CNG FUELING GAINS IN COLORADO.

• Author: Romig, Suzie
• Position: STATE OF THE STATE

Loveland chef and food truck owner Scott Atchison doesn't want customers of his signature Moose Balls treats and popular Sloppy Elk Sliders to catch a whiff of diesel fumes.

That's why his mobile cuisine operations at The Sweaty Moose are fueled by CNG, or compressed natural gas, which emits fewer air-polluting chemical compounds. His kitchen occupies a converted CNG-powered, 30-foot passenger bus that he bought used in 2016 from Canopy Airport Parking near DIA.

"I wanted something greener, a little bit more environmentally friendly," says Atchison, who fuels his 14,000-pound truck powered by a V-10 engine at various CNG stations in Boulder and Weld counties.

Atchison operates one of the more unique CNG vehicles in Colorado, but the state is home to an estimated 4,000 medium- to heavy-duty CNG-fueled vehicles out of some 160,000 in the U.S., according to Sherrie Merrow, a Denver-based natural gas vehicle consultant with MVista Strategies. Colorado currently has 22 public CNG fueling stations with locations from Grand Junction to Colorado Springs, from Eaton to Trinidad. Businesses and fleets utilize 20 additional private stations within Colorado, according to the U.S. Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels Data Center.

Natural gas vehicle use in the state has grown along with the nation's, to 4 percent of the 201 6 transportation market, up from 0.2 percent in 2009, Merrow says. The increase is due to technology innovations and expanded business models for fueling stations. Currently, the I-25 corridor has adequate CNG station coverage, and the I-70 corridor has basic coverage with a longer gap that developers want to plug between Denver and Glenwood Springs.

Station developers such as X3CNG, Sparq, Clean...