As John Larson nears his goal of making natural gas a transportation fuel of choice, he urges Connecticut business to prepare for the upcoming revolution.
The congressman from Central Connecticut believes converting commercial fleets to natural gas and installing natural gas fueling stations is the fast-track to energy independence, particularly from foreign oil.
And now, after three years of trying to kick start the revolution in Congress, Larson appears to have powerful, bipartisan support to push natural gas onto the country.
“It is nice to work on legislation across the aisle where everyone gets it,” Larson said. “The sooner we get started on this road to energy independence the better.”
Larson, a member of House Select Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee, spews a litany of anti-foreign oil rhetoric, citing the billions of dollars in trade deficits, the fact more than half our oil coming from foreign sources, the heavy reliance on the unstable Middle East.
“We’ve got to get out of the business of relying so heavily on others for our fuel,” Larson said.
For Larson, natural gas starts the solution. Large domestic supplies lasting 100 years means cars fueled by America. Oil prices are rising, and natural gas prices are dropping. Natural gas will make for a smoother transition into clean, more abundant transportation alternative — such as hydrogen fuel cells.
In 2008, Larson first introduced an act to steer the transportation sector toward natural gas. That legislation passed the House of Representatives in 2009, but stopped there.
Last year, Larson appeared to have the support for the law, but it was wrapped up in the cap-and-trade provisions of energy policy reform, which ultimately was shelved.
This April, Larson — along with lawmakers from Oklahoma and Texas — introduced a smaller, more focused bill, the New Alternative Transportation to Give American Solutions, or NAT GAS, Act.
“This year, a stand-alone bill makes a lot of sense,” Larson said.
The ultimate goal is energy independence, but the provisions focus on offering incentives for manufacturers to build natural gas vehicles and for commercial fleet operators to buy them.
Heavy-duty vehicles such as garbage trucks and 18-wheelers use far more fuel than personal cars and small trucks. Converting the heavy-duty operators to natural gas is the quickest way to immediately reduce our dependence on foreign oil, Larson said.
“Converting one garbage truck is the equivalent of taking 18 cars off the road,” Larson said.
Plus, natural gas vehicles are cleaner and cheaper to fuel.
Vehicles running on compressed natural gas or liquefied natural gas emit 25 percent less greenhouse gases than those using petroleum, said Pat Davis, U.S. Department of Energy vehicle technologies program manager.
The cost of a fill-up is cheaper than $4 per gallon of gasoline. The price of compressed natural gas, or CNG, runs $2-$3 per gallon, depending on the fueling station, Davis said. A CNG fueling station at Norwich Public Utilities offered $1.99 per gallon on April 27.
Connecticut already made some headway with natural gas vehicles. Using $13.2 million from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act, the Connecticut Clean Cities Future Fuels project is building CNG fueling stations throughout the state.
“This is probably the largest alternative fuel project ever in the state,” said Lee Grannis, coordinator for Greater New Haven Clean Cities Coalition.
Connecticut will have eight CNG fueling stations by the end of the year, including a Shell station in Windsor Locks offering CNG, biodiesel and an electric car charging station.
The Connecticut Clean Cities also helps commercial fleet operators convert to natural gas by building stations. Solid waste hauler Environ Express Inc. and telecommunications giant AT&T share a newly opened CNG/LNG fueling station in Bridgeport.
“Any place AT&T can find a reliable fuel source, they will convert their fleet to natural gas,” Grannis said.
Green Access Taxi of Bloomfield and Metro Taxi of West Haven are building separate stations and buying natural gas cars.
“For the life of me, I don’t know why the country is not pushing harder for compressed natural gas as an alternative fuel,” said Bill Scalia, owner of Metro Taxi.
Metro Taxi will have 110 CNG vehicles in operation this year. The U.S. Department of Energy supplied a grant to cover the increase in costs over gasoline-powered taxis; and the company is using its estimated $500,000 in annual fuel savings to buy more wheelchair accessible taxis, giving Metro a unique offering in the market.
Larson sees this as just the tip of the iceberg.
If the NAT GAS Act passes, more companies will see the cost and environmental benefits of natural gas fleets; and they will receive incentives to buy them, Larson said. That increased interest will spur further development by manufacturers, who will receive incentives to sell them.
For Connecticut to increase drastically its use of natural gas, New England will have to get a greater supply of the fuel. A pipeline linking the region to large deposits of natural gas in the Midwest and Southwest has been proposed and is supported by Connecticut natural gas companies, including Yankee Gas, which want to offer more natural gas for home heating.
The main drawback of natural gas vehicles is they can’t drive as far on a tank of fuel. For a CNG vehicle to get the same range as a gasoline vehicle, the fuel tank must be twice the size, which limits cargo capacity.
Since most commercial fleet operators choose the cargo space over the range, CNG vehicles just don’t travel as far, said Gerald Koss, Ford Motor Co. fleet marketing manager. Unless a company has its own fuel station, the concerns over range impede businesses from making the switch.
Ford offers three vehicles that can run on CNG, but they are conversions. For the automaker to ramp up production of CNG vehicles, the customer demand would have to increase, Koss said.
Since Ford launched a CNG initiative in 2008, the company has seen increased interest but not at a high enough level, yet, Koss said.
The NAT GAS Act takes care of all that, Larson said. With more businesses buying CNG, more fueling stations will pop up to service them, alleviating range concerns. As the interest in CNG rises, automakers will respond to the market.
The legislation isn’t over the hump yet, but Larson remains confident it will pass.
Within a month of its introduction, the NAT GAS Act garnered 104 Democrat co-sponsors and 77 Republican co-sponsors — just 37 supporters shy of the necessary votes need to pass the House. President Barack Obama favors the bill, as does Speaker of the House John Boehner.
Larson is further encouraged by the backing of oil and gas executive T. Boone Pickens, who is organizing support outside of Washington.
In anticipation of the law passing, Larson is working with Sen. Joe Lieberman and members of the U.S. Senate to craft identical legislation in that chamber to avoid procedural delays before Obama signs it into law.
“We have a 150-year resource, and we have to figure out how to tap into it,” Larson said.
The domestic natural gas supply is closer to 117 years, said Philip Budzik, operations research analyst for the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That 117 years is based on current usage, which will undoubtedly increase is the NAT GAS Act passes.
But the legislation isn’t designed to make natural gas the end-all-be-all of transportation fuel in the country, Larson said. It is just a smart, easy way to transition from foreign oil.
The best part about CNG vehicles is they are a good forerunner to hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles, Larson said. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles emit zero greenhouse gases and can be powered by clean, domestic sources.
Natural gas will make the country used to gaseous fuel by the time the fuel cell technology becomes readily available for the consumers, Larson said.
No matter the type of non-petroleum powered vehicles — CNG, electric, fuel cell — once there are more of them on the road, the NAT GAS Act will have completed its ultimate goal.
“This country really needs to extricate itself from foreign oil,” Larson said.
