Pump prices revive natural-gas interest

By JORDAN WEISSMANN

Pump prices revive natural-gas interest

In Detroit, GM is the only automaker to show interest in revisiting natural gas.

There are only 120,000 natural-gas vehicles in the United States.

WASHINGTON — In the early 1990s, all three major American automakers started building clean and efficient natural-gas vehicles. But when a new federal law failed to create an expected guaranteed market, the momentum died. Today, only Honda sells a model in the United States — and in minuscule numbers.

Now, as drivers reel from the shock of high gasoline prices, natural-gas vehicles are attracting renewed interest both on Capitol Hill and in Detroit. Proposed legislation and a new impetus at General Motors may bring a modest revival.

But there are mammoth hurdles to getting large numbers of natural-gas vehicles on the road. Most troublesome is simply where to buy the fuel. Of 176,000 gas stations in the United States, fewer than 2,000 carry natural gas, according to the Department of Energy. In the Washington area, there are just four. There are 8 million natural-gas vehicles worldwide, but only 120,000 in the United States, according to Natural Gas Vehicles for America, and most of those are in fleets owned by governments and corporations.

Natural-gas vehicles run on a normal internal combustion engine but have a special, high-pressure fuel tank that is cheap to fill. In April, the equivalent of a gallon of compressed natural gas averaged $2.04, compared with $3.53 for gasoline. They also emit 20 percent less greenhouse gas and less than a third the amount of smog than petroleum-powered cars. Because natural gas is less flammable than gasoline and because the sealed fuel tank admits no oxygen, the chance of an explosion is very low.

Reps. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., have introduced legislation that would help increase the number of natural-gas pumps at fueling stations and boost the number of natural-gas vehicles on the road.

Many advocates, especially politicians, are attracted to natural gas because it is mostly a local resource.

The United States gets 98 percent of its supply from domestic sources. And many think that recently discovered deposits of shale in Louisiana, Texas and under the Appalachian Mountains could keep the country self-sufficient for decades.

The government last tried to popularize natural-gas vehicles in the early 1990s when Congress passed a law requiring government fleets to switch to alternative fuels. The major U.S. automakers jumped on board, but the push sputtered when the Department of Energy decided not to make local governments comply with the rule.

Ultimately, sales foundered, and by 2004 only Honda’s natural-gas Civic GX was the only commercially available natural-gas vehicle still sold in the United States.

In Detroit, GM is the only automaker to show interest in revisiting natural gas. “Energy prices have changed,” said Larry Burns, GM’s vice president of research and development, “and the value propositions are out there that it shouldn’t be big news or surprising that we’re exploring natural gas.”