Gassing Up?

CleanScapes, a waste hauling company, operates a fleet of 50 natural gas-fueled vehicles.

Natural gas may never be the preferred fuel option compared
to gasoline and electrically powered vehicles, at least as far as the consumer
market goes. But lower prices and low emissions are making them an attractive
alternative for companies with large fleets of trucks or taxis.

Waste
hauling may be the tipping point, says Stephanie Meyn, program manager for the
Puget Sound Clean Cities Coalition (PSCCC). As the waste haulers have moved to
natural gas, she says, the infrastructure of natural gas refueling stations has
steadily increased.

The shift to natural gas could soon accelerate. PSCCC was awarded a $15 million grant from
the U.S. Department of Energy last August as part of the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act to increase the number of alternative fuel vehicles on the
roads, while also building a better infrastructure for refueling natural gas
vehicles. About $2.5 million of the grant will go toward converting gasoline or
diesel-fueled vehicles to natural gas. The conversions will focus primarily on
taxis and shuttles that return to a home point following their daily service
routes. Some of the money will also help outfit a farm in Whatcom County with
the equipment to digest methane gas from farm waste. This gas will
be showcased in the Bellair shuttle, which runs from Bellingham to
Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Waste hauling companies would like to use
similar technology to harvest natural gas from their own landfills to run their
trucks.

Several waste hauling companies in the Northwest already use
natural gas vehicles. Republic Services, which operates in Seattle and
Bellevue, has 226 natural gas trucks in the Western region, and 20 percent of
their newly ordered trucks will also run on natural gas. CleanScapes is another
natural gas customer. It operates 50 natural gas trucks and would consider
ordering more if the area it services increased.

It may be years before consumer vehicles run on natural gas.
Kits to convert cars to burning natural gas used to be popular, but stringent
laws and regulations have pushed the cost of after-market kits as high as
$22,000. Adding a converter kit that isnt certified is considered to be
tampering with a federally controlled emissions system, and can bring about a
large fine.

But as more businesses turn to natural gas, spurring the
development of an infrastructure of fueling stations, auto manufacturers may
begin to consider large-scale production of natural gas vehicles for the
consumer market.