August 13, 2007
NGV advocates converged on Washington in the first week of August in an intense effort to get natural gas into the House energy bill as part of a transportation fuels portfolio standard. The bill, passed Aug. 4, ended up not including a transportation standard, but advocates found some receptive ears in Congress—as well as increasing interest from the Department of Energy (DOE) and EPA (see CalNGV News, 7.30.07).
Todd Campbell, director of public policy for Clean Energy, says it’s clear that the EPA and DOE don’t believe the Renewable Fuel Standard goal of displacing 35 billion gallons of petroleum fuels by 2017 can be achieved with renewable fuels alone. “We had a very strong welcome from the DOE and the EPA,” Campbell says. “They clearly are interested in natural gas being part of the solution. And I think one reason the House was unable to pull together a portfolio standard for transportation fuels is that they’re realizing it can’t just be a renewable fuels standard—it has to be alternative fuels.”
One good sign: the EPA’s well-to-wheels analysis of NGVs’ greenhouse gas benefits is consistent with the CEC’s positive analysis. And biomethane has strong political appeal, with its renewability, the potential for blending it with pipeline gas, and initial estimates indicating that it could have a 200 percent greenhouse gas emissions advantage—“which means it would be the best renewable fuel out there,” Campbell says. “Washington loves that story.
“The biggest thing we’re struggling with is that the EPA initially accepted the projections that the renewable fuels makers presented, and now reality is setting in and they’re starting to revise those numbers,” Campbell says. “Now they’re more skeptical, so we have to work that much harder to make a strong argument about why we can displace 5 to 7 billion gallons by 2017.”
Courtesy of California Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition.