From our first designation as a Clean Cities Coalition on October 13, 2004, we have been under the non-profit status of Trust for The Future. Trust for The Future is a fine incubation organization for organizations looking to obtain their own exempt 501(c)3 status from the Internal Revenue Service.

Our Advisory Board requested that we work toward obtaining our own non-profit status with the IRS and become a “stand-alone” coalition.

We are happy to report we have completed that goal and are now exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)3! We received notice of our Exempt Status on September 16, 2011 with an effective date of exemption of April 6, 2011.

This bit of news doesn’t change anything for you or your company when it comes to your contributions to Middle Tennessee Clean Fuels. This is just a milestone that needed to be reached for the growth of our Coalition. Your contributions have always been tax exempt and will continue to be tax exempt.

We are very excited about this designation as a tax exempt organization and wanted to share the great news.

Pat Riley, general manager of the Gibson County Utility District, makes preliminary remarks before introducing Scott Dahlstrom (right) of the Jackson Energy Authority at the Rotary Club Thursday. The two are members of a coalition pushing the use of compressed natural gas as an alternative to gasoline and diesel fuels in vehicles, especially in company and governmental fleet vehicles.

By BILL McCUTCHEON

P-I Staff Writer

Published: Friday, August 19, 2011 11:38 AM CDT

“The United States represents only five percent of the world’s population but consumes twenty-five percent of the world’s oil­ — more than eighty percent of which is imported,” Scott Dahlstrom of the Jackson Energy Authority told members of the Rotary Club Thursday.

“On the other hand,” he said, “some ninety-eight percent of the natural gas we consume is from domestic supply.”

Dahlstrom was introduced by Pat Riley, general manager of the Gibson County Utility District, who briefly talked about the building boom in Dubai — a boom which has resulted in up to 25 percent of all the world’s building cranes being used there. “And, in this country, where temperatures regularly are one hundred and ten degrees or higher,” Riley said, “they have built dozens of luxurious high rise buildings as well as an extravagant mall which includes, of all things, ski slopes complete with chair lifts.”

Riley said his personal goal would be to shut that ski lift down.

“After all, it’s our money that was used to build everything there, yes, money that we paid them for their oil.”

He was just one of several members of a coalition of natural gas districts and companies that were special guests for the meeting, including Tae Eaton, manager of the Paris-Henry County Natural Gas Utility District.

The group is pushing the benefits of using compressed natural gas in commercial and personal vehicles.

“Natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel than traditional fuels,” Dahlstrom said. “CNG is simply natural gas that has been compressed to between thirty-six hundred to five thousand psi so it has the density to perform as a fuel in vehicles.

“There are political, economic and environmental benefits to CNG,” he said. “Politically, it creates American jobs, as more than ninety percent of our natural gas is produced in North America; it also reduces our dependency on foreign oil.” Cost-wise, CNG would help local, state and federal governments better control their spending by lowering fuel costs.

One of the major aims of the push for CNG is for use in fleet vehicles, such as those used by governmental departments.

Economically, the benefits include both a supply infrastructure as well as vehicle technology that already exist.

“Fuel prices are less than half that of gasoline and diesel,” he said, “and the lifecycle costs for natural gas vehicles are lower, too — and, this is very important, CNG does not depend on federal subsidies.”

Dahlstrom also emphasized that natural gas is the cleanest burning of all fossil fuels thus improving public health and the environment.

“Natural gas vehicles produce less hydrocarbon exhaust emissions compared to gasoline-fueled engines,” he said, “and they also emit seventy percent less carbon monoxide, eighty-seven percent less non-methane organic gas, eighty-seven percent less nitrogen oxide and twenty percent less carbon dioxide.”

Another important benefit is its safety.

“CNG is lighter than air so in case of leaks, it will dissipate into the air instead of forming pools in the ground that are dangerous fire hazards or a threat to ground water.”

Two additional benefits he brought out were that heavy duty natural gas vehicles are quieter, operating at 80-90 percent lower decibel levels than comparable diesels — and they reduce greenhouse gas emissions more than 20 percent.

“There are challenges, however,” Dahlstrom said, “including a current lack of convenient fuel station locations along with training a sufficient number of people to maintain the vehicles.”

The program was arranged by Rotarian Harold Bass.

Written by
Andy Humbles

2:38 AM, May. 24, 2011|

Ethanol is a part of the country’s economic and environmental future, the Obama administration believes, and Tennessee is playing a key role in its development.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was in Nashville on Monday, speaking at a Thorntons gas station in West Nashville on the advantages of ethanol and the federal government’s initiative of installing 10,000 flexible-fuel pumps in the next five years.

Most retail gasoline stations already sell gasoline blends containing 10 percent ethanol. Flexible-fuel pumps would allow a mixture of up to 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, known as E-85.

“Greater supply and accessibility will mean greater acceptance,” Vilsack said at the Thorntons station, which has two of the approximately 20 flexible-fuel pumps
available in Middle Tennessee.

In 2007, the state legislature provided $70 million to the University of Tennessee for research and development of cellulosic ethanol — ethanol made without food grain crops. Most ethanol now is made from corn.

About $40 million has gone to a demonstration-scale bio-refinery in Vonore, Tenn., that opened in 2010.

In 2008, UT began the development of switchgrass as an energy crop in Tennessee.

“We have over 5,000 acres of switchgrass production on 61 different farms,” said Sam Jackson, research assistant professor with the University of Tennessee. “Switchgrass is one of the favored feed stocks because of the high volume that can be created … per acre.”

The bio-refinery in Vonore is the only facility of its scale that converts switchgrass into ethanol, Jackson said. The facility began producing ethanol with cornstalks and is in the process of converting to switchgrass as its primary feedstock, Jackson said.

Gov. Bill Haslam supports the research as well, Haslam spokesman David Smith said.

Woody materials such as sawdust and wood chips and animal waste are among several other ethanol producers being researched. Switchgrass would be a source that grows well in this region, Jackson said.

If Americans embrace a higher-ethanol-content fuel, it can help the country “wean ourselves off a reliance on foreign oil,” Vilsack said Monday.

There are about 2,300 stations in the U.S. where people can get E-85 fuel, according to Atha Comiskey, coordinator of Clean Cities of Middle Tennessee.

Reduces emissions

“It’s cleaner; E-85 reduces carbon monoxide emissions,’’ Comiskey said.

Increased ethanol production and use in the U.S. will increase jobs, Velsack and Comiskey said Monday.

Detractors claim ethanol reduces miles per gallon, but Comiskey believes that’s minimal.

Price and accessibility are what Thornton’s customer Rebecca Cowan, 26, of Nashville believes will determine whether E-85 and other ethanol blends will catch on.

“I’m probably not going to drive somewhere” to find it, she said. “And will I have to buy a new car?”

“I look at the price and if it would burn in my car,” Otis Greene, 55, of Nashville said. The Thorntons station’s two E-85 pumps sold fuel on Monday for $3.29 a gallon, compared with $3.63 for regular-grade unleaded gas with10 percent ethanol.

“I’d like to know more about it,” Greene said.