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Ocean State Clean Cities is a partnership between a nonprofit organization and the University
of Rhode Island Outreach Center. It's been a wonderful collaboration. We are a government
and private partnership. Stakeholders can be state agencies like the Office of Energy
Resources or the Department of Environmental Management, and they can also be private stakeholders
like the two we have here today.
The big thing for us at Newport Biodiesel is that Ocean State Clean Cities gives us
the forum where we can all discuss about what's going on with different types of alternative
energy. And in Rhode Island, I really feel that this is the place where that happens.
I see it as just such a great informal and unexclusive forum for everybody, in the private
sector, the public sector, fleets, municipalities—just anyone—to come together to learn about these
technologies.
I have been so grateful to have this stakeholder group, so when I'm dealing with transportation
issues, which is a really huge part of our energy system—about a third of our expenditures,
about a third of our greenhouse gas emissions, and about a third of our energy use is related
to transportation.
When you talk about alternative fuels, there are six recognized alternative fuels. There's
ethanol, biodiesel, compressed natural gas, propane, hydrogen, and electricity, as in
electric vehicles. We also promote idle reduction and fuel economy measures. I'm really proud
to say that our stakeholders displaced over 500,000 gallons in 2012.
Our first year, we were making 300,000 gallons of biodiesel. Now, we're well over a million
and a half gallons a year, so we're continuing to have a bigger impact. I think that's the
thing that's important here is that you have to look at the big picture to try and get
more renewable energy out into the environment.
So we're gonna need biodiesel. We're gonna need electrification. We're gonna need compressed
natural gas. It's gonna take a lot of different approaches to wean us from our dependence
on petroleum.
That's why I really love the Clean Cities so much is that they're fuel neutral. They're
technology neutral. We're all kind of big proponents of the right tool for the job.
It's really nice to know that there are some positive steps we can all take, and I think
that resonates with everybody.