Growing up, I learned early to go with the best I had until something else better came along. It has served me well and I suggest here that it would also serve our country today.
There are many polarized groups pushing different agendas on the alternative fuel debate, but herein I would recommend the proposition sited above; why not use the best fuel sources we have now until we develop something better?
CNG is a LOW COST FUEL or it should be. In Utah, as of 07/14/08, CNG is $.85 a gallon statewide; yes, that’s .85 cents! In many other states CNG is as high as $3.75 a gallon. Utah, Oklahoma and a couple of other states regulate their natural gas. If Utah were not regulated, we also would be paying about $.50 a gallon less than gasoline, which has been where the petroleum companies and profiteers have pegged CNG’s price in many other states. In the past 20 years a few petroleum companies, like Clean Energy, have gone around the country and bought up many of the natural gas suppliers and distributors, in effect, destroying any competition.
As noted in Time magazine 4/1/08, ethanol is partially responsible for the deforestation of the rainforest as well. The article reports that the corn that is used to distill one tank of ethanol would feed one human for a year. Also less corn available means higher feed prices, thus higher meat, dairy and everything else. In pandering to the farm lobby the federal government and Detroit abandoned CNG as an alternative fuel in favor of E(85) and now we are feeling the pinch at the grocery store and in the lack of new CNG vehicles to choose from. Would you rather import fuel or food? We don’t have to import either if we could get special interests out of our elected officials pockets and heads.
Production, transportation, taxes and profit make up the main elements of petroleum’s price to the consumer. Unlike petroleum, CNG requires relatively little development, production, refinement or transportation. In fact, natural gas is often discovered with petroleum and burned off (flared) as a nuisance. It’s estimated that the world’s NG that is flared off in one year is equivalent to the energy used in the USA in 4 months. Now, consider your ECON 101 class. Remember supply and demand effects? If we have a product with an over abundance (high), with a demand that at this point is almost nil (low), what would you expect the price to be?
CLEAN AIR: Natural gas vehicles show an average reduction in ozone-forming emissions of 80% compared to gasoline or diesel vehicles. The use of CNG vehicles results in less petroleum consumption, and less air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions. Natural gas is not made from petroleum, as gasoline and diesel are. It has a simple, one carbon, molecular structure (CH4) that makes possible its nearly complete combustion. In general, carbon dioxide is exhaled by animals and utilized by plants during photosynthesis.
Carbon dioxide is an important greenhouse gas because it absorbs in the infrared range, and because of its atmospheric lifetime. Replacing one diesel-powered garbage truck with a natural gas-powered one is equal to taking 325 cars off the road in terms of pollution reduction.
Fuel System: Natural gas vehicles (NGV’s) have all the same standard safety equipment as conventional cars (seat belts, air bags, etc.), yet they are subjected to the same crash safety tests as well.
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