John Everton  of H2 Engine Systems and the TARTA test vehicle.

Think that the high price of gasoline has YOU worried? Think about the headaches you'd have if you ran a fleet of vehicles. Say 2000 of them. That's the number that Ken Neidert, Toledo's Commissioner of Fleet and Facility operations has to worry about.

In the last two months of 2007 he says he'll probably go $500,000 over his 3.1 million a year budget for fuel. I asked what would happen if prices continue to spiral upward

"It's disastrous," said Commissioner Neidert, "because basically what we'll do is ask the city to shut down the fleet. We just sent a memo out to the city asking to stop all non-essential vehicles, and adhere to the no libeling policy. Police seem to think their cars need to run at the scene of an accident to make their LED lights run. Everyone thinks as diesel engine needs to run, that they have to warm it up for an hour or 30 minutes before running, and that is just not the case. So it's re-education and making the directors responsible. So far, that has fallen on deaf ears because they've never been pushed to that point. So a re-education program is going to be a major thing. "

But he's doing more than re-education. Toledo's bus system, TARTA, has partnered with the University of Toledo and a private company H2 Engine Systems in a with a $1.5 million grant made possible by Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur to investigate the impact of using a mixture of biodiesel and petroleum-based diesel fuels.

The study is being conducted by the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Toledo. According to Mark Vonderembse, the University of Toledo's principal investigator on the Bio Diesel project and a professor in the Department of Information Technology Management, their research shows that freight and passenger transportation will rise anywhere from 40-80% by 2020. "This will provide us with congested highways and rail lines." says Vonderembse. "We are looking at this primarily from the freight perspective. There are plenty of agencies looking at it from the passenger side. So how do we move the goods? "

They are studying the effectiveness of three different types of fuel; ultra-low-sulfur diesel (ULSD), a biofuel, B20 ? derived from soybean oil and yellow grease (primarily, recycled cooking oil from restaurants), and bio-hydrogen. A Bio-hydrogen engine burns biodiesel and has a small amount of hydrogen in the air intake of the vehicle to increase fuel efficiency.

The Biodiesel project was designed to look at the impact on fuel economy, on maintenance cost, total vehicle life cycle, emissions, when using biodiesel, (B20), ultra low sulfur diesel, and bio-hydrogen. That research has not been done before and the answers may help fleet operators, like Neidert. As soon as B20 or higher is available at a competitive price," says Neidert," I'm all for switching over. I'd switch tomorrow. I want to use green energy "