Hartford Courant, CT
05-17-07
State's Flex-Fuel Policy A Sham, Critics Say
By MARK PETERS, Courant Staff Writer
Connecticut state government has 1,700 vehicles that could run on ethanol fuel
instead of gasoline.
But few do.
The biggest problem? Filling up.
There are only two fuel pumps in Connecticut - in Newington and Danbury, and
both owned by the state - that dispense U.S.-made E85 fuel, which is derived
from corn.
The fuel, a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, is not routinely
shipped to the Northeast and costs almost double the price of ordinary gasoline.
But over the past eight years, the state has nonetheless added hundreds of socalled flex-fuel vehicles to its fleet annually, even as it phases out earlier models
that ran on either natural gas or gasoline.
It has been buying the vehicles, mostly cars, to comply with federal requirements
intended to increase the use of alternative fuels and wean the country off foreign
oil.
But most of the state-owned vehicles burn only a few thousand gallons of ethanol
each month, about 1 percent of their total fuel consumption.
The practice of buying flex-fuel vehicles but failing to use the alternative fuel has
caused the legislature's Democratic leaders to criticize Republican Gov. M. Jodi
Rell. They said Rell's administration is blindly following federal rules but not
working toward the underlying goal of developing a market for new energy
sources.
By purchasing cars that run on an expensive fuel that's difficult to get, the
Democrats say, the state is missing an opportunity to use its huge fleet to
promote the use of gas-electric hybrid cars, hydrogen fuel cells or other
technologies at a time when energy prices are skyrocketing.
"It is just a lack of imagination, and a shortsighted bureaucratic approach," said
state Rep. Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden, a supporter of a bill the General
Assembly is considering that would change the state's vehicle-purchasing
practices.
But administration officials say they have been fighting the federal requirements
for several years. Revised rules recently announced by the U.S. Department of
Energy will allow states to focus more on hybrid vehicles and other technologies
to meet the federal mandate.
The governor's office also began a review of the state's fleet purchasing policy
this month.
"Analyzing our current mix of alternative fuel vehicles and investigating other
ways of meeting the federal requirements can only benefit our state," Rell said in
a statement.
But getting more U.S.-made E85 into the flex-fuel vehicles the state already owns
will be a challenge. Experts say the distribution system for E85 in the Northeast
is primitive and prices remain high. Ethanol is a common gasoline additive in the
Northeast, but it's difficult to find high-ethanol-content fuels like E85 outside the
Midwest, where most of the country's corn is grown.
"In the Northeast you can almost count up [the stations] on one hand," said Chad
Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University's Center for
Agriculture and Rural Development.
Transporting ethanol to the Northeast is difficult because its chemical makeup
precludes shipping it through existing pipelines. It's most often distributed by
truck, Hart said.
The gradual movement of the state's fleet toward alternative fuels dates from the
Energy Policy Act of 1992, when Congress began requiring states to replace fleet
vehicles with a certain percentage of flex-fuel models. The goal was to build a
market for domestically produced fuels and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign
oil, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Energy said.
Connecticut complied by buying Chevrolet cars that could run on gasoline or
natural gas. The vehicles were clean, affordable and could fill up at depots that
already existed, said Tom Yuhas, director of fleet operations for the Department
of Administrative Services, which oversees most of the vehicles used by state
employees.
But in 2002, Chevrolet stopped making cars that ran on both fuels. So the state,
which had started acquiring flex-fuel vehicles that could run on E-85 in 1999,
began switching more aggressively to flex-fuel vehicles to comply with the federal
mandate, Yuhas said. The flex-fuel vehicles don't cost more than vehicles that
run on ordinary gasoline.
State officials said the federal standards left them with few options besides flexfuel vehicles once Chevrolet stopped offering natural gas-powered vehicles, said
Donna Micklus, a spokeswoman for the Department of Administrative Services.
At the same time, federal requirements increased the percentage of alternative
fuel vehicles the state must buy. Currently, at least 75 percent of new state
vehicles purchased must be able to run on alternative fuel.
ADVERTISEMENT
Click here to find out more!
SPONSORED LINKS
"What options did we have?" asked Micklus, who pointed out that the state would
face federal fines if it didn't comply.
But critics ask why state officials didn't apply for an exemption to pursue hybrid
vehicles or other technologies. They said the Rell administration bought
hundreds of vehicles that used an alternative fuel most state employees couldn't
get without driving well out of their way.
"Have we done anything to lessen the consumption of fuel? The answer is no. I
would label it a boondoggle," said House Speaker James A. Amann, D-Milford.
Administration officials say they chose to abide by the requirements while
lobbying to change them. They said their efforts helped lead to an announcement
by the Energy Department in March that it would grant waivers allowing states to
pursue other technologies, including hybrids, to meet the fleet requirements.
"With gasoline prices at record levels, the state will push to accelerate the
transition from older, less efficient and high-emission vehicles to hybrid, lowemission vehicles," said Adam Liegeot, a spokesman for Rell.
The state has 267 hybrid vehicles in the administrative services fleet. Yuhas said
they cost about $8,000 more to buy than the flex-fuel cars, but some of the
additional cost is recouped in reduced fuel use.
As for ethanol, its use in Connecticut as more than an additive will probably
require an evolution from corn-based fuel to cellulosic ethanol derived from
switchgrass and other plants, experts said.
Lester Lave, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh,
said the United States produces about 5 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol a
year, and the goal is to triple that in coming years.
That's still just a fraction of the 140 billion gallons of gasoline the country
consumes each year. Cellulosic ethanol has the potential to reduce U.S.
consumption of foreign oil on a much larger scale. Projects are being developed
now to explore large-scale production of the alternative fuel, Lave said.
"This is not blind faith," he said. "It does not involve any new, startling technology
to do it."
Contact Mark Peters at mrpeters@courant.com.