Full Title: U.S. Virgin Islands Transportation Petroleum Reduction Plan
Author(s): Caley Johnson
Publisher(s): National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Publication Date: September 1, 2011
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
The U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) has set a goal to reduce petroleum use 60% by 2025 compared to the business-as-usual scenario. Ground-based transportation is responsible for 40% of USVI petroleum use, so the USVI and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) set up a Transportation working group (TWG) to devise a way to meet the 60% reduction goal in the transportation sector. This report lays out the TWG’s plan.
The first step to achieving such a goal was to benchmark current fuel use and transportation characteristics. To do this, we (the TWG) consolidated key statistics from numerous USVI agencies, surveys, and reports. We found that USVI on-road transportation used 47 million gallons of petroleum in 2010 and is on the path to use 75 million gallons per year by 2025. Overall, the USVI transportation system is inefficient, offering much “low-hanging fruit,” or relatively easily achievable petroleum use reductions with many co-benefits. On average, USVI residents take an even larger share of their trips in personal vehicles than mainland U.S. residents do, since USVI bus ridership is low and walking or biking is inconvenient or dangerous. The vehicles in the USVI are inefficient, and their fuel economy is further reduced by poor traffic flow.