In 2009, U.S. Department of Energy's Clean Cities was awarded 300 million dollars in the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act to fund 25 cost-share projects around the country. Wisconsin State Energy Office (SEO) had the privilege of being awarded with 15 million dollars. SEO decided to partner with Wisconsin Clean Cities (WCC) and 53 businesses, companies, industries, or agencies around the state. All these actors volunteered to collaborate and join the program to shifting towards better means of transportation.
The partners had the option to choose what kind of alternative fuels they wanted to expand on. They chose from bio-diesel, compressed natural gas, electric, ethanol to hybrid heavy duty class 8 trucks, hybrid & plug-in hybrid electric school buses or electric bucket trucks. The increased alternative technologies were manufactured in the U.S. and some of the manufacturers were located in Wisconsin. Some of them included: Cummins, ANGI Energy Systems, Odyne Systems, IMPCO, and General Motors.
The partners included in this program were a wide range of actors. Milwaukee County, Marquette University, Go Riteaway Bus, Transit Express, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Milwaukee Metro Sewerage District (MMSD), and WE Energies just to name a few of them. WE energies was awarded with 1,262,291 dollars in funding; they bought 3 light-duty CNGs, and 3 transportation companies, allowing for them to purchase alternative fueling, too. MMSD was awarded with 95,371 dollars and purchased 9 light-duty CNG vehicles, 1 medium-duty, 6 light HEV and 6 HEVS. One more example is Milwaukee County purchased 4 PHEV utility trucks which turned out to be a huge cost saver.
As a whole, MCTP turned about to be a great success. It displaced over 1.6 million gallons of petroleum by the year 2013.This program was featured at 163 events in WI throughout the 4 years. It allowed for 19 private alternative fuel stations and 3 public access alternative stations to be installed across the state ,and it deployed a total of 377 alternative vehicles on the road. It had small limitations throughout the initiative from a supply and demand problem to vehicle reliability and performance issues including some vehicles that were deemed inefficient in our cold winters.
There was a consistency in the roles of SEO and MCC. SEO had important managing duties ,and WCC handled the outreach efforts. I think SEO, MCC, and the various partners worked collaboratively to significantly implement more alternative vehicles and have less impact on Wisconsin's air quality and environment. This program has had a great impact on all the actors and they all continue to be a part of programs and initiatives to improve air quality. One project MCC is currently working on is a Forwarding Wisconsin's Fuel Choice.
Going on a tangent, on a current agenda, another program on reducing emissions I found that I wanted to mention was the California Environmental Protection Agency. They have the California Air Resources Board (ARB) have a significant vehicle emissions research program that leads multi-agency research programs to characterizing vehicle emissions. Their goals are to understand the real-world effects of the current regulations and to inform the development of new regulations. Part of their research includes remote sensing devices that are capable of measuring real-world vehicle emissions and their impact on the air quality. From my eyes, this research program is working on some really neat stuff, hopefully in the near future, it will have success in improving emissions testing, emissions regulations and reducing amount being released into the atmosphere. And, too, I hope more programs and initiatives occur in Wisconsin to improve our emissions tests and regulations to overall keep working on and implementing programs to better the air quality.
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Hey Samantha,
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I didn't even know that Wisconsin had any sort of programs like this. It's nice to hear that our state is trying to clean up the air that we live and breath in by starting up this transportation program. By testing emissions, we are monitoring the amount of pollutants going into the atmosphere. Wisconsin is learning by these programs that they can make adjustments once they see results from the programs. This makes the producers of cars smarter which makes the people making them smarter. Overall, it makes our state better off in the long run when it comes to air quality.