Governor Phil Bredesen pumped gas at a Lebanon filling station today, but not just any gas. The fuel is 85-percent ethanol.
Bredesen put 1.5 million dollars in his budget this year to subsidize filling stations like the one in Lebanon that pump both an ethanol based fuel, E-85, and bio-diesel, made from soybean oil.
Cars have to be specially designed to use E-85, but most diesel engines can use the bio-diesel. Bredesen says he wants no one in the state to be more than 100 miles from a so-called, ‘Green Island.’
“We’re working on trying to get them in at least the urban areas where you have a lot of density and along the interstates and you know these green islands are just a part of trying to make this energy available.”
The ethanol in the gas the governor was pumping currently comes from corn. Bredesen has also funded a 40-million dollar refinery to turn other plants like switch grass into fuel. That money will complement the 125-million dollar grant issued to Oak Ridge National Laboratory by the U-S department of energy this week, to research how to turn plant materials into fuel.
Most of the biofuels stations are in Davidson and surrounding counties or along the I-75- corridor through Knoxville in east Tennessee. Bredesen says the state is in the process of converting its fleet to alternative fuels cars.
For a map of current and proposed ‘Green Islands’:
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