Will cars ever really run on natural gas?
Natural gas is now significantly cheaper than gasoline, which could make natural gas vehicles increasingly popular. The biggest potential savers: gas guzzlers like heavy duty trucks.
Natural gas is now significantly cheaper than gasoline, which could make natural gas vehicles increasingly popular. The biggest potential savers: gas guzzlers like heavy duty trucks.
Will natural gas ever catch on as an important transportation fuel?
Yes, argues MIT Professor Christopher Knittel, in a new discussion paper聽for the Hamilton Project. Given the now-enormous spread between gasoline and natural gas prices, Knittel thinks that natural gas vehicles should become increasingly popular. Here, for example, are his calculations of the lifetime operating costs for various vehicles using gasoline or natural gas (click to enlarge, and be sure to read the caveat in the footnote):聽
As you would expect, the biggest potential savings accrue to the most fuel-guzzling vehicles, heavy-duty trucks in particular.
Knittel does not believe, however, that the private market will exploit this potential as fast or extensively as it should. He thus proposes policies to accelerate refueling infrastructure build-out and to encourage聽natural gas vehicles. Here鈥檚 his abstract:
His聽鈥漵teps to promote the use of natural gas vehicles and fuels鈥� are subsidies聽and regulations. Regular readers will recall that I believe environmental taxes聽would be a聽better way of addressing environmental concerns and, in particular, of promoting natural gas over gasoline.聽Of course, that view hasn鈥檛 gained much traction among聽policymakers.聽As least not yet.