Americans have a love affair with their automobiles. They’re a huge part of our lives and they’re not going away any time soon. But motor vehicles generate more air pollution than any other single human activity. Hell, wars have been fought to protect our right to oil reserves in foreign countries. Oil spills threaten our oceans and wildlife.
What if you could pump your vehicle full of something cleaner, cheaper, readily available, and domestically abundant?
You can!
I’m talking about propane, the same energy that has heated homes and barbecued chicken for almost 100 years. There are multiple advantages, but I’ll focus on three.
- Emissions reductions. Propane, called autogas when used in on-road engines, has a lot less of all those harmful pollutants that come out of a gasoline- or diesel-fueled vehicles. With significantly less carbon monoxide, greenhouse gases, nitrogen, and other toxic gunk, autogas has real environmental and health benefits.
- Cost. Historically, autogas costs about 40 percent less than gasoline. The long-term return on investment is significant due to less maintenance costs (cleaner burning fuel through the engine means the engine stays cleaner longer) and lower fuel costs.
- Availability. Propane is abundant, with about 90 percent of propane produced here in the U.S. and an additional 7 percent from Canada. By comparison, the U.S. imports about 60 percent of the oil we use.
There are many other benefits too (excellent safety record, robust refueling infrastructure, reliable performance, product availability, and more).
You can go to your local dealer and purchase a propane autogas vehicle, but for now, it makes more sense for companies with fleet vehicles to use them. There are 270,000 vehicles fueled by autogas in the U.S., with many public and private fleets using them. (Compare that to the 17 million worldwide, and you can see we are way behind on this clean solution!) So for now, encourage companies that you support to use a cleaner alternative fuel like propane autogas. And if you are interested in more information, check out the websites of two of our clients involved in propane autogas, the Propane Education & Research Council and ROUSH CleanTech.
