Natural Gas Buses--Better than Diesel?

Transportation is a significant contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.  After all, cars, trucks, and buses are used by Americans to get to work, shop, and in general to get to and from places they need to go to.  Everytime individuals start up that engine is more dirty oil that gets burned and consumed, which in turn increases U.S. reliance on foreign energy.  Diesel, the fuel of large commercial trucks and buses, is even worse in terms of fuel consumption and the dirty pollution it emits into the atmosphere.

So, to deal with the emissions of carbon dioxide from large commercial trucks, some of them are using what many purport to be cleaner burning natural gas.  After all, if we are going to run on a fossil fuel, it might as well be the cleanest one available! The question, however, is whether natural gas is really any cleaner, if at all, than diesel.   One important problem that is overlooked regarding natural gas trucks involves, for example, "maintenance costs on CNG (being) more than twice that of diesel according to Cap Met maintenance figures."

Clearly, natural gas buses may not be better than diesel especially if they harm the environment as much as and possibly more than diesel ones.  Maintenance costs clearly indicate that natural gas buses are not necessarily cleaner and could be considered as a liability to the same degree as diesel ones.  Perhaps, the best solution is to run on a truly clean fuel like hydrogen, which does not emit any carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and is not going to be detrimental in terms of maintenance costs.  natural-gas-bus.

Photo credit: Flickr