National Clean Cities Coordinators meet at Oak Ridge National Lab

Clean Cities Coordinators Gather at Oak Ridge National Lab for the National Clean Cities Training Workshop.

Coordinators from across the country meet August 29 through September 1, 2016 at the Oak Ridge National Lab.   The three day conference was full of opportunities to network and exchange ideas on how to further accelerate the acceptance of Alternative Fuel Vehicles in the marketplace. With close to 100 Clean Cities Coalitions in attendance there were lots of opportunities to talk  about what is going on in the world of Alternative Fuels and Advance Technology Vehicles.

One of the sessions dealt with Renewable Diesel. Renewable Diesel meets the petroleum diesel ASTM specification. This allows it to be legally used in existing diesel infrastructure and vehicles. Renewable Diesel (RD) is a drop in replacement for petroleum diesel. It is eligible for  Low Carbon fuel credits in both Oregon and California. Locally Rogue Valley Transit District has started using RD for its remaining Clean Diesel transit buses.

Smart Mobility was another topic that received a lot of coverage. Smart Mobility covers a wealth of different petroleum reduction strategies, including telecommuting, electrification of the transportation system, Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) connectivity, Autonomous Vehicles, ride share apps and lots more. This appears to be an area that will receive a lot of focus in the coming years and is just going to continue to evolve as we work to define just what this means to us moving forward.

In the world of V2V, Cadillac will be the first domestic brand with this technology in vehicles starting with the 2017 model year. Other manufactures will include V2V within the next 3 to 5 years. This technology will allow equipped vehicles to communicate data on location, speed, road conditions and other data between themselves to maintain separation on highways, accident avoidance or whether a bridge has iced over. Research shows that this will reduce accidents, congestion and potentially fuel usage.