FuelPub.com |

This October marks two significant events in the alternative fuel world: The fourth bi-annual Odyssey Day alternative fuel education event will be observed across the country, and the Clean Cities Coalition will celebrate its 15th anniversary. Under the circumstances, wouldn’t it make sense to observe both milestones at the same time?

That’s exactly what the folks behind Odyssey Day and Clean Cities thought, so they’re joining forces to bring an amazing lineup of training, education and awareness events to cities throughout the United States this October.

Officially, Odyssey Day is Friday, October 3rd, but the celebration will begin earlier in the week, with a special Clean Cities anniversary event (TBA). (Participants have the option of scheduling Odyssey Day events a day or two ahead of or after the official date, depending on their local needs, but for all intents and purposes, the 3rd is the big day.)

“October 3rd will make the fourth time we have conducted National AFV Day Odyssey and every time it is bigger and better, but there also is more of a need,” says Al Ebron, executive director of the Morgantown, WV-based National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium (NAFTC), which runs Odyssey Day. “With gas prices hovering at $4.00 a gallon, the Odyssey message becomes even more important. Our nation’s dependence on oil is taking a toll on all of us and we can no longer sit back and think that it is going to get better. We must take a stand and take control of the situation. Educating the public, fleet managers and others on alternative transportation technologies is our part of the solution, but it will take all of us to make a difference.”

Timing is Everything

But will it make a difference? Clean Cities has been around for 15 years, Odyssey Day for six, and they still have an awful lot of work cut out for them. To really change things, they need to get the message out to people who have never heard it before, but the people who come to Odyssey Day and Clean Cities events are often the people who are already aware of the problems and the solutions. This year has to be the year that all of that changes.

“Even though the technologies have come a long way, there are still people who remember they rode in a propane pickup twenty years ago and it didn’t have any power and it smelled bad...” says Dennis A. Smith, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Clean Cities Program. “So, I think they haven’t even given some of these options a thought! But now, because of the price of fuel, they’re not going to casually dismiss it. They’re going to say, ‘Hey, maybe I do need to look at this. This is serious! So many people are talking about it now, and I see that the city buses are running on natural gas, and there’s a new ethanol filling station in the neighborhood, it sounds like it’s for real this time.’

“So, I think timing is everything,” says Smith, “and we’re hoping it’s right this year.”

Inquiries Are Up

“The price of fuel has driven everything,” Smith says. “The policy makers, the elected officials, we’ve had an unprecedented volume of inquiries from Congress and from Capitol Hill in general, as far as, ‘What are the options? What have we been doing? What’s the state of the technology?’”