NGVAmerica Letters to the Editor

New York Times

April 30, 2006

Your May 30 editorial “Energy Shortage” supports legislation that provides incentives for alternative fuels (like cellulosic ethanol) and vehicles (like plug-in hybrids).  We’ll need those technologies.  But they primarily are for light-duty vehicles, and are not available today.  Natural gas vehicles (NGVs), however, are available right now, and can displace diesel from our heavy-duty fleet. NGVs are growing rapidly here and around the world.  In the U.S., over 20 percent of transit buses on-order are natural gas.  Congress provided significant financial incentives for NGVs last year because commercial versions of those vehicles are available today and 97 percent of the natural gas we use is produced in North America.  NGVs also produce less urban pollution and greenhouse gases.  And displacing 20 percent of the diesel used in our trucks and buses would only increase natural gas use overall by 4 percent, which we can afford. You should be supporting this, too.