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Environmental Impacts
Natural gas vehicles produce significantly lower harmful emissions, including nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and toxic and carcinogenic pollutants, compared to gasoline and diesel vehicles. And because natural gas contains less carbon than any other fossil fuel, CNG vehicles produce lower emissions of carbon dioxide, a principle greenhouse gas. In fact, by efficiently displacing conventional gasoline and diesel, CNG vehicles go further than any other alternative fuel in achieving the goal to reduce harmful air pollution and greenhouse gases.
Light-Duty Vehicle Emissions: CNG vs. Gasoline
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calculated the potential benefits of CNG versus gasoline, based on the inherently cleaner-burning characteristics of natural gas. It was determined that CNG vehicles:
- Reduce carbon monoxide emissions by 90% – 97%
- Reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 25%
- Reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by 35% – 60%
- Potentially reduce non-methane hydrocarbon emissions by 50% – 75%
- Emits fewer toxic and carcinogenic pollutants
- Emit little or no particulate matter
- Eliminate evaporative emissions
While stricter environmental regulations have forced automakers to continuously work to improve the emissions performance of gasoline vehicles, CNG vehicles have consistently kept their emissions performance well ahead of government standards. Results from tests comparing the emissions of light-duty CNG vehicles and light-duty gasoline vehicles can be found at the Vehicle Technologies Emissions Testing page.
For more in-depth analyses of natural gas vehicle emissions versus conventional fuel emissions, please see the AFDC Natural Gas Emissions page.
The plot above shows the amount of vehicles on the road (left axis) and gallons of gasoline displaced by those vehicles (right axis) by each federally recognized alternative fuel (bottom axis). The yellow bar represents thousands of alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) and the blue line charts displaced gasoline gallons. CNG tops the list of gasoline displacement by AFVs, accounting for 53% of total gasoline displacement, despite the fact that only 8% of AFVs use CNG. This displaced gasoline not only benefits the environment; it also decreases our nation’s dependence on foreign oil.
This second graph illustrates the effectiveness of each alternative fuel type in reducing emissions of the primary greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2). In this study alone, a disproportionately small number of CNG vehicles (about 51,000) are responsible for reducing the greatest amount of carbon dioxide (over 200,000 tons of CO2 per year). It is clear that CNG vehicles are among the most effective of all alternative fuel vehicles at reducing emissions of carbon dioxide.
The above information is from the Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Clean Cities Annual Metrics Report 2008.
