Natural gas

An argument can be made that the green deal is more about politics than climate change and it revolves around changing transportation over to natural gas. There are 23 million vehicles using natural gas around the world including 175,000 in the Unites States. Many business use natural gas including 2,200 buses in LA County and 6,000 WM garbage trucks. There are over 1 billion vehicles in the world and about 100 million new ones are produced each year. This means that if all new vehicle starting in 2021 used natural gas it would take about ten years to make the transition. This allows time to install natural gas filling stations around the world. The US currently has over 1,000 such stations including 30 in the Twin Cites. Natural gas produces 30% less CO2 and almost zero heavy metals and acid rain chemicals. It runs smoother and requires less maintenance. Overall, natural gas is one of the cleanest burning alternative fuels available today. NGVs can reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions and reactive hydrocarbons which form ground-level ozone, the principal ingredient of smog, by as much as 95 percent. NGVs can also reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by as much as 30 percent, carbon monoxide (CO) by 85 percent and carcinogenic particulate emissions by 99 percent. Natural gas cost about the same as gasoline but has an octane rating of 130. The truly sad thing is that this change over could have started 50 years ago.