The goal is to reduce air pollution and reliance on petroleum-based fuels by requiring that 75 percent of new vehicles purchased by states burn alternative fuels. But there's a hole in the law you can drive a fleet through, as, unfortunately, Utah has shown.

Use of alternative fuels began in the 1990s in Utah with the purchase of dozens of vehicles that run on either natural gas or gasoline. When Detroit soured on natural gas cars - only Honda makes them now - the state bought 600 flex-fuel vehicles capable of burning both gasoline and corn-based ethanol.

But the program backfired. Natural gas and ethanol are hard to find, so state employees fill up with unleaded instead, defeating the purpose of the law. When fed gasoline, flex-fuel vehicles burn more gas, cost more to operate and produce more pollution than identical models with conventional gasoline engines.

Now state officials will start purchasing, in small numbers, gas/electric hybrid cars, a smart move. They reduce pollution and provide excellent fuel mileage. The state would buy more, but in order to comply with the Energy Policy Act, Utah must continue to purchase flex-fuel vehicles because, incredibly, gas/electric hybrids don't qualify as alternative fuel vehicles under the federal law. To buy hybrids in bulk, states must seek a waiver from the U.S. Department of Energy under a costly and confusing "Alternative Compliance" program.

The alternative fuel rules read like a comedy of errors, with the state and federal government playing starring roles. The Department of Energy needs to rewrite the script and the state needs to better direct its employees for any hope of a happy ending.

Utah should establish more natural gas and ethanol fueling stations and require employees to use them. The feds should add gas/electric hybrids to the list of approved alternative fuel vehicles. And the Energy Department should force state fleets to not only purchase alternative-fuel vehicles, but to actually burn the alternative fuel.

In short, learn a hard lesson from the Beehive State, which complied with the law as written while the environment paid the price.