Before I start today’s post about the City’s first hybrid vehicle, I want thank my guest bloggers from last week: Brenda Uting, Luke Fischer, Andrew Sullivan, Lorene McWaters, and Steve Sinell. They did a wonderful job. Thank you!
The City’s 20-40-15 energy conservation program has two primary components: increasing the energy efficiency of our buildings and increasing the overall energy efficiency of our vehicle fleet. The ‘20′ in 20-40-15 refers to our goal of increasing the energy efficiency of our buildings by 20%. The ‘40′ refers to our our goal of increasing the energy efficiency of our vehicle fleet by 40%. And the ‘15′ is a shorthand reminder that we want to accomplish both of these goals by 2015.
We’ve take a couple of important steps toward meeting the vehicle efficiency goal this summer. The first move was our decision to begin the change over in our police patrol vehicle fleet to the new Dodge Charger. After a year of testing and comparing, our officers tell us that they like the Charger. They tell us that it’s roomier and has better handling than the Ford Crown Victoria, which has been the standard in police fleets for over a decade. I like the Charger too, but not just because it looks sharp. It also has a feature that allows the vehicle to idle at 4 cylinders instead of all 8. This decreases fuel consumption; increase energy efficiency; and does it all with no trade-off in vehicle performance. We ordered six of them this summer, and there’s more to come too.
This is Outside Utilities Supervisor John Carlon with his new work vehicle – a Ford Escape Hybrid. The City purchased the vehicle earlier this spring. It is our first hybrid vehicle. John’s job involves supervising lots of projects simultaneously all over town. His vehicle must be able to carry tools and supplies. His driving involves stopping, starting, stopping, starting, etc. Lots of short trips. Before the hybrid, John drove a conventional medium duty pickup truck that averaged 12 mpg. The Escape Hybrid, after 2,000 miles, is averaging 29 mpg. An increase in fuel efficiency of over 140%. A few more of these and we’ll meet our 40% goal sooner than we planned.
Increasing the energy efficiency of the City’s buildings and vehicles is an important goal for our city. I hope we can also decrease our energy overall costs, but I doubt that we will be able to do that. Unit prices of energy will continue to rise as we continue to decrease our consumption of energy. But if we can decrease our energy consumption, we can at least hold our costs steady as prices for energy increase. And, we can be a better steward of our natural resources in the process.
