After years of burning in the background - used for domestic heating and cooking, industrial production of fertilizers, firing commercial boilers for steam and running turbines for electricity - it is finally coming to the US transportation market in a big way.
Ladies and Gentlemen please welcome to the main stage- Natural Gas!
Found abundantly - priced nicely- requiring little or no more processing than filtration- easily transportable in pipes - the solution we always knew existed is finally being taken seriously!
Ironically Natural gas used to be flared as waste at most oil rigs and refineries! Now it is being promoted by a business tycoon Pickens and many energy companies who have bet heavily on this fuel - there is traction now in the chambers of powers that matter!
The solution has been proven successful despite much criticism in India, Argentina and even Iran. After all if something can fire a turbine to create 1MW of electricity why cant it run a passenger car?
Honda is offering the Civic Natural gas already and many mid and large size commercial vehicles are already available. In fact school busses and taxis have adopted it since over 5 years. Unknown to most - there are already over 1100 fueling stations in America. In Los Angeles alone there are over a 2000 CNG busses.
UPS has been using CNG since late 90s, Waste Management has used it since 2009, AT&T has newly made the switch, Ryder is testing it with trucks, Chesapeake energy has switched 800 of its fleet already and many more smaller operators and airport fleets have been quietly getting off their diesel/gasoline gluttony and moving to a frugal CNG diet.
The advantages are too obvious to miss: local production and abundance, no need for expensive sea transportation and refining, 50- 705% lower emissions and very little change required to the traditional IC engines.
So get ready - you might be soon seeing three new letters next to the gas pumps - "CNG"
I must caution that challenges always arise and technology must be used to conquer- for example for the safe drilling and early leak detection of natural gas. But truly these are not insurmountable and no different to those we face with any fossil fuel or combustible gasses.
Ready to make the switch?
PLEASE go to NGVC.org for more information!
