The Cleanest Cars on Earth?: Honda Civic GX and Other Natural Gas Vehicles (NGVs)
Clean Burning Natural Gas Vehicles (NGVs) are hot commodities in some parts of the country, where fuel can sell for as low as $0.63 per gallon.
Unlike the world’s most fuel efficient car (VW’s 285 MPG bullet), the Honda Civic GX looks like a standard passenger vehicle. What makes it special is what you don’t see: tailpipe emissions that are often cleaner than ambient air.
The Civic GX is powered by compressed natural gas—methane—the simplest and cleanest-burning hydrocarbon available. With an economical 113-hp, 1.8-Liter engine, the EPA has called the Civic the “world’s cleanest internal-combustion vehicle” with 90% cleaner emissions than the average gasoline-powered car on the road in 2004.
And get this: in Utah, natural gas can be purchased for $0.63 per gallon.
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At $24,590, buying a new Civic GX won’t exactly break your bank account, especially since up to $7,000 will come back to you in the form of state and federal tax credits. But don’t expect to find one easily. The car is only sold in two states, New York and California, and Honda can’t build them fast enough. One dealership said they have over 80 people waiting to buy.
We need an incremental approach that uses what we have available right now and does not rely on technologies that are decades away from commercial viability and widespread use. Natural gas is something we can do right now, and we need to act right now to create a bridge to the future before it is too late.
CNG vehicle conversion is simple and all the technology is already in existence. We already have a massive distribution network for natural gas. One of the most compelling facts that is probably unknown to the American people is that the combination of horizontal drilling and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing of gas rich shale zones in various regions of the country has recently resulted in proving up the existence of and economic viability of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that is not accounted for in current estimates of proved reserves. Most of this is found in Texas and Louisiana where we have the world’s best infrastructure in terms of trained people and equipment for development of these reserves. These short reserves life numbers for natural gas quoted above are for proved producing reserves and assume that we stop development today. We have trillions of cubic feet of proved undeveloped, probable, and possible reserves categories that are not included in these low numbers. Moreover, development of this massive quantity of relatively clean energy is already economical without any government interference or tax credits. The largest foreign sources of natural gas are not from OPEC countries which spreads the risk of supply disruptions of imports when they are required.
Besides lower green-house gas and pollutant emissions, CNG requires far less processing than oil. Cleaning up natural gas from the wellhead can be done through thousands of small (cleaner) facilities and therefore massive refineries are not required. The surface environmental impact of natural gas wells and processing equipment is much less than the impact of oil production and processing. The less imported oil we use the less tanker traffic and the less oil spills we should see. We already have a vast pipeline network for natural gas which can be easily expanded.
The first vehicles should be bi-fuel with the capacity to run on gasoline/ethanol or natural gas at the flick of a switch. See http://www.cngoutfitters.com for an example of this. The next logical step would be a plug-in hybrid natural gas vehicle to further reduce CO2 emissions and improve fuel economy that could also run off the electric grid.
There is no panacea but CNG is a great incremental step we can take right now. All engineering designs involve trade-offs. Everyone needs to realize that any solution requires materials and those materials must come from the earth. Hydrogen is great but currently made from fossil fuels which releases CO2. Ethanol processing creates huge amounts of CO2 and natural gas to cook the corn mash, slurps up vast amounts of water, and uses huge amounts of commercial fertilizer made from fossil fuels not to mention drives up food costs. Batteries are made from various metals as are windmills. High efficiency motors require rare metals from overseas. These metals come out of the ground through mining! When considering all the options please consider the TOTAL impact of the technology, not just what you see running down the road!
Natural gas companies have been running all their vehicles on natural gas for decades. Hydrogen is the only combustable fuel that offers absolutely no harmful emmissions; water vapor and heat are the only by products. It seems to me this technology is the way we should be going but for some unknown reason, the technology selected by the car makers is that of Hybrid technology which is the most expensive technology available. We will eventually be forced to switch to hydrogen so why go through all these other alternatives and waste all the time and resources when we can start toward the cheapest and most plentuful fuel available… HYDROGEN! Remember this, the Hindenburg did not explode! It burned rapidly but it did not explode. The paint is what actually caught fire… from a lightning strike. Had that been any carbon based gas, the explosion would have rocked the eastern seaboard. Let’s face it, anything combustable can be dangerous if not given the respect it deserves.
My fear about converting to natural gas is the increase in demand will drive the price so high we wouldn’t be able to afford it. It couldn’t be supplied in large enough quantities to satisfy need. High demand and short supply spells high prices. I’d much rather see hydrogen stations going in everywhere. That can be produced anywhere there’s water and electricity, or wind to make the electricity if need be. I don’t expect that things will go this way because it makes the most sense. It’s known around the world that the US doesn’t usually do the smart thing.
I am hopeful they will be able to convert cars to natural gas so we are not dependent on foreign oil. I live in the epicenter of the Marcellus Shale formation and they are finally starting to drill for natural gas. There are alot of regulations concerning the water supply. New York state seems more strict than Pennsylvania about the water regulations. I have signed on with Chesapeake Energy Where I live in Pennsylvania and with Fortuna for some acreage we own in New York. Our whole village signed on with Chesapeake because we are all hoping to get royalities. I live in a depressed area where decent paying jobs are scarce. We are keeping our fingers crossed.
Please consider updating your section on supplies of natural gas. The key thing you are missing is the discovery of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas in shale formations. There currently is a glut of natural gas in North America, primarily due to the success that has been realized in shale gas. The Barnett, Marcellus, Hainesville, Muskwa are just a few of the shales that are producing billions of cubic feet of gas every day. And there is more to come; so North America is NOT running out of natural gas.
A few random comments. Excellent discussion on this site, thanks to the moderators and participants. This is obviously a hot topic these days.
First, in regard to the comments regarding electric or hydrogen being the only way to move forward; please think about and investigate the origin of electricity or hydrogen in your area. In the case of electricity, the overwhelming majority is generated by burning coal or natural gas. Coal is nasty stuff, and getting it clean is a MAJOR & EXPENSIVE undertaking. Clean coal will not be cheap. Other sources are nuclear (major waste disposal issues), hydroelectric (better, but think of the little fishies), and finally, in tiny amounts, wind and solar (really clean, but wind is noisy and kills birds). Natural gas is the cleanest fuel that is available in large quantities that could be used today. It’s not the final answer, but it is the best fuel to bridge the gap between dirty oil and coal to real renewables.
In regard to hydrogen - guess what - a lot of it comes from……natural gas. I looked into getting a small fuel cell for my home - it ran on natural gas, converting it to hydrogen. Pretty cool little machines, but still dependent on fossil fuels. Didn’t buy it because it wasn’t economically feasible, it was too expensive. The hydrogen molecule is also a small, slippery little rascal, which makes working with it (think fuel stations) a bit of a problem.
where could i find a shop that would convert a 2000 chev blazer to a nvg vehicle.
would it be cost Efficient as i now have 80,000 miles on it??
Natural gas may be cleaner where you burn it, but getting it to consumers creates serious ecological catastrophe.
It’s completely disingenuous greenwash to consider “natural” gas ‘clean’.
see:
http://www.un-naturalgas.org/
http://www.shaleshock.org
and all the great reporting on this already; here in Businessweek:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_47/b4109000334640.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+%2B+analysis
and in Propublica:
http://www.propublica.org/site/author/abrahm_lustgarten/
Spoke to a Laclede Gas man this a.m. the St louis, MO Natural Gas Co. he said they had dual fuel trucks: Nat gas + Gasoline. Whaen gasoline was high, they were told to run on Nat Gas = 80 < 100 mile range, than switch to gasoline until able to re fill with Nat Gas. While on Nat Gas he said throttle responce was low. Low torque. Poor hill climbing + passing ability for their heavy trucks. Said very noticeable difference.