US sued for breaking own law on alternative fuels

By Danielle Knight

Washington, DC, Jan. 4 (IPS)— Environmentalists have taken the US government to court on charges it has run afoul of a 1992 law requiring its agencies to buy vehicles that run on fuels other than petroleum.

The lawsuit, filed in US District Court in the state of California by the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Bluewater Network, accuses 18 federal agencies of failing to uphold provisions of the Energy Policy Act.

Signed into law by former President George H. W. Bush, the law was passed in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War as a way to reduce the country’s dependence on petroleum and boost the use of domestic replacement fuels.

"It’s outrageous that even when the federal government is legally required to reduce oil dependence, they can’t do it,’’ said Russell Long, executive director at Bluewater.

Federal officials said they could not comment since the matter involved pending litigation. However, a Department of Energy official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said plaintiffs were wrong to accuse the department of failing to enforce the 1992 law. “We set forth guidelines,’’ the officialsaid. “We don’t have the authority to enforce the Act.’’

The law requires the energy department to develop and oversee a plan to replace 10 percent of US petrol consumption with alternative fuels, such as methanol and ethanol, by the year 2000 and 30 percent by 2010.

Under the Act, all federal agencies with large vehicle fleets were required to purchase 25 percent, 33 percent, 50 percent, and 75 percent alternative fuel vehicles during the fiscal years 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999, respectively. For the year 2000 and beyond, the requirement remains at 75 percent.

The Act, the elder President Bush said in 1992, ‘’will place America upon a clear path toward a more prosperous, energy efficient, environmentally sensitive, and economically secure future.’’

The lawsuit, however, charges that the government has strayed far from this path. Most federal agencies, it says, including the departments of justice, transportation, commerce, defense, agriculture, and the interior, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, have not come close to meeting the minimum percentage requirements for alternative fuel vehicles.

The commerce department, for example, purchased only 11 percent alternative fuel vehicles in 1998, 16 percent in 1999, and 17 percent in 2000, the lawsuit asserts. The Environmental Protection Agency purchased only 35 percent alternative fuel vehicles in 1998 - a fraction of the Act’s 50 percent requirement, it says.

The energy department maintains a website that lists the agency’s recommended guidelines on how other agencies can comply with the Act. But Jay Tutchton, an attorney with Earthjustice, the environmental law firm representing plaintiffs, said this is not enough.

The lawsuit argues that federal agencies failed to publicly submit compliance reports to Congress and publish them in the Federal Register and post them on the Internet, as required by the Act.

Tutchton said the Department of Energy’s website is incomplete and only lists a single 1999 compliance report for the agency.

The plaintiffs obtained information on the agencies’ performances by approaching each one directly and through the Freedom of Information Act, he added.

The lawsuit further states that the Department of Energy failed to consider extending the alternative fuel provisions to local government and private fleet operators if the federal government did not meet the Act’s goal of reducing petrol use. This also was a requirement of the Act. The agency, according to the plaintiffs, missed the deadlines to develop such rules.

The lawsuit contends that some agencies bought vehicles that could run on either petrol or ethanol, but then ran them on petrol. This, argues the suit, violates both the Act’s goal of cutting the use of petroleum and a 2000 executive order signed by former President Bill Clinton.

Plaintiffs said they chose to file suit in California partly because the state has more than twice as many federal light duty vehicles subject to the Act than any other state - 37,678 in 1998, compared with 3,638 in Washington, DC.

Environmentalists said the alternative fuel provisions of the Energy Policy Act contrast strongly with the current administration’s energy strategy. President George W. Bush’s plan includes increased oil exploration and drilling, including in pristine areas, and reduced environmental regulations for the energy industry as a whole.

“Why is the Bush administration pushing for more oil burning when federal law requires it to take the lead in a healthier direction?’’ asked Peter Galvin of the Center for Biological Diversity.

A version of the administration’s energy strategy was approved by the House of Representatives in August but must still pass in the Senate.

Debate over energy policy has intensified since the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks. Bush has called on the Senate to approve his energy strategy in order to increase domestic supplies of oil.

Tutchton said that if the administration truly wants to decrease dependence on fossil fuels, it should be doing all it can to comply with the Energy Policy Act and move toward alternative fuels and renewable technologies.

“It is truly startling to find such wholesale non-compliance with a federal statute whose purpose could not be more timely as we embark on a new round of debates over the current President Bush’s proposed national energy policy,’’ he said.