A team of UC Davis transportation experts will travel to Washington, D.C., next week to brief members of Congress and their staffers on the status of clean car and truck fuels and technologies.

The discussion will critically examine the future of automotive technologies and fuels that have the potential to dramatically reduce petroleum consumption and greenhouse gases in the transportation sector -- including biofuels, hybrid electric technologies and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

The briefing, titled "Future Transportation Energy: Opportunities and Challenges," is scheduled for Jan. 23, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in Room HC-5 in the Capitol Building. The speakers will stay from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. to answer questions.

U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, is hosting the event.

The participants -- Daniel Sperling, Joan Ogden, Tom Turrentine and Anthony Eggert -- are all part of a new research initiative named Sustainable Transportation Energy Pathways (STEPS), within the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS-Davis).

Building on ITS-Davis' expertise in both the engineering and consumer aspects of alternative transportation, STEPS will evaluate the technical, economic, environmental and policy issues that will arise as the nation increases its use of nonpetroleum fuels (such as biofuels and hydrogen) and vehicles (such as plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell cars).

Yesterday (Jan. 18), Sperling stood alongside California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at a news conference where the governor signed an executive order that spells out the state's historic effort to reduce the carbon in petroleum fuels and thereby cut the state's greenhouse gas emissions. In California, 41 percent of such emissions come from transportation fuels.

Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies, is co-director of the University of California team assigned the job of writing the low-carbon fuel standard -- the first such policy in the world. Schwarzenegger wants manufacturers to cut the carbon content of fuels sold in California by at least 10 percent by 2020.