Despite Congressional foot-dragging, Obama forces Feds to cut gas use 21%

One of the biggest disappointments of the first half of President Obama’s term was Congressional Democrats’ near total failure to do anything about energy, climate change, or sustainability.

The good news: There are some things a President can do on his own, and Obama has done some of them.

Writing at Cleantechnica, Susan Kraemer notes:

… Although Obama cannot pass the climate legislation he might want, an Executive Order governing federal agencies is within his jurisdiction, and in 2009, he lost no time in passing Executive Order mandating a 30% reduction in greenhouse gases emitted by the government, the nation’s single largest energy user. The effects are starting to show up, on military bases and other government operations.

Today’s result comes from the General Services Administration, which buys cars for all the federal agencies to lease. Executive Order 13154 mandates, among other details, a 30% reduction in gasoline use by 2020. The 35,000 vehicles the GSA has bought this year use 21% less gasoline than last year. And last year, according to the GSA report, the agency averaged 22.5% of the gasoline use of 2008, the baseline year.

They average 23.4 miles per gallon, up from 19.1 miles per gallon, which may not sound very efficient, but the military is a big buyer of vehicles, as is the post office. Hummers and delivery vans are not known for efficiency.

Trade journal Government-Fleet.com reported last October that the GSA was planning on adding 100 all-electric vehicles to augment the rapidly-greening fleet:

Of the 650,000 vehicles GSA operates, less than 2 percent are electric vehicles or electric hybrids. More than 11,000 vehicles are hybrids, including about 5,600 bought earlier this year.

According to GSA’s strategic sustainability performance plan, released in September, GSA’s motor vehicle fleet includes nearly 89,000 alternative-fuel vehicles. GSA plans to increase the alt-fuel fleet to approximately 98,000 vehicles. By FY 2015, GSA plans on increasing its consumption of alternative fuels by 159 percent over the FY 2005 baseline by increasing alt-fuel usage by 10 percent per year through FY 2015.

How are they doing? “22,000 of the 35,000 vehicles ordered by GSA were advanced technology vehicles (i.e., electric vehicles, hybrids, flex-fuel capable automobiles and plug-in hybrids)”. says Green.autoblog.com. And by 2015 the plan is to purchase only alternative fuel vehicles.

On the other hand, it probably wasn’t hard to improve efficiency over the bloated Bush years. Jalopnik pointed out that in 2008 the Bush administration spent $3.4 billion on vehicles, with almost no controls and very little interest in fuel economy.