CNHI News Service
August 3, 2005
(OKLAHOMA CITY) -- Pat Hughes knows natural gas is a clean-burning fuel. He is also familiar with the label “cheap fuel.” As fleet and building maintenance manager for the city of Watauga, Texas, Hughes has seen trucks that burn compressed natural gas save money, especially in an age of $2 gasoline.
But Hughes has yet another name for it: the “quiet alternative fuel.” “Nobody’s heard about it,” Hughes said. But he has no regrets about the city investing $130,000 in a compressed natural gas station to charge up its two code enforcement pickup trucks.
Natural gas vehicles have existed for more than 60 years, but only recently are fleets starting to take notice. The north Fort Worth suburb plans to buy two more natural gas trucks and invest in electric cars. Despite satisfaction from experienced customers like Hughes, the number of natural gas vehicles in the United States has held to around 130,000. One reason may be a lack of political support, said Richard Kolodziej, president of the Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition. With the exception of their fuel tanks, which must be pressurized or insulated, natural gas vehicles look like their gasoline or diesel counterparts. This makes the issue look “not particularly sexy”, Kolodziej said.
Electric cars, once thought to be the salvation from dependence on foreign oil, have been replaced by the promises of hydrogen fuel cells and fuels from farm products, said Kolodziej, who argued there is no single solution. “What Americans want is a silver bullet answer,” Kolodziej said. “What we need is a portfolio approach.”
Dual Fuels
A longer-distance heavy duty counterpart to compressed natural gas is liquid natural gas. It is essentially the diesel to CNG’s gasoline. Liquified natural gas takes up less space than the compressed gas, but the fuel must be cooled to subzero temperatures and stored in an insulated tank. The liquid vaporizes before reaching the engine. Each come with setbacks. Converting a traditional vehicle can cost from $8,000 to $10,000, Hughes said. Compared to the price tag of the adjustment, Watauga saved money by buying trucks built for natural gas instead of getting a conversion. But the natural gas pickups cost thousands more than gasoline trucks of the same model. Compressed natural gas tanks, cylinders installed on the roof or in the trunk of a car, hold the gas at pressures of up to 3,600 pounds per square inch.
Liquified natural gas has to be kept more than 263 degrees below zero or it will expand and stress the gas tank. This means LNG trucks must be driven at least one of three days, to keep the gas tank’s cooling system active and burn the fuel before it gets too warm. It also means certified fuelers are required who have been trained to avoid coming in contact with the frigid fluid, said Terry Rose, who manages Oklahoma Natural Gas’ fleet in western Oklahoma. To follow regulations, the utility company has to use alternative fuels in at least 90 percent of additions to its company fleet, excluding large vehicles. The company started running trucks on natural gas in 1978, years before the federal mandate. The natural gas fleet has grown to nearly 500. Rose said the company has saved money, but he is not sure how much. All ONG’s pickup trucks that use alternative fuels burn compressed natural gas.
In experiments, the cylinders have survived collisions, dynamite, even an armor-piercing bullet - and the most that has happened is small dents and a release valve sending a plume of the gas into the air to dissipate, Rose said. ONG’s trucks gas up at stations like a Love’s Country Store in Woodward. The gas station uses natural gas from an ONG pipeline and sells largely to ONG trucks and all-terrain vehicles, said Jenny Love Meyer, spokeswoman for Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores.
The Woodward station is one of more than 160 locations in the chain to offer compressed natural gas. Drivers pump the fuel from an above-ground storage tank that draws directly from a pipeline, eliminating the need for a supply truck like those used for petroleum fuels. A second location, a Love’s Travel Stop in Ardmore, once offered compressed natural gas but stopped due to a lack of demand, Love Meyer said.
Costs Compare
Fleet use of natural gas fuel has its monetary rewards. Gassing up a midsized pickup can cost more than $50, but the fuel is sold in a thermal energy equivalent instead of a true gallon. This means some natural gas vehicles can drive farther before refueling because of the fuel’s octane rating of more than 100. Love Meyer sees an obstacle to expanded use of natural gas vehicles in the company’s inability to offer natural gas in stores where few drivers can yet use it.
Meanwhile, drivers need to know the fuel is locally available before they invest in a natural gas car or truck.
“It’s kind of like the chicken and the egg,” Love Meyer said.
Based on the dominance of the natural gas utility’s fleet, it is difficult for Love Meyer to estimate what the possible demand might be for natural gas offerings elsewhere, she said. The retailer is pinning the future more on biodiesel and ethanol. Watauga is the first city in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex to own a natural gas station, Hughes said. This means the fuel costs less than 65 cents per gallon, though mileage is slightly lower than gasoline mileage. It works out to more than $80 in monthly energy savings for each truck, from the $150 cost of operating on gasoline.
City police took two Crown Victorias to a racetrack in an experiment to guess which one operated on natural gas, but failed, Hughes said. “If they didn’t know they were driving CNG, they couldn’t tell.”
But the comparable performance and cheaper refueling costs are not enough for some in Washington who hope to pin government incentives on a major energy bill this week. A significant energy bill in Congress this year could come with as much as $11.5 billion in tax breaks and incentives to encourage use of alternative fuels. “We’d like for those to be passed. We think it would be a great thing,” Rose said of the incentives.
Included in the Senate version before going to a conference committee was a 36-cent tax credit for every gallon of natural gas fuel purchased.
Buyers of natural gas vehicles could enjoy a tax credit ranging from $2,000 to $28,000, and a home refueler would come with a $1,000 credit.
Installing a commercial natural gas fueling station could attract a $30,000 tax credit, under another element of the Senate energy bill passed in June.
On the way in
Natural gas vehicles have yet to fill American roads. But Watauga is not alone in its experiment.
In the past year, Toyota introduced its first industrial forklifts to the United States that run on compressed natural gas.
In California, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority aims to be 100 percent CNG-fueled by the end of 2006. More than 2,000 of the authority’s buses, a majority, already run on natural gas.
And FuelMaker Corp., based in Toronto, sells natural gas pumps that drivers can install in their garages for refueling.
Kolodziej has focused his work on supporting fleet use of natural gas. But his cause is branching out to consumers with help from automakers and the home refueling unit.
“We could easily double the market in a short period of time,” he said.
The future of natural gas use in cars and trucks hinges on federal policies and petroleum prices, Kolodziej said, declining to forecast use more precisely.