MOLINE, IL - John Deere Construction & Forestry Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing Domenic Ruccolo recently testified before the U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, advocating making infrastructure projects greener through the use of more productive and efficient construction equipment that gets the most work out of every gallon of fuel used.

Ruccolo's testimony came during the Committee's hearing on "Constructing a Green Transportation Policy: Transit Modes and Infrastructure."

Among other action items, he urged the Federal government to take steps to support further efforts within the construction equipment industry to improve equipment productivity and efficiency and reduce environmental impacts.

"Collaboration and cooperation between the public and private sectors are needed to investigate and fund the research and development of new standards and technologies to further improve equipment productivity and efficiency," Ruccolo said. "The Federal government has not consistently assisted the non-road equipment industry in the past on such an effort, concentrating instead upon the onroad sector.

"However, by recognizing the essential role non-road equipment will play in transforming the transportation and other sectors of the economy to achieve ambitious and necessary greenhouse gas reductions, we can see that appropriate investment by the Federal government into non-road technologies would create substantial environment returns," Ruccolo said.