While driving around Palo Alto last week I spotted one of the Stanford University bio diesel buses (part of the Marguirite public transit system) making it’s rounds. Stanford currently uses B5 biodiesel for these busses, a blend of conventional petroleum diesel with 5% vegetable derived diesel fuel. While this may not sound like much, especially compared with the programs at the University of Colorado and some other locations which have had buses running on 100% biodiesel since 2003, it does represent progress.
The Stanford program launched in June 2005 with the 5% B5 grade fuel described above and has since been working to move to higher percentages of biofuel. As the bfleet progressively greens their fuel intake, the stickers on the side of each bus will evolve to show more and more yellow within the black droplet (which represents conventional diesel).
As of October 28th 2008 however, when we took the picture just below, the busses are still at 5%, judging by the sticker. Keep your eye out for these busses and read more about the Stanford program here.
