Bowman Consulting Group Ltd., a multi-disciplinary engineering services firm, has partnered with Transportation Energy Partners (TEP) and dozens of public and private partners on Drive Clean Rural USA, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funded pilot project to bring alternative fuel sources, like hydrogen, electric and more to rural communities.
Funded by the DOE, and managed by the nonprofits TEP and Clean Fuels Ohio, Drive Clean Rural USA is an eight-state pilot project that brings together rural government leaders, business owners, fleet managers, farmers and industry experts to accelerate rural communities’ access to clean fuel transportation solutions. The eight states participating in the pilot project include: Alabama, Indiana, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.
Participating county government and private fleet partners will receive free technical assistance from Clean Cities coalitions and the project’s industry partners. Drive Clean Rural USA is a three-phase project that will run through June 2024.
Bowman joins this project as an industry partner to provide planning and engineering support to communities in the eight clean cities’ partner states to help them gain access to alternative fuels. Bowman and other industry partners help support rural communities by providing knowledge on infrastructure for alternative fuels, including logistics and transportation, predevelopment construction assistance and construction costs.
As part of the program, there will be vehicle fleet analyses that assess vehicle tasks, drive cycles, mileage and more. There will also be demo vehicles available to some program participants ranging from fleet cars, pickup trucks, and bucket trucks powered by propane, natural gas, hydrogen, electric plug-in, and biofuels.
