USA, Texas

Michael Williams, the chairman of the Railroad Commission of Texas, has taken a strong position in support of more NGVs and other alt fuel vehicles. In a recent statement, Chairman Williams said “As the energy commissioner in Texas, I believe our state and nation need to take that first step by using taxpayer dollars to encourage more alternative-energy sources.”  As part of that effort, he recently wrote two high visibility letters.  In the first to the CEOs of the major Detroit automakers, he urged them to work with him to replace the entire fleet of state vehicles with alternative-fuel vehicles. “That's 458,000 more vehicles running on fuels like propane, bio-diesel, electricity, compressed natural gas (CNG), or liquefied natural gas (LNG),” he said in the letter. 

The second letter was sent to the superintendents of the more than 1,200 school districts in Texas.  In that letter, he urged them to get cleaner school buses on the road.   While Texas has a number of school bus fleets operating on natural gas, more than 95 percent of the state’s school buses only consume gasoline or diesel.

“We not only want each U.S. citizen to use more clean energy, but we want a country whose strength to grow does not rely on the energy supply of foreign powers and the whims of foreign cartels,” he said. “We need to export more energy technology, instead of importing barrels of oil. That's why I want to encourage my counterparts in other states to set a similar example for their citizens and write their own letter to Detroit to urge the automakers to meet their state's transportation needs.” 

That would go a long way to getting Detroit to again provided OEM-built NGVs for America.