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ALTERNATIVE-FUEL VEHICLES SCARCE COMMODITIES IN ARKANSAS

By John Lyon/ARKANSAS NEWS BUREAU
Monday, September 15, 2008 9:43 AM CDT

LITTLE ROCK — While Congress considers an energy bill that calls for 85 percent of American-made vehicles to run on alternative fuels by 2020, Arkansas’ public schools are phasing out the handful of non-gasoline powered school buses now on the roads.

School buses are a topic of discussion as the handful of non-gasoline-powered public school buses are being phased out of use. Pine Bluff Commercial/Ralph Fitzgerald

“We’ve got, I’m going to say less than two dozen school buses that are either propane or compressed natural gas, and most of those are older buses and actually most of them are being phased out,” said Mike Simmons, senior transportation manager for the state Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation.

School districts acquired the buses in the late 1980s and early-to-mid-1990s, at a time when interest in alternative-fuel vehicles was high. That interest eventually petered out, and today vehicles powered by anything other than gasoline are hard to find in the Natural State.

“There was kind of a push to do natural gas, and then it just kind of flopped,” Simmons said.

Now alternative fuels are once again at the forefront of public consciousness, with some touting them as America’s salvation from high gasoline prices, global warming and dependence on foreign oil.

Compressed natural gas, or CNG, “is the right fuel and the right answer to the biggest problems affecting our economy, environment and national security,” Aubrey McClendon, chairman and CEO of Chesapeake Energy Corp., said in a news release last week announcing a campaign called “CNG Now.”

Oklahoma-City based Chesapeake is calling for federal and state incentives for more CNG vehicles and CNG refueling stations, plus an extension of the existing $1,000 federal tax credit for the installation of in-home CNG dispensing units.

CNG also is part of an energy plan being promoted by Texas businessman T. Boone Pickens, who has described natural gas as a 20-30 year bridge between gasoline and the next generation of transportation power.

The federal government has pushed for alternative fuels before. In the early 1990s Congress passed a law requiring government fleets to switch to non-petroleum fuels, but the U.S. Department of Energy did not require local governments to comply.

Automakers began turning out CNG vehicles, but sales dropped as public interest flagged. Today, only one CNG vehicle, Honda’s Civic GX, is sold in the U.S., in small numbers.

A combination of factors dampened consumers’ enthusiasm for natural gas, including a drop in gasoline prices and a lack of available places to refuel, said Jim Gilbert, a project consultant with the Arkansas Transit Association.

“People lost interest in it because the consumer out there says, ‘Where am I going to get this stuff at?’” Gilbert said.

Some cities across the country have CNG transit buses but no Arkansas city uses them, primarily because of the cost involved in building the necessary infrastructure, he said.

According to the Department of Energy’s Web site, Arkansas is one of 10 states, plus the District of Columbia, that have no public CNG stations. Oklahoma has 28 and Texas has 15.

“There were some (years ago), and I think the demand was just too low,” said Evan Brown, building and industrial programs coordinator with the Arkansas Energy Office.

Is there a touch of irony in this, given Arkansas is experiencing a boom in natural gas drilling in the Fayetteville Shale play?

“A little bit, yeah,” Brown said.

Chesapeake is the second-largest operator in the northern-Arkansas shale play. McClendon estimated recently that natural gas companies would spend between $75 billion and $100 billion in Arkansas during the next decade and potentially find 20 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, an amount that at current natural gas prices would be worth roughly $200 billion in future revenue.

The Department of Energy lists three private CNG stations in Arkansas, two of them owned by gas companies and one owned by Little Rock National Airport.

The airport bought 13 CNG vehicles — two cars and 11 pickups — five years ago, according to Pat Sellars, the airport’s director of facilities. A $175,000 grant from the Department of Energy paid for the vehicles and a CNG dispensing unit.

Sellars said natural gas is often less expensive than gasoline, but not always.

“Natural gas has gone up substantially, and I’m guessing right now the economic difference between gasoline and natural gas is probably zero,” he said. “But the (lower level of) emissions makes it far more attractive to use CNG than gasoline.”

But Sellars acknowledged that if the airport had not received the grant, buying CNG vehicles “would not rank very high on the list of priorities.”

Richard Abernathy, superintendent of the Bryant School District, said his district is phasing out five propane-powered buses purchased between 1991 and 1996. Others have been retired from service but kept for spare parts, he said.

Abernathy said diesel buses make more sense economically than propane or CNG buses, at least right now, but if all things were equal he would prefer to go with natural gas.

“Natural gas burns much cleaner. It is probably much better as far as for your environment and the air quality,” he said.

Regarding the renewed interest in alternative fuels, Abernathy said he hopes it lasts, but he wonders if it is already fading.

“Everyone was jumping up and down and screaming and hollering when gas hit $4 a gallon and it was just, you know, the world was ending,” he said. “Now it’s at $3.50 and you just don’t hear that much about it anymore. People are still concerned about it ... but it seems the emergency part of it has gone away.”

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