Environmentalists and other interested parties including natural gas companies have been promoting natural gas vehiclesor NGVs as a cleaner and more cost effective alternative to the gas. For the past 10 months officers from the Cumberland Police Department have been patrolling the streets of their town in cruisers powered by natural gas, although unmarked detectives’ cars and several other department vehicles still use regular gasoline.
Environmentalists and other interested parties, including natural gas companies, have been promoting natural gas vehicles, or NGVs, as a cleaner and more cost effective alternative to the gas guzzling, exhaust spewing variety for a number of years. In fact, last week representatives from companies all over the United States and Canada — including auto makers and energy companies — gathered at the Providence Convention Center to participate in the 16th annual Natural Gas Vehicle Conference.
The idea seems to be gaining popularity here in the Ocean State, with companies such as AAA auto club, New England Pest Control, Bell Atlantic, GTECH Corp., and Providence Gas Co. already using some NGVs.
At a Sept. 9 press conference marking Alternate Fuel Week, Gov. Lincoln Almond said there are now 23 vehicles in the state fleet using alternate fuels and over the next year 25 percent of the new state vehicles purchased will also use alternate fuels. Electricity and solar powered vehicles are also considered alternate fuel vehicles.
And with a little help from a progressive tax package passed by the General Assembly in 1997, which is targeted at companies using a large number of vehicles, the list of companies with environmentally friendly fleets could grow. Among other things the tax package offers credits for companies that buy alternate fuel vehicles (AFVs) and offers a business tax credit for companies that build or improve an alternate fuel filling station.
The latter incentive is expected to help promote the use of environmentally friendly vehicles, or so AFV-boosters hope. Now there are only three public natural-gas filling stations in Rhode Island, which can create logistic difficulties for companies not near a refueling station or that travel long distances.
One of the factors that helped Cumberland Police Chief Anthony J. Silva decide to sign a three-year lease for eight natural gas-powered Ford Crown Victorias was that there is a refueling station run by Valley Resources, Inc., in town. Cumberland was the first Rhode Island police department to buy a natural gas cruiser.
Silva’s decision was based on several other key factors as well, including trying to make the most of limited budget money and providing a cleaner work environment for his officers. “We were in dire need of replacement cars and there wasn’t much money around,” he said.
In listening to a pitch from the folks at Alternate Energy Corp., the chief said he learned NGVs operate without producing exhaust fumes, have good maintenance records and longer life spans. It made more sense, he said, to save on maintenance costs and have cars that last longer.
“You can expect to get longer life out of the engine,” explained John Gorter, a project manager with AEC, which is a subsidiary of Valley Resources. “If you drive the car 3,000 miles, the oil comes out the same color it was when it went in.”
Converting a gasoline vehicle to a NGV costs upwards of $3,000, Gorter said. Auto dealers, such as Honda, charge about $4,500 more for dedicated NGVs.
James Dodge, chief executive of Providence Gas Co., said experts demonstrating the benefits of NGVs will often perform “the handkerchief test.” In such a test, a white handkerchief is affixed to a NGV’s exhaust pipe, then the car is turned on and left running for awhile. The handkerchief always comes off clean, Dodge said.
“You’ve got to remember a police officer spends eight hours a day in the car; it’s his or her office,” Silva said. “A lot of that time is spent idling without passing cars to blow the exhaust away.
“When we looked at the whole thing as a package, it looked good,” he said.
The only drawback of such vehicles is the relatively short range it can travel before needing to be refueled, Silva added. Though these vehicles get similar mileage per gallon, natural gas must be compressed and as a result the gas tanks hold less fuel, Silva explained. So each natural gas powered vehicle has a 10 gallon tank, instead of an 18 gallon tank the way other cruisers do.
“It’s great for around town,” said Sgt. Jon P. Goula, who fielded questions about Cumberland’s cruisers at the NGV Convention last Tuesday. On a typical shift officers have to refuel their cars at least once, said Goula, who added he drives about 100 miles each shift.
The small capacity of NGV fuel tanks created the need for bi-fuel vehicles, in which both natural gas and gasoline can be used, explained David Moniz, Providence Gas Co.’s NGV account manager. “There’s not a lot of natural gas around. We needed a backup,” Moniz said.
Providence Gas runs a refueling station on Allens Avenue in Providence, which services about a dozen companies with an estimated 100 vehicles.
There are about 70,000 vehicles running on natural gas across the country and about one million in operation worldwide, Moniz estimated.
Dave Pontes is the general manager of New England Pest Control, which became the first private company to convert to NGVs in the state when it began a trial run with two trucks in 1992. Twenty-two of its 75 vehicles are now bi-fuel vehicles, including the two original test vehicles. The six-year-old test vehicles are still on the road and have logged more than 200,000 miles a piece.
The company plans to convert 10 to 15 more cars within the next two years and to eventually install a fueling station, Pontes said.
“I’m saving 40 cents a gallon on fuel and because the fuel is so clean, I don’t have to replace parts like mufflers, tailpipes and spark plugs as often,” he said.
(Staff writer David Levesque contributed to this report.)