Blue skies, pristine mountain vistas, endless open space and … choking fumes from motor vehicles? Even though the latter clearly doesn’t belong in our National Parks, maintaining their air quality has become a real challenge. With 275 million tourists visiting our National Parks each year, a tremendous number of personal vehicles and tour buses visit on a regular basis. So how do you balance providing open access and freedom of mobility with limiting pollutants? To address this dilemma, many parks are working to adopt clean alternative fuels, advanced vehicle technologies, and other fuel-saving measures with the help of Clean Cities in the Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Program.

The National Parks Service and Clean Cities collaboration has deep roots. Since 1999, the initiative has helped to fund the purchase of low-speed electric vehicles, the installation of electric charging stations, and other alternative fuel vehicles and infrastructure (including biodiesel, compressed natural gas, E85-ethanol, and propane). As a result of industry partnerships, Toyota donated 23 Prius hybrids for rangers to use in five parks, as well as $5 million to support environmental education projects. Similarly, Ford retrofitted Glacier National Park’s classic Red Bus fleet to run on propane, a cleaner, domestic fuel. The buses also free tourists from having to rely on their personal vehicles.

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