It's a (natural) gas in Glendale

Tooling around Glendale in your natural-gas-powered vehicle will be a bit easier next summer.

Clean Energy Fuels Corp. said today it plans to open a compressed natural gas station at the Glendale train station off San Fernando Road by summer 2009. The station will be open to the public and also service the city of Glendale’s CNG-powered Beeline buses and its growing fleet of CNG-fueled trash trucks.

Seal Beach-based Clean Energy, co-founded by Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, is a major local operator of CNG stations open to the public, with about 20 in the Los Angeles area and north Orange County. Many CNG stations are privately owned by fleet operators, and with only about 100 public-access CNG stations now in California, it still takes some planning to make sure you are within range of a fill-up.

Jim Harger, senior vice president of Clean Energy, said there are several thousand CNG-powered cars in the L.A. area, many of them taxicabs. A lot of those are conversions. The only regular-production CNG-powered car available from a major manufacturer these days is the Honda Civic GX.

In anticipation of new "green" taxi regulations in the area, Clean Energy plans to open half a dozen CNG stations in L.A. and the South Bay by next summer, Harger said. (Running vehicles on natural gas emits far fewer greenhouse gases than gasoline or diesel.)

Manhattan Beach, for example, is expected to give final approval Tuesday night to an ordinance that would require local taxi operators to phase in low-emission vehicles over a four-year period. Natural gas is expected to be a popular option because the big Ford Crown Victorias favored by taxi drivers are easy to convert to CNG operation, said Manhattan Beach Finance Director Bruce Moe.

Natural gas costs the equivalent of about $1.65 a gallon at Clean Energy stations. That’s cheaper than the $1.95-a-gallon statewide average for regular gasoline, although CNG’s price advantage has narrowed considerably as gasoline prices have plummeted.

—Martin Zimmerman

Photo: 2009 Honda Civic GX

Credit: Honda Motor Co.

Comments

[Sherry]

Well it is official we are in a recession and have been for the past year. Amazing isn't it. WE seriously need to get on with alternative energy projects and get out from under our dependence on foreign oil. This past year the average family went broke at the pump alone filling up the family vehicles to get back and forth to work. That cost most of between 60-100. per fill-up. Then there was the grocery store where the price of EVERYTHING rose sharply as increased production and shipping costs were passed on to the consumer.So we quit going out to eat so much or at all, put off buying things we wanted or really needed, some even to the point of having no money left for necessary medicines. No one single factor in our economy has ever caused so much damage to society as the high cost of fuel this past year. Yet,little attention has been given to this face. Jobs and homes have been lost at a record rate as the consumer is forced to cut back spending. While we are busy doing the happy dance at the pumps OPEC is working out their strategy to raise the price of a barrel back up to 75-100 per barrel. We need to utilize free sources of energy like wind and solar and new technologies such as plug and hybrid cars. It would cost the equivalent of 60 cents per gallon to charge an electric car at the rate of the average electric bill. That elec could conceivably be generated at least partially from sun or wind power. With bailouts left and right and an economic stimuli's package that cost 168 BILLION and did nothing for our economy...WHY NOT BAIL US OUT OF OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL? That money would have gone a LONG WAY toward getting some alternative energy projects set up. Jeff Wilson has a great new book out called The Manhattan Project of 2009 Energy Independence NOW.

[CHarles Lopez]

The people of this nation need to wake up, this looks like 1973 all over again.
We had a fake shortage and then we just forgot about it. The American Car Manufacturer's started the SUV fad.
Now 50% of the cars on the road get lower mileage than my 1930 ford Roadster.
When we had the 1973 gas shortage I was working for a Contractor in a Chevron Oil Refinery.
We were working 7 days a week and 12 hours a day.
They had Sanfrancisco bay full of Oil tankers and no place to put the oil.
We were putting in a huge Tank Farm. The Gas shortage was a joke, that everyone in that industry knew about.
The price of fuel world wide is based on one thing, what ever the market will pay.
We should have nationalized oil like other countries have done.
There are certain things that should be under government control to protect us.
Just look at the profit that they have made at our expense.
This bunch makes the mob look like a Church social.

[Raffi Kojian]

It's quite appropriate that Glendale, with so many Armenians will have the natural gas option. Armenia itself has by far the highest percentage of natural gas cars in the world - almost 1/3 of its vehicles run on it. No other country comes close to this figure.

http://www.huliq.com/390/armenia-leads-the-way-in-using-cleaner-car-fuel

[David]

When will the auto makers offer natural gas kits for installation on old and new vehicles?

This kits are readily available in SE Asia.

Politics?