The mission of the US Department of Energy (DOE) Clean Cities program is to advance the nation’s economic, environmental, and energy security by supporting local decisions to adopt practices that contributes to the reduction of petroleum consumption. The Greater Long Island Clean Cities Coalition is one of many nationally sanctioned (90 coalitions throughout US), which develops public/private partnerships to promote alternative fuels and vehicles, fuel blends, fuel economy, hybrid vehicles and idle reduction awareness.
The Greater Long Island Clean Cities Coalition is celebrating its 10-year anniversary from October 2006 to October 2007, what better time to look back on what we have accomplished. GLICCC is one of 90 Clean Cities Coalitions dedicated by the DOE since the program started in 1992. As a matter of fact we were the 51st coalition formed in the country.
In the ten years since our official dedication, GLICCC has grown to 159 stakeholder companies, which translates to 308 actual members. These numbers represent most of the towns in the Nassau/Suffolk Ozone non-attainment area, universities, utilities, refuse companies, private industry along with both counties.
During this period of time GLICCC has been lucky enough to work with their local MPO, NYMTC and has secured close to 10 million dollars in CMAQ funding. These funds have helped fund 94 clean fuel projects on Long Island and assisted in placing 254 clean fuel vehicles on the road, most of which are heavy duty. Class 6,7 & 8 vehicles are some of the largest polluters that are on the roads today.
While the Coalition is proud of each and every one of these 94 projects, some of the ones that have had the biggest impact on the local air quality include:
- Brookhaven National Laboratory adding 77 CNG vehicles to their fleet
- Town of Hempstead starting out with two CNG sedans 10 years ago only now to add 5 Plug-in Hybrid Refuse trucks to their always growing AFV fleet.
- Long Beach City School District replacing 20 old diesel buses with CNG School Buses, as well as a slow fill fueling station
- Nassau County starting their AFV fleet with 20 CNG Honda Civics
- LIPA working with Odyne Corporation to build a demonstration Plug-in Hybrid Electric Transit bus.
- Town of Brookhaven building both CNG light-duty fleet (18 vehicles) as well as a heavy-duty fleet (155 vehicles) using 200,000 gallons of biodiesel yearly not funded by the coalition. Their usage of CNG has increase so much that they have had to upgrade their fueling station twice.
- Arrow Security adding 20 CNG vehicles to their patrol fleet.
This year our annual call for projects, Round 7.2, had 15 projects submitted. The request total over twice the amount we had allotted. This was a first. We also have exciting projects that are pending, some of which will add E85 fueling stations to the local landscape.
As more of the pending projects are completed we will keep updating our stakeholders about the added vehicles and the reduction in emissions and use of imported petroleum products.