasoline. The problem is that the vehicles have no access to ethanol pumping stations – none were available when the vehicles were purchased and none are scheduled to open until December 2009. This slow introduction does not surprise NACS and suggests that policymakers need to be diligent in assessing the impact of such programs.
“There are many challenges facing retailers who might want to install E-85 dispensers,” NACS Vice President of Government Relations John Eichberger told NACS Daily. “Chief among these are the cost of equipment conversions, the relatively low level of consumer demand, the price relationship to gasoline and the lack of any dispensers certified to sell the product. Such challenges must be acknowledged by government policy makers before implementing new programs.”
And the flex-fuel vehicles are actually chugging out more smog and greenhouse gases than many vehicles in the state’s old fleet – as much as 2,000 extra tons annually. As a result, energy experts question whether the administration’s quest to “look green” has come at the expense of real environmental progress, reports the newspaper.
The vehicles are California’s fifth attempt in two decades to shift the vehicles its employees use to cleaner fuel. The failed moves have cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. “This is about California politicians wanting to be leaders in alternative energy. They just jump on whatever is sexy. Right now, it’s ethanol,” said Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute in Berkeley, which is working with the administration to reduce greenhouse gases, to the Alameda Times-Star. “However, ethanol, particularly from corn, is not a likely fuel source for California.”
Produced largely from corn grown in the Midwest, ethanol is transported to California on tankers or diesel-powered trains. The newspaper writes that this process alone nearly cancels the fuel's clean-air benefits in California.
“There are a lot of these big, bravado moments. They put out an executive order, or pass a law, but they don’t follow through with the commitment,” said S. David Freeman, former energy adviser to President Jimmy Carter, to the newspaper. “The journey to energy independence requires real, substantive change.”