Government sticks to gas instead of alternate fuels

Despite the failure of alternative fuels to become as commonplace as envisioned by Congress eight years ago, federal agencies have met goals for purchasing alternative fuel vehicles, according to a new General Accounting Office study. But for several reasons, the vehicles are often filled with ordinary gas, GAO found.

The GAO study, "Energy Policy Act of 1992: Limited Progress in Acquiring Alternative Fuel Vehicles and Reaching Fuel Goals" (RCED-00-59) details the government's difficulty in meeting the act's goal of encouraging the development and introduction of alternative fuels into the marketplace.

Recognizing the long-term problems if the country relies too heavily on petroleum fuels, Congress in 1992 set a goal of replacing 10 percent of the consumption of such fuels with alternatives, such as natural gas, ethanol, methanol and electricity. To help spur alternative fuel use, Congress mandated that by 1999, 75 percent of the vehicles federal agencies buy each year be powered by alternative fuels.

While the country has only replaced 3.6 percent of its gasoline use with other fuels, federal agencies met the Energy Policy Act's vehicle purchasing goals in 1998 and will fall only slightly short in 1999 and 2000. In 1998, for example, agencies bought 14,000 alternative fuel vehicles.

The Postal Service was responsible for 10,000 of those purchases. But other agencies have had more difficulty meeting the goals.

"The higher cost of these vehicles makes it difficult for an agency's fleet managers to satisfy the act's mandates within their limited budgets," GAO reported. "Several fleet managers told us their primary responsibility is to acquire the number of vehicles that will satisfy their agency's mission. Buying alternative fuel vehicles has a lower priority. Thus, when budget constraints make it impossible to satisfy both the agency's mission and the act's mandates to acquire alternative fuel vehicles, fleet managers obtain conventional vehicles."

GAO also found that because alternative fuels are not widely available in all areas of the country, agencies have resorted to putting ordinary gas in the alternative fuel vehicles they purchase.

"In some cases, fleet managers have had to run [alternative fuel] vehicles on gasoline because there were no refueling stations for alternative fuels in the area," GAO said. "In other cases, fleet managers used gasoline because they had concerns about the safety or reliability of alternative fuels or did not realize a vehicle could run on an alternative fuel."