Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on March 3, 2014
Natural Gas Vehicles to Boom Over Next Decade
New research from Navigant Consulting finds that the number of vehicles using natural gas will double over the next decade to 39.8 million. Much of that growth will occur in Europe and China, although the market in the United States will also grow due to low-priced natural gas.
Natural gas vehicles will still only be a niche market, accounting for around 2.6% of cars and light-duty trucks in 2023.
The U.S. lags behind in natural gas vehicle saturation. Navigant predicts that natural gas infrastructure and refueling stations will double in North America by 2023. This will allow for an increase of 138,177 natural gas vehicles sold in North America in 2023. But that pales in comparison to Asia-Pacific, which will sell an additional 1.9 million sold.
Countries with the highest number of natural gas vehicles are ones that put in place policies to support their growth years ago. Many did so because they had large endowments of natural gas – such as Argentina, Pakistan, and Iran. Others did so to reduce air pollution, such as India and Bangladesh. China in particular will likely drive growth of natural gas vehicles as it seeks to reduce smog in its cities.
In the United States politicians from both the Republican and Democratic party to some degree have supported policies to increase the penetration of natural gas in the auto market. Senators James Inhofe (R-OK) and Carl Levin (D-MI) coauthored an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal on February 27th, laying out policies to support greater adoption of natural gas vehicles in order to take advantage of America’s large reserves of shale gas. They call for allowing automakers to receive bonus credits toward meeting their requirement for corporate average fuel economy standards if they build natural gas vehicles. They also call for other incentives, such as allowing states to include natural gas vehicles in their high-occupancy-vehicle lanes, which has proven successful for electric-hybrid vehicles.
13 Comments on "Natural Gas Vehicles to Boom Over Next Decade"
rockman on Mon, 3rd Mar 2014 9:21 pm
This is certainly the hopes of the oil patch: anything that drives up NG consumption (and prices) is nothing but good news for us.
Nony on Mon, 3rd Mar 2014 9:38 pm
Unless you pivoted from gas to oil (EOG).
DC on Mon, 3rd Mar 2014 9:41 pm
LOL..fool.com. NG vehicles have been around for DECADES. They are nothing new under the sun. We had NG powered cabs and others in the 80s.
Q/They also call for other incentives, such as allowing states to include natural gas vehicles in their high-occupancy-vehicle lanes, which has proven successful for electric-hybrid vehicles.
Funny beyond words….
Correction for FOOL.com,-they are not ‘electric-hybrid’ anythings. They are simply gas-burners with a small-weak electric battery that remains completely idle(useless) 98% of the time. They run on gas-not electricity. Just like NG vehicles do. NG trash-cans emit Co2 and a host of other pollutants-just like gaz-o-leen does.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Mon, 3rd Mar 2014 9:51 pm
It will be interesting when folks homes are cold because the gas supply is unstable but they still have their natural gas vehicle to get them to the mall to get an ice cream. It is a bad idea to promote gas in transportation too much. Lets stay focused on the great chemicals natural gas makes, gas as a cooking fuel, and home heat.
Northwest Resident on Mon, 3rd Mar 2014 10:22 pm
“…the number of vehicles using natural gas will double over the next decade to 39.8 million.”
This is like those predictions that claim we’ll have 10 billion people on planet earth by 2030.
Projections like these fail to take into account the actual hard physical limits that we are running up against. They fail to realize that the party is over, the hangover is setting in, and we’ll be lucky to make it through the next couple of years, much less the next decade.
Boat on Mon, 3rd Mar 2014 10:38 pm
I would rather see a bigger market for Nat gas than export it overseas.
J-Gav on Mon, 3rd Mar 2014 10:43 pm
Can you spell “flash in the pan?”
Makati1 on Tue, 4th Mar 2014 1:38 am
When they put up a steel smelter that makes the millions of tons of steel for these vehicles and it is TOTALLY powered by solar panels, come back and we will talk. Another ad by Big Petro.
Nony on Tue, 4th Mar 2014 3:42 am
The average life of a car is 10 years (IOW 10% of the cars are new each year regardless). We don’t need to worry about the “extra steel required”. If there is demnd for NG vehicles, they will phase in. We’ll see.
meld on Tue, 4th Mar 2014 10:11 am
If this happens all that will change is people will start complaining about high NG prices at the pump rather than petrol. If everyone started moving over to NG I’d stay with my petrol thanks. Always do the opposite of the masses.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Tue, 4th Mar 2014 12:20 pm
Nony, the infrastructure at this point will never scale up in the economic climate we are experiencing today to allow much NG use for transport. It may scale for long distance truck transport on the major interstates but not much consumer use. It is just not practical. The economies of scale of producing NG cars are not there. The necessary upgrades for service stations are not feasible. Just look at electric cars. There has been allot of talk about them but they are nothing more than a niche. It is not something I see happening. We will be up to our armpits in alligators soon just trying to maintain what we have.
Kenz300 on Tue, 4th Mar 2014 2:01 pm
It is time to end the oil monopoly on transportation fuels.
The electric, flex-fuel, hybrid, biofuel, CNG, LNG and hydrogen fueled vehicles all are competition to oil fueled vehicles. That is a good thing.
UPS, FedEx, Walmart, Waste Management and others are converting their fleets of long haul vehicles to use CNG and LNG.
Nony on Tue, 4th Mar 2014 7:10 pm
Davy, yeah…it could be hype. If it really were such a strong thing, one would thing it would have happened already.