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The Alternative Fuels Data Center (AFDC) provides information, data, and tools to help fleets, fuel providers, policymakers, cities, states, Clean Cities and Communities coalitions, and other transportation decision makers find ways to reach their energy, environmental, and economic goals through the use of alternative and renewable fuels, advanced vehicles, and other fuel-saving strategies.
The transportation sector accounts for approximately 30% of total U.S. energy needs and 70% of U.S. petroleum consumption. The United States became a net exporter of petroleum in 2020 with exports surpassing imports, although imports of 8.33 million barrels per day in 2022 remained an important part of balancing supply and demand for domestic and international markets.
Please see our profiles on Nelson Business Enterprises and Pocono Mountain School District. These are just two of many AFIG-funded clean transportation project success stories. More are under development.
Alternative Fuels Map
This map shows locations of electric vehicle charging and compressed natural gas, liquified natural gas, and E85 (gasoline containing 85% ethanol) refueling stations in Pennsylvania that were supported by Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Commonwealth Finance Authority, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and private funds.
Alternative Fuel Refueling Sites
Find locations in Pennsylvania, or across the country, that offer the following alternative fuel types: compressed natural gas, liquified propane gas, electric charging, liquified natural gas, ethanol (e85), and methanol (m85).
Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability or evidence of effectiveness. Unlike modern medicine, which employs the scientific method to test plausible therapies by way of responsible and ethical clinical trials, producing repeatable evidence of either effect or of no effect, alternative therapies reside outside of mainstream medicine[n 1][n 2] and do not originate from using the scientific method, but instead rely on testimonials, anecdotes, religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural "energies", pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, fraud, or other unscientific sources. Frequently used terms for relevant practices are New Age medicine, pseudo-medicine, unorthodox medicine, holistic medicine, fringe medicine, and unconventional medicine, with little distinction from quackery.
Much of the perceived effect of an alternative practice arises from a belief that it will be effective, the placebo effect, or from the treated condition resolving on its own (the natural course of disease). This is further exacerbated by the tendency to turn to alternative therapies upon the failure of medicine, at which point the condition will be at its worst and most likely to spontaneously improve. In the absence of this bias, especially for diseases that are not expected to get better by themselves such as cancer or HIV infection, multiple studies have shown significantly worse outcomes if patients turn to alternative therapies. While this may be because these patients avoid effective treatment, some alternative therapies are actively harmful (e.g. cyanide poisoning from amygdalin, or the intentional ingestion of hydrogen peroxide) or actively interfere with effective treatments.
The alternative medicine sector is a highly profitable industry with a strong lobby,[1] and faces far less regulation over the use and marketing of unproven treatments. Complementary medicine (CM), complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), integrated medicine or integrative medicine (IM), and holistic medicine attempt to combine alternative practices with those of mainstream medicine. Traditional medicine practices become "alternative" when used outside their original settings and without proper scientific explanation and evidence. Alternative methods are often marketed as more "natural" or "holistic" than methods offered by medical science, that is sometimes derogatorily called "Big Pharma" by supporters of alternative medicine. Billions of dollars have been spent studying alternative medicine, with few or no positive results and many methods thoroughly disproven.
The terms alternative medicine, complementary medicine, integrative medicine, holistic medicine, natural medicine, unorthodox medicine, fringe medicine, unconventional medicine, and new age medicine are used interchangeably as having the same meaning and are almost synonymous in most contexts.[3][4][5][6] Terminology has shifted over time, reflecting the preferred branding of practitioners.[7] For example, the United States National Institutes of Health department studying alternative medicine, currently named the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), was established as the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) and was renamed the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) before obtaining its current name. Therapies are often framed as "natural" or "holistic", implicitly and intentionally suggesting that conventional medicine is "artificial" and "narrow in scope".[1][8]
The meaning of the term "alternative" in the expression "alternative medicine", is not that it is an effective alternative to medical science (though some alternative medicine promoters may use the loose terminology to give the appearance of effectiveness).[9][10] Loose terminology may also be used to suggest meaning that a dichotomy exists when it does not (e.g., the use of the expressions "Western medicine" and "Eastern medicine" to suggest that the difference is a cultural difference between the Asian east and the European west, rather than that the difference is between evidence-based medicine and treatments that do not work).[9]
Alternative medicine is defined loosely as a set of products, practices, and theories that are believed or perceived by their users to have the healing effects of medicine,[n 3][n 4] but whose effectiveness has not been established using scientific methods,[n 3][n 5][13][14][15][9] or whose theory and practice is not part of biomedicine,[n 4][n 1][n 2][n 6] or whose theories or practices are directly contradicted by scientific evidence or scientific principles used in biomedicine.[9][13][19] "Biomedicine" or "medicine" is that part of medical science that applies principles of biology, physiology, molecular biology, biophysics, and other natural sciences to clinical practice, using scientific methods to establish the effectiveness of that practice. Unlike medicine,[n 1] an alternative product or practice does not originate from using scientific methods, but may instead be based on hearsay, religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural energies, pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, fraud, or other unscientific sources.[n 5][9][11][13][19]
Some other definitions seek to specify alternative medicine in terms of its social and political marginality to mainstream healthcare.[20] This can refer to the lack of support that alternative therapies receive from medical scientists regarding access to research funding, sympathetic coverage in the medical press, or inclusion in the standard medical curriculum.[20] For example, a widely used[21] definition devised by the US NCCIH calls it "a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not generally considered part of conventional medicine".[22] However, these descriptive definitions are inadequate in the present-day when some conventional doctors offer alternative medical treatments and introductory courses or modules can be offered as part of standard undergraduate medical training;[23] alternative medicine is taught in more than half of US medical schools and US health insurers are increasingly willing to provide reimbursement for alternative therapies.[24]
Complementary medicine (CM) or integrative medicine (IM) is when alternative medicine is used together with mainstream functional medical treatment in a belief that it improves the effect of treatments.[n 7][11][26][27][28] For example, acupuncture (piercing the body with needles to influence the flow of a supernatural energy) might be believed to increase the effectiveness or "complement" science-based medicine when used at the same time.[29][30][31] Significant drug interactions caused by alternative therapies may make treatments less effective, notably in cancer therapy.[32][33][34]
Several medical organizations differentiate between complementary and alternative medicine including the UK National Health Service (NHS),[35] Cancer Research UK,[36] and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the latter of which states that "Complementary medicine is used in addition to standard treatments" whereas "Alternative medicine is used instead of standard treatments."[37]
David Gorski has described integrative medicine as an attempt to bring pseudoscience into academic science-based medicine[40] with skeptics such as Gorski and David Colquhoun referring to this with the pejorative term "quackademia".[41] Robert Todd Carroll described Integrative medicine as "a synonym for 'alternative' medicine that, at its worst, integrates sense with nonsense. At its best, integrative medicine supports both consensus treatments of science-based medicine and treatments that the science, while promising perhaps, does not justify"[42] Rose Shapiro has criticized the field of alternative medicine for rebranding the same practices as integrative medicine.[3]
CAM is an abbreviation of the phrase complementary and alternative medicine.[43][44][45] The 2019 World Health Organization (WHO) Global Report on Traditional and Complementary Medicine states that the terms complementary and alternative medicine "refer to a broad set of health care practices that are not part of that country's own traditional or conventional medicine and are not fully integrated into the dominant health care system. They are used interchangeably with traditional medicine in some countries."[46]
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