Extreme energy makeover: town to be the country's highest per-capita user of "flex-fuel" vehicles. Gas station becomes "BioIsland".

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: AROUND INDIANA

NEXT TIME SOME OUT-OF-STATER badmouths Indiana for allegedly living in the past and shunning the cutting edge, share the story of BioTown USA, the new nickname for the tiny community of Reynolds.

The rural White County home of some 547 Hoosiers, Reynolds is not the place one might think to look for advanced technologies and progressive, applied environmentalism. But hotbed for new ideas it is, with a starring role as the nation's first community attempting to meet all of its energy needs through biorenewable resources. Given the current price and supply trends in petroleum and natural gas, renewable energy has become quite the hot topic lately.

Indiana may not be accustomed to setting the trends, but it truly is the perfect place to begin weaning America from expensive and often foreign sources of energy That's because the answer to the nation's energy woes grows all around us. The BioTown USA project aims to demonstrate how a community can kick its oil habits and eventually exist "off the grid," using close-to-home resources to run vehicles and light homes.

Already, the BioTown USA project has nearly completed its first phase, according to Indiana agriculture director Andy Miller. "Our key goals for Phase 1 are educating and encouraging ethanol and biodiesel use," Miller reports. To that end, the state and Reynolds last month marked "Extreme Energy Makeover Day" with the delivery of the town's first "flex-fuel" vehicles and the announcement that General Motors will provide 20 residents with free two-year leases of new E85 vehicles, designed to run on fuel that's 85 percent ethanol. The ultimate goal is to make Reynolds the highest per-capita user of flex-fuel vehicles in the country.

The "Extreme Energy Makeover" event also included the start of demolition and reconstruction at the town's BP gas station, which will become a "BioIsland" with pumps selling the E85 ethanol blend as well as B20, a fuel that blends 20 percent soybean biodiesel with traditional petroleum diesel and can be used in any standard diesel engine. And a symposium on alternative energy included such...