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- from FuelsAndVehicles.com Daily Updates

As the deadline passed for federal agencies to report their alternative-fuel vehicle (AFV) acquisitions, it is becoming clear that compliance is far off for several agencies, and even some that are boasting impressive AFV acquisitions are woefully falling short of a Clinton-era executive order to reduce fossil-fuel consumption.

Following a federal court order, all federal agencies were to have announced in the Federal Register the on-line location of their AFV-fleet acquisition compliance reports by January 31, 2003. The court order was the result of a lawsuit filed by environmentalists after it became evident to them that many agencies were flouting a law passed during the previous Bush Administration requiring 75 percent of all federal agencies' yearly fleet acquisitions be AFVs by 2000. The law -- the Energy Policy Act of 1992 -- also seeks to reduce the nation's reliance on imported fossil fuels by 30 percent by 2010. At the current rate, the environmentalists maintain, that goal seems out of reach.

In the latest development, environmental advocacy group Earthjustice, which sued the government on the behalf of the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity, is in the process of investigating whether most federal agencies are complying with the compliance deadline. In a search by Inside Fuels and Vehicles, it appears that at least six agencies may not be. Searches on the Federal Register were unsuccessful at locating the announcements of the existence of the reports and calls to those agencies, when returned, were often responded by agency officials who did not even know that they were subject to the AFV requirement in EPACT. Similarly, Carole Jeandheur, the Justice Department lawyer who is representing the federal government in the lawsuit, said she did not have a list of all the agencies that have completed the reports or made them available.

The reports that could be accessed came from EPA, Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Energy (DOE), Department of Commerce (DOC), U.S. Postal Service, Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of Transportation (DOT), Department of Labor (DOL) and the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Nearly half of those agencies -- DOC, DOT, DOD and DOL -- continue to fail to meet EPACT compliance for yearly AFV acquisitions. The reports for these agencies mention that the reasons they are not coming into compliance include limited availability of AFVs, limited refueling infrastructure and, because of the specific missions of some agencies, AFVs would be inadequate to properly get the job done.

Even for the agencies that are meeting their AFV acquisition requirements, however, actually filling those vehicles with alternative fuels, as required by Clinton's executive order, continues to be a challenge. A large majority of the vehicles the agencies are using to meet compliance are capable of running on conventional gasoline as well as E85 (85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline). Because of the lack of E85 fueling stations, government officials maintain it is necessary to fuel their fleet vehicles with conventional gasoline.

Take DOJ for instance. For the past four years the agency has been a model of EPACT compliance in terms of the vehicles it buys, but the fuels it is putting into those vehicles is another matter. In 2001, DOJ consumed more than 36 million gallons of gasoline, while it only used close to 8,000 gallons of E85 -- far below 1 percent of its total fuel consumption. Similarly, while it pumped nearly 4 million gallons of diesel fuel into its vehicles, only 6,168 gallons of compressed natural gas and 1,190 gallons liquefied petroleum gas were consumed.

One of the main reasons environmentalists think the agencies are continuing to disregard the AFV-acquisition requirement and the Clinton executive order is that there is no enforcement mechanism in either laws. “The only penalty is through public scrutiny,” said Jay Tutchton, an Earthjustice attorney.

Environmentalists may cite an excerpt from a November 2000 report found on the Department of Health and Human Services' web site as evidence that federal agencies have been aware for some time that they were held to no real threat if they did not meet the AFV-acquisition requirements. It reads: “The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Fleet AFV Program Report for Fiscal Year 1999 can not present the Department's data on the number of alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) acquired in fiscal year 1999, nor its planned acquisitions and projections for FY 2000. Further, it is unknown whether HHS was in compliance with the Energy Policy Act's AFV requirements for fiscal years 1996-1999 because HHS has no information about the percentage of AFVs acquired [during those years], nor is this information capable of being obtained since AFV information was not specifically tracked during that time period,” read the report.

During the time period in question, EPACT was in effect for four years. A current HHS AFV-acquisition compliance report was unable to be obtained by Inside Fuels and Vehicles. Calls to HHS were directed to the General Services Administration, which were referred to Jeandheur, who stated she did not have knowledge if HHS completed its report by the January 31, 2003 deadline.