Las Vegas's Bet on Biofuels Pays Off

photo: LVRCCC

Las Vegas usually doesn't make anyone's list of green cities, what with its sprawling water-sucking desert suburbs and smoke-filled casinos. But it turns out that nobody beats Sin City when it comes to powering its vehicle fleet with alternative energy like biodiesel, natural gas, electricity and hydrogen. Sixty-three percent of Las Vegas's buses, cars, trucks and other municipal vehicles - 450 in total - use some form of alternative fuels that emit fewer planet-warming greenhouse gases than conventional gasoline or diesel, according to SustainLane, a San Francisco environmental management service. That made Vegas the No. 1 for alternative fuel fleets in SustainLane's survey of the U.S.'s 50 biggest cities. Next up in the top 10 was Honolulu, with 51 percent of its fleet forsaking Big Oil; Kansas City, Missouri (45 percent), Albuquerque (42 percent), Dallas (39 percent), Denver (31 percent), Phoenix (28 percent), Los Angeles (25 percent), Seattle (25 percent) and Portland, Oregon (25 percent). Conspicuous in their absence from the list were the ecotopias of San Francisco and San Jose.