place on top

place on top

For three days in May, Long Beach is a major hub of the alternative-energy world in its capacity as host of the Alternative Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo, reportedly “the largest gathering of alternative fuel and clean vehicle stakeholders in North America this year.”

The underlying message of the expo’s opening was a simple one: For the sake of American security and economic self-interest, energy consumers and providers must work together to wean ourselves from our reliance on foreign oil.

While the expo will place more emphasis on the economic portion of that message, having as Day 1’s keynote speaker Gen. Wesley Clark (ret.), former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, helped emphasize that this technological transition is about more than money and the environment.

Wesley Clark addressing expo attendees
Wesley Clark addressing expo attendees

With a resume going beyond the military also to include a directorship of BNK Petroleum and his membership on Clinton Global Initiative’s Energy & Climate Change Advisory Board, Clark is in a uniquely informed position to comment on the consequences of U.S. reliance on oil. “We’ve completely distorted American foreign policy — and we’re still dependent on foreign oil,” he said, labeling clean-energy alternatives “mission critical for national security.”

While these thoughts may not be revolutionary, if enough people get on board with the program, there will indeed be a sort of revolution. In that sense the ACT Expo, with a mission “to help accelerate the adoption of alternative fuels so that high volume sales numbers can be reached,” is attempting to facilitate an environmental revolution from the business side.

If that sounds mercenary, well, we live in a world full of mercenary realities — even for many of the most well intended persons and companies among us. As the Expo’s press material states, “Individual product volume sales for clean vehicles must start to be measured in the tens of thousands of units per year in order to drive down clean vehicle technology costs.”

Changing public perception of non-gasoline alternatives is a key challenge for those sales to come, whether those perceptions are held by governmental officials who do not view natural gas as a viable option for heavy equipment, or by commuters who think they will lose something in the bargain of switching from gas-powered automobiles. As phrased by the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s Judith Mitchell, “Perceptions of alternative-fuel vehicles will play a major role in their success.”

It’s a challenge Mayor Bob Foster understands too well. “I’d like people to understand that [using] alternative-fuel vehicles […] is not something where you’re depriving yourself,” he told the Long Beach Post shortly after giving expo attendees a brief welcome. “[… A] natural-gas vehicle […] performs as well as any diesel or even any gasoline vehicle. And with the price of natural gas — which we have an abundant supply of — being [the equivalent of] around $2 per gallon, it just makes a lot of sense. This [expo] is a great place to see what’s available.”

make smallThe general public will have a great chance today (i.e., Wednesday) to see for yourselves whether the exposition hoopla about natural-gas vehicles is justified, as the Expo will host a “Ride and Drive” event that kicks off at 12:30 p.m. “with a parade of clean vehicles,” followed by a three-hour window during which one and all are invited to test-drive any of approximately 30 vehicles, “from passenger sedans to heavy-duty trucks […] using a variety of fuel types […] including natural gas, electric, hybrid, biofuels, hydrogen fuel cell, propane and clean diesel.”

Lyle Jensen, CEO of American Power Group Inc., which is present at the expo representing (among other things) an aftermarket upgrade of diesel engines to run partly on natural gas that doubles a vehicle’s miles-per-gallon rating, points to the necessity of “education and the exposure to new technologies that are coming to market” for the U.S. to catch up to the rest of the world.

“We’re definitely behind the curve,” he says. “Thirteen million CNG [i.e., compressed natural gas] vehicles in the world, and we’ve got less than 110,000. So we’re significantly behind. But we have the ability to catch up rather quickly at this point.”

Jensen says regulatory changes made last year by the Environmental Protection Agency clean alternative fuel conversion manufacturers (which the EPA said “will streamline the compliance process while maintaining environmentally protective controls”), in combination with recent discoveries of vast, domestic natural-gas reserves, is a game-changer for the alternative-fuels industry; and that the ACT Expo is golden opportunity for participants to help each other along by exposing themselves to technologies available to help them increase profit by way of providing environmentally superior-to-oil fuel options.

“We know that growth [i.e., economic, industrial] is going to happen,” Mitchell said during her opening remarks. “How will we accommodate that growth wisely? [… The ACT Expo] is a perfect laboratory for market research.”

Although Foster is glad whenever conventions and the like come to town because of how they help the local economy (“You are all required to spend money here,” he joked to audience during his remarks), as someone who has had the chance to regard the energy picture from multiple angles — he’s a one-time president of Southern California Edison who for the last decade has driven an electric car that costs him about $18 per month to power, not to mention his mayoral efforts to help the Port complex to go ever greener — the ACT Expo is an event that hits him where he lives.

“I think it’s critical for California and the country to start taking alternative fuels very seriously,” he says. “[…] We need to convince people to think a little differently about it. It’s about perception.”

The ACT Expo continues today and Thursday at the Long Beach Convention Center.