Clean Energy Biofuels Celebrates the Planet’s Longest Biofuels Corridor – The I-75 Green Corridor Project
Contact: Jennifer Rennicks, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, 865-235-1448, [email protected]
Atlanta, Ga. – This week, June 9-13, 2014, marks the celebration of the I-75 Green Corridor Project. Launched five years ago, this ambitious, multi-state project started in Knoxville, Tennessee through a grant funded by the Department of Energy Clean Cities Program with the goal of allowing any American driver to traverse any portion of I-75 and make the entire trip running on either E85 or B20 biofuel. The project has significantly increased the availability of both biofuels along the entire length of Interstate 75, which runs from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan at the Canadian border to Miami, Florida. Biofuels stations were added with the intent of filling in gaps in biofuels access along the corridor and adding more stations in metropolitan areas, such that a station of each type could be found no greater than 200 miles apart along the entire length of the interstate.
This week we celebrate the nearing completion of the project, and many partners, including Clean Energy Biofuels, from all six states and beyond are helping spread the word about the project through web presence, social media discussions and picture sharing, press releases, and videos. Check us out on Twitter @CleanEnergyBio and @cleanenergyorg and Facebook at www.facebook.com/CleanEnergyBiofuels.
SACE’s Clean Energy Biofuels (CEB) retail fueling station in Atlanta, GA is one of the 30+ participants collaborating in the project. As summer travel (and the weather) heat up, we invite diesel vehicle travelers to come fuel up with us. We are the only state-of-the art, public, retail biodiesel fueling station in metro Atlanta. We offer an unique product –made from recovered waste oil from local restaurants, produced locally using 100% renewable, solar power and meets the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International standards – providing substantial environmental benefits.
“Celebrating our two year anniversary this month as well, we are pleased to have a strong loyal customer base including some regulars from the film and music industry as well as many travelers through the corridor, local residents and fleets,” said Anne Blair, clean fuels director for Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “We are very pleased to offer biodiesel to the local community and to those who want to reduce their environmental impact – our station alone has prevented hundreds of barrels of oil from being used.”
Since the project’s inception, over 3.3 million gallons of biofuels have been sold from stations associated with the project, and 2.6 million gallons of petroleum have been displaced. The project has now displaced over 61,000 barrels of oil, or alternatively, the U.S. has now produced over 61,000 additional barrels of renewable, American fuel! This also equates to:
- 25,222 tons of CO2 emissions avoided,
- Eliminating the annual CO2 emissions from 4,817 U.S. passenger vehicles,
- The amount of carbon sequestered by 18,946 acres of U.S. forests in one year,
- Switching 604,604 incandescent lamps to compact fluorescent lamps, or
- The energy used by 2,109 homes for one year.
Thus far along the entire corridor, E85 has been installed at 26 fuel stations, and B20 has been installed at 9, including SACE’s Clean Energy Biofuels (CEB) retail fueling station here in Atlanta, GA. These numbers are expected to increase in the coming months with another 6 stations coming online this summer. The project is now in its final year and has resulted in the 1,786-mile interstate becoming the planet’s longest biofuels corridor.
The significance of this project lies not only in the extensive length of American interstates involved or the six-state, multi-partner coordination that has taken place. There is also significance in the fact that American drivers now have a greater number of fueling options, as well as alt-fuel vehicles.
Conveniently, almost all diesel vehicles can run on biodiesel with few if any modifications to the vehicle. Even in the B20 marketplace, there are a growing number of B20-capable vehicles, from passenger to larger utility vehicles. With exciting developments like the B20 approved Chevrolet Cruze, more consumer-oriented, biodiesel-capable vehicles will surely come to market. More and more OEMs are responding to consumer demand for diesel vehicles, and some of those vehicles are approved for B20 use, such as the diesel 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee and 2014 Ram 1500 EcoDiesel. Clearly, now is the time to put these fuels into action, and this endeavor is helping to diversify America’s fuel portfolio one gallon at a time.
In the coming months, more data will roll out to show the significant impact of this project. We invite you to get more information and updates about the I-75 Green Corridor Project by visiting www.CleanFuelsCorridor.com.
Look for the I-75 Green Corridor Project on social media, including
- Twitter: @CleanEnergyBio, @cleanenergyorg, @ETCleanFuels and the hashtags #I75, #Green
- Facebook: CleanEnergyBiofuels, ETCleanFuels
- Flickr: Many photos from the project can be found here! http://bit.ly/i75-green-corridor-pics
- Instagram: ETCleanFuels
- More ideas here: http://cleanfuelscorridor.com/social.html
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