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I'm Don Francis. I am the coordinator here in Atlanta for the Department of Energy Clean
Cities program. Clean Cities-Atlanta Petroleum Reduction program is a Department of Energy-funded
program to increase the use of alternative fuels and alternative fuel vehicles here in
the Metro Atlanta area. Some of the partners include DeKalb County, City of Atlanta, Hartsfield-Jackson
Airport, UPS, and Coca-Cola Refreshments, as well as many others. A federally funded
program from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, providing $14.9 million of federal funding
with $24.5 million local match to increase the use of alternative fuels and alternative fuel
vehicles here in Metro Atlanta.
Why is this important? This program is providing not only clean alternative fuels, which is
having an impact on our air quality, but also providing jobs, more than 200 alternative fuel
vehicles being used by fleets all over.
The keystone project here in Atlanta has been the DeKalb County Sanitation Department renewable
natural gas project. Here at Seminole Road Landfill, we built a renewable natural gas
facility that is processing methane coming off the landfill, converting it into automotive
grade natural gas, and is being used by the sanitation department fleet. When this project
is done, not only will we be making our own natural gas here locally, but we'll have reduced
the use of diesel by DeKalb County by 1.5 million gallons.
We've tripled the number of natural gas refueling stations here in the metro area. Buford Highway,
built by American Fueling Systems, it is now the largest, publically accessible natural
gas refueling station in the state of Georgia. With PS Energy Group, we added natural gas
to three of their existing locations, as well as upgraded a fourth location in downtown
Atlanta.
This facility here in DeKalb has become a flagship for this technology around the world
and has been visited by more than 18 different countries. This program has funded 40 vehicles
here for DeKalb County Sanitation Department, 36 shuttle buses that are used at Hartsfield-Jackson
Airport, 30 vehicles for Coca-Cola Refreshments, as well as 70 vehicles for UPS.
There are nearly 112,000 vehicles in the United States running on natural gas today. This
is part of a worldwide population of nearly 15 million vehicles. The types of vehicles
that can use natural gas range from the heaviest-duty trucks you see on the road today, all the
way down to passenger cars, pickups, and vans. Part of the advantages of using natural gas,
it's a lot less expensive than gasoline or diesel. It is cleaner than gasoline or diesel,
and it's domestically produced here in the United States and not imported from overseas.