Congress burning the midnight oil - midnight meaning diesel fuel

A story sure to get a lot of attention

Cut Emissions? Congress Itself Keeps Burning A Dirtier Fuel - NYTimes.com:

WASHINGTON — As part of the climate change agenda he unveiled this year, President Obama made a commitment to significantly reduce the federal government’s dependence on fossil fuels. The government, he said in a speech in June at Georgetown University, “must lead by example.”
But just two miles from the White House stands the Capitol Power Plant, the largest single source of carbon emissions in the nation’s capital and a concrete example of the government’s inability to green its own turf.
...
By then the plant had reduced the amount of coal in its fuel mix to 5 percent, down from 56 percent in 2007. But it made up the difference primarily with diesel fuel oil because, as the architect of the Capitol, Stephen T. Ayers, told a Congressional panel in 2008, converting the plant to burn natural gas exclusively would have required a modernization costing $6 million to $7 million.

 Continue reading at the NYTimes.com

...with a couple of phrases I believe mean the plant operates below the share of capacity threshold it would require if converted to natural gas

...The plant remained below its capacity to burn natural gas, according to a 2010 report from the Government Accountability Office, and it continues to burn diesel fuel oil, which, in addition to being much more expensive, is a significant source of emissions. 

...according to the Department of the Environment, overhauling the plant would probably result in a “significant” net increase in its emissions.