More Slides from Ed Dolan’s Econ Blog http://dolanecon.blogsp ot.com/ Move Over Ethanol, Market Forces Favor CNG Posted March 16, 2011 Terms of Use: These slides are made available under Creative Commons License Attribution—Share Alike 3.0 . You are free to use these slides as a resource for your economics classes together with whatever textbook you are using. If you like the slides, you may also want to take a look at my textbook, Introduction to Economics , from BVT Publishers.
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Move Over Ethanol, Market Forces Favor CNG as a Gasoline Replacement
The gap between the price of oil and natural gas is at its widest in history. That should favor wider use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) as a motor fuel. This slideshow examines the advantages of CNG and discusses some of the economic barriers that stand in the way of its wider use.
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More Slides fromEd Dolan’s Econ Blog
http://dolanecon.blogspot.com/
Move Over Ethanol, Market Forces Favor CNG
Posted March 16, 2011
Terms of Use: These slides are made available under Creative Commons License Attribution—Share Alike 3.0 . You are free to use these slides as a resource for your economics
classes together with whatever textbook you are using. If you like the slides, you may also want to take a look at my textbook, Introduction to Economics, from BVT Publishers.
Posted March 16, 2011 on Ed Dolan’s Econ Blog http://dolanecon.blogspot.com
The Search for the Fuel of the Future
The US government has spent billions in the search for the elusive “fuel of the future” that will be clean, cheap, and made in America Ethanol Hydrogen fuel cells Nuclear fusion
Meanwhile, few have noticed a humble, off-the-shelf technology that is all of these things, and is available right now: compressed natural gas (CNG)
A Hydrogen Fuel PumpHydrogen has been touted as the “fuel of the future” but it is decades away from widespread use.Photo source: EERE http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hydrogen_fueling_nozzle.jpg
Posted March 16, 2011 on Ed Dolan’s Econ Blog http://dolanecon.blogspot.com
CNG: The Fuel of Now
More than 100,000 buses and delivery vehicles in the United States run on CNG
CNG emits less carbon than any other fossil fuel and fewer of the gases that cause local air pollution and smog
Many individual consumers have converted cars, pickups, and SUVs to CNG or use of dual fuels
Honda is the only manufacturer that sells a street-ready CNG vehicle in the US (the Honda GX)
A CNG Powered Bus in Arlington, VAPhoto source: Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CNG_buses_Arlington_Transit_ART_07_2010_9541.JPG
Posted March 16, 2011 on Ed Dolan’s Econ Blog http://dolanecon.blogspot.com
Barriers to CNG: Filling Stations
CNG suffers from a “chicken and egg” problem—demand for vehicles is low until there are more filling stations, but supply of filling stations is low until there are more vehicles on the road
There are about 1,000 CNG filling stations in the US now, but only about half of them are open to the public
The biggest number of stations are in California. Other clusters are found in New York, New Jersey, and the Washington, D.C. area
Posted March 16, 2011 on Ed Dolan’s Econ Blog http://dolanecon.blogspot.com
Barriers to CNG: Conversion Cost
Almost any vehicle can be converted to CNG or dual fuel use, but strict EPA regulations keep the cost of conversion extremely high, up to $20,000 or more per vehicle
Non-certified kits cost as little as $1,000 but installing them is considered to constitute illegal tampering with a vehicle’s emission system
Legislation has been introduced to simplify the certification process, but it has not yet passed
Clean energy tax credits offset only part of the high cost of regulatory barriers
Almost any vehicle can be converted to CNG. NGV America maintains a business directory of conversion kits and installershttp://www.ngvc.org/buz_dir/index.html