NGVs and America’s National On-Road Transportation Policy

Our dependence on foreign oil distorts our foreign and military policy, threatens our economy, worsens our balance of trade, and costs us jobs here at home.  It also is helping fuel a worldwide terrorist network.  Since the oil crises of the 1970s, we’ve done a great job in reducing the amount of oil we use in residential, commercial, industrial, and electricity generation applications.  But we’ve done a poor job in transportation.  That has to change, and change quickly.  We should be investing in research and development for long-term solutions like hydrogen and ethanol from biomass.  They eventually may play a major role in America’s transportation mix.  But we can’t wait for the fruits of that research to come to market.  We have to act now.  Fortunately, we have alternatives we can use today.

Where we must use gasoline or diesel fuel, we should use it as efficiently as possible.  Hybrid vehicles – including plug-in hybrids -- are one option, and we should encourage their manufacture, purchase and use.  We also can blend more alcohol fuels into each gallon of petroleum.  Every gasoline vehicle on the road is capable of operating on 10 percent ethanol made from corn and other crops.  Every diesel vehicle on the road can operate on up to 20 percent biodiesel made from waste oil and soybeans.  Use of these farm-fuels blends will increase our miles-per-petroleum-gallon, and these too should be encouraged.

But, where we don’t have to use gasoline or diesel at all, we shouldn’t.  Right now there are thousands of delivery trucks, port vehicles, airport vehicles, transit buses, school buses, trash trucks, shuttle vans, and other urban-based vehicles operating around the country solely on clean natural gas.  Trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles are the backbone of our economy.  Our economic wellbeing is based on our ability in getting products and goods distributed cost-effectively and on time.  We must ensure that these vehicles cannot be crippled by the policies of a foreign (and hostile) government – or some catastrophic event.  We should be encouraging the use of natural gas, propane and other non-petroleum fuels in these urban vehicles. If these commercial urban vehicles switched away from petroleum altogether, it would make a substantial dent in the amount of oil we need to import, and would protect this vital part of our economy from the vagaries of foreign oil policies.  The technology is here today to do that -- and it’s economic.  We simply need the will and leadership to make it happen.  That’s why last year Congress passed and the President signed into law financial incentives for advanced technology and alternative fuel vehicles.  These incentives are helping make these technologies and fuels more economically attractive.  Now it’s up to private and public fleet decision-makers to act.

For the last 100 years, the world has had the good fortune to have an ample supply of cheap, secure oil.  That era is probably over.  Research may provide us with a simple, silver-bullet solution in the future. However, it would be imprudent to just assume that this will happen and do nothing today. We need to act today with the alternatives we have today. We need to use all our non-petroleum fuel options in applications and regions where they are most appropriate.  If we act aggressively now, we can help break our addiction to foreign oil.