What’s the Deal with Compressed Natural Gas?

George Stuckey is the director of marketing at Fox Service Company, the largest locally owned multi-trade service provider.

Recently, fuel price hikes and national security concerns have heated up a debate on alternative fuels. To further raise the stakes, T. Boone Pickens, a Texas energy billionaire, kicked off the “Pickens’ Plan” PR campaign focused on reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil and greenhouse emissions.

All the attention has narrowed the focus from many automotive alternatives to one: compressed natural gas (CNG), and the benefits are apparent. Namely, the price of a gallon of CNG hovers around $2.00. This is great news for Austin, Texas drivers faced with recent gasoline price spikes.

Natural gas prices are also less susceptible to volatility due to recent large deposit discoveries in the United States, and new technology that is allowing producers to exploit reserves more economically than ever before.

On the downside, there are currently only 1,300 CNG refueling stations in the U.S. Until now, there’s been only one CNG station in Austin.  However, Fox Service Company and FuelMaker Inc. are changing the landscape through the Phill home or business fueling device that allows CNG vehicle owners to fill-up off existing natural gas lines.

With Phill, CNG drivers can refuel onsite, over several hours, to avoid time and money wasted at a standard gas pump. Implementing an at-home or at-work station is an easy process; a Phill mounts to the wall and taps into existing natural gas lines.

The government is standing behind a push to convert American cars to natural gas, offering $1,000 federal rebates on Phill purchases.

After Pickens testified before U.S. Congress in late September, Rep. Rahm Emanuel entered a bill providing tax credits to purchasers of Phill stations and CNG vehicles.

Increasingly U.S. companies and local and state governments are flocking to convert their fleets to CNG to save money versus purchasing diesel or gasoline. This past year, UPS ordered 300 CNG vehicles for its fleet to be delivered in 2009.

Washington's Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s 439 buses are all natural gas powered. In a recent report, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company boasts the viability of CNG by adding six new CNG heavy-duty gas crew trucks and five dumpster trucks to its current fleet. And voters in California will decide whether the State can invest heavily into natural gas vehicle infrastructure in November.

Fox Service Company, locally owned and operated since 1972, is bringing CNG home to Austin as the region’s authorized dealer of Fuelmaker’s refueling stations.  Now Austinites can decide what do to with this leading-edge transformational technology.