Natural gas touted as the next alternative fuel in San Diego
“I’m not proud of it, but I’m a reformed diesel guy,” said Andrew Douglas, senior VP of sales and marketing at Agility Fuel Systems of Santa Ana, California.
Douglas was among the dozens of attendees at the L-NGV2015 conference in San Diego last week, a gathering mostly aimed at the compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. Agility retrofits tractor-trailers to run on CNG, and has produced 25,000 such vehicles since it was founded in 1996.
More and more companies are converting to CNG: In the early years the customers were mostly city transit buses and garbage trucks, but the shipping sector is taking advantage of systems that can stash more fuel on board and propel the big trucks longer distances. On the company’s new Saddle Creek Gen 5 model, four cylinders of CNG totaling 160-gallon diesel equivalent are stacked up behind the driver’s cab. The setup weighs more than 3,000 pounds, but it can travel 750 to 850 miles without refueling.
But the industry has challenges: Douglas said the goal is to get 10 percent of the nation’s heavy-duty trucks running on natural gas by 2020. The cost of such vehicles is steep, although Agility says companies can make that money back within 2 years.
“Eighty years ago there was a transition to an alternative fuel going — diesel,” he told a conference room of about 40 people. The industry is seeing a migration to a “new alternative fuel,” natural gas. Just as decades ago, price is the motivator.
Diesel is averaging about $2.86 a gallon, compared with $2.11 for CNG.
“I think we’re seeing an evolution to a cheaper fuel source, in this case, natural gas,” he said.
Later, showing off one of Agility’s behind-the-cab systems on a Frito-Lay truck in a cavernous room of the San Diego Convention Center, Douglas talked about being a trucking guy at heart, trying to convince trucking companies to switch away from a fuel that has been synonymous with big trucks for decades.
“Sometimes you have moments of doubt. And whenever I go there, I think to myself, No matter what the obstacles are, it’s about the price of fuel — or the differential (between NG and diesel). That’s what’s going to drive this.”
Fuel Freedom Foundation co-founder and chairman Yossie Hollander presented on the same panel as Douglas and Greg Roche from Applied LNG of Westlake Village, California. Hollander praised CNG and LNG, saying it’s going to be a “sustainable business for a long time.” But he reminded the panelists that the market for light-duty vehicles is 3.5 times bigger than the market for larger vehicles. “That’s the larger market here.”
One solution is to make liquid alcohol fuels, like ethanol and methanol, out of natural gas. Those fuels can run in many of the vehicles Americans drive already, without the need to buy a new vehicle or undertake an expensive conversion.
Fuel Freedom seeks to open the fuels market so all fuels, including CNG, LNG and alcohol fuels, are available to the consumer, not just gasoline. “We don’t have favorites,” Hollander said. “What we want is a supermarket.”
