Airport

• At the Dallas Forth Worth International Airport, the world’s third busiest airport, most of the fleet of 500 maintenance vehicles are powered by natural gas. In 2011, the airport introduced the first of its 46 courtesy shuttle buses powered by compressed natural gas, or CNG. And it plans to add additional CNG powered buses to take passengers to the various parking lots at the airport. Because the cost of natural gas sold as a transportation fuel is much less expensive than gasoline or diesel, the airport expects to save about $250,000 in fuel costs for its new courtesy buses.
  
  
• At the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, more than 100 transit buses, 60 rental car shuttles and other airport vehicles run on CNG.
  
  
• At the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, travelers and airport employees are shuttling from airport parking lots to the main terminal aboard 25 40-foot long CNG buses.
  
  
• And passengers who park at the more than 8,000 parking spaces at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport ride CNG powered buses.
  
  
• At the Seattle –Takoma International Airport, more than 150 cabs operated by the Seattle-Tacoma International Taxicab Association run on natural gas. The airport reports the reductions in emissions from the CNG fleet is like taking almost 800 passenger vehicles off our roads for a full year.
  
  
• And at the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport, the airport authority worked with the local utility and cable fleets to support adding CNG to a nearby service station. These efforts were coordinated through the Baton Rouge Clean Cities Coalition.

These are examples of how airports, regardless of their size, are helping their surrounding communities reduce emissions and comply with federal and state air quality plans. The airports and the contractors who support airport operations are using a variety of light, medium and heavy duty natural gas vehicles to reduce emissions and comply with federal and state air quality plans.

And the airports are also working to improve energy security, choosing to go with domestically produced natural gas. And some of those resources were found very close by. Natural gas resources were even produced from under the 180,000 acres of the Dallas Forth Worth Airport.

Air-side natural gas vehicles include runway street sweepers, baggage tows, dump and plow trucks, groundskeeping tractors, foodservice vans, security and parking enforcement patrol cars and other airport staff vehicles. Curb-side applications include airport owned and privately owned parking, hotel and rental car shuttles, door-to-door shuttles and taxicabs.

Click here for a Guide to Natural Gas Vehicles and Engines.

The air quality benefits of using natural gas powered vehicles have been confirmed. In a 2005 report, the federal government reported that 10 airports in a government pilot program were able to significantly reduce the pollutants that lead to ground level ozone, which is the pollution of greatest concern nationally. The airports achieved these results by using inherently low emission vehicles. All 10 of the airports were located in ozone nonattainment or maintenance areas.

“On a lifetime basis, for example, these projects are expected to reduce nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons, the two precursors of ozone, by 2,984 tons and 3,725 tons respectively,” says the report.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicle Data Center also contains information on fleet experiences at airports. Click here for an overview.

San Francisco International Airport

In 2000 San Francisco International Airport instituted a Clean Vehicle Policy that by 2012 all ground transportation vehicles would have very low emissions -- if manufacturers offered products that were reliable and reasonably economical. Compressed natural gas, hybrid, and electric vehicles are the main choices for operators.

Vehicles running on compressed natural gas (CNG) were the first option for ground transportation providers in 2000, and they remain the most important component today. In 2010, almost 500 CNG vehicles were in service at SFO, including buses, vans and autos. They are among the 2,250 permitted very low-emission vehicles in operation at the airport.

Two competing public access CNG stations serve SFO, one at each end of the airport. Operated by Trillium USA and Clean Energy, the stations opened in 1999 and 2003 to serve a rapidly growing population of CNG vehicles. With 15 fast-fill CNG hoses between the two stations, they form the largest public access CNG fueling complex in Northern California, selling 1.5 million gasoline gallons equivalent per year. Specialized fast fills for transit buses are offered at the Clean Energy station.

These demand figures do not include off-site refueling, which can be significant for some operators like San Francisco Yellow Cab, with its own station.

About 25% of the airport’s owned fleet of 400 vehicles run on CNG, including passenger vehicles such as the Honda Civic GX and Ford Crown Victoria, as well as pickup trucks, street sweepers, a crane truck and several dump trucks.

Roger Hooson, senior transportation planner for the airport, says that since vehicles directly owned and operated by the airport account for a small portion of the miles traveled by all vehicles serving the airport, the policy has to involve the much broader universe of commercial traffic in and out of the airport on a daily basis, such as the hotel shuttles, the taxis and bus service to on-airport and off-airport parking lots.

Who uses the most fuel?

Part of the success of the airport’s Clean Vehicle Policy is that it used both financial and non-financial incentives to encourage operators to move to cleaner vehicles if the vehicles were available, reliable and reasonably economical. For example, the airport instituted a policy that allows taxis using alternative fuels to go to the front of the line on a limited basis. While that incentive doesn’t reduce airport revenue, it offers substantial economic benefit to taxi drivers.

“We never actually mandated CNG vehicles,” says Hoosen. “We gave incentives to the lower emission vehicles since the city had an overall mandate to reduce emissions by 50 percent over 1990 levels.”

When the program first started, the airport for a short time allowed the lower emission vehicles to go to the head of the line four times a day, but that brought protests from drivers who did not have access to the lower emission vehicles. “Our policy initially was that lower emission vehicles could go to the front on the line twice per day or once per driver shift,” says Hoosen. Hybrids are now helping to meet the goal.

Financial incentives matter as well. Over a decade, the airport has received about $16 million from the Bay Area Quality Management District, San Francisco County Transportation Authority, and other grant agencies for SFO-permitted low-emission vehicles.
In 2001, the airport received a National Natural Gas Vehicle Achievement Award from NGVAmerica and the Clean Vehicle Foundation for its aggressive effort to support cleaner air.