NGV Global

Creating incentives to convert the nation’s heavy vehicle fleet to natural gas would reduce oil use, invest in American energy sources, increase our energy independence and national security, and slash air pollution.

Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel—it produces less than half as much carbon pollution as coal for electricity and up to 25 percent less than oil for transportation. Recent technological advancements in developing unconventional shale gas resources have dramatically increased the amount of recoverable natural gas resources in the United States. And this creates an unprecedented opportunity to use gas as a bridge fuel to a 21st-century clean energy transportation system that relies on dramatically enhanced fuel economy; lightweight, electric vehicles; public transit; advanced bio-fuels; and low-carbon fossil fuels such as natural gas.

Cleaner, domestically produced natural gas has the potential to meet more than one-third of the fuel needs of heavy- and medium-duty trucks and buses by 2035. Our analysis, which is based on current fleet turnover rates for each class, determines that deployment of 3.5 million of these natural gas vehicles by 2035 would save at least 1.2 million barrels of oil per day compared to business as usual, which is more oil than we imported from Venezuela last year.

Our country’s dangerous overdependence on foreign oil poses a triple threat to our energy security by endangering our energy supply, economic security, and national security. The Center for Naval Analysis’s Military Advisory Board determined that, “Our dependence on foreign oil reduces our international leverage, places our troops in dangerous global regions, funds nations and individuals who wish us harm, and weakens our economy; our dependency and inefficient use of oil also puts our troops at risk.”

Domestic natural gas can play a vital role in reducing reliance on foreign oil and enhancing national security by substituting it for the oil-based fuels such as diesel and gasoline used in heavy commercial transportation in the near term.

Natural gas can pave the way to our clean energy future

Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel, producing less than half as much carbon pollution as coal for electricity and up to 25 percent less than oil for transportation. Natural gas is also domestically available in vast quantities. The United States consumed 20.68 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in 2009, but only 13 percent of that amount was imported. And new techniques for extracting domestic gas should mean that we will not have to import significant quantities of natural gas in the foreseeable future.