Hennepin County’s fleet includes vehicles that are used in a wide variety of functions, including public safety, utility management and road construction and maintenance. Hennepin County has minimized the fleet’s impact on the environment by:
- Adopting a new protocol to guide vehicle purchases that focuses on increasing fuel efficiency and on purchasing smaller cars, hybrid vehicles and vehicles that meet more stringent air emission standards. Hennepin’s fleet includes eight hybrid electric vehicles, 186 flexible-fuel vehicles and 175 vehicles using biodiesel fuel.
- Building an E85 fueling station in downtown Minneapolis in cooperation with the City of Minneapolis.
- Recruiting cities and counties to participate into the county’s biodiesel cooperative purchasing program.
- Increasing the percentage of biodiesel used in the fleet.
- Evaluating idle reduction through the use of small motors or batteries to operate ancillary equipment on utility vehicles.
- Adopting a policy to reduce unnecessary idling of vehicles.
