Hickenlooper looks to fleet to promote natural gas.

• Author: Best, Allen
• Position: ENERGY

AS PART OF ITS ECONOMIC development strategy, the administration of Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has set out to expand the in-state market for natural gas by promoting its use in transportation.

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Switching fleet vehicles such as school buses and delivery vans to natural gas could displace 10 percent of oil consumed in Colorado, state officials say.

"Compressed natural gas is not going to displace all of the oil we use, but if we can do 10 to 20 percent in live years, that will be appreciable,'" says TJ Dejora, director of the Governor's Energy Office.

The vast majority of natural gas extracted in Colorado is exported out of state. In presentations before various groups recently, Dejora has reported that only 36 percent of the gas was consumed within in Colorado, as of 2009. That same year, it imported 79 percent of its oil, mostly from Canada.

Natural gas burns more cleanly than petroleum, producing half the emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide. That advantage is already part of the strategy to reduce ground-level ozone in the Denver-Fort Collins area.

"We really see this as a market-based solution," said Dejora of the evolving market for natural gas. "But right now the market needs a nudge, a hand or a shove whatever is appropriate."

Compressed natural gas also has a strong price advantage that is becoming apparent to waste-haulers and other fleet operators. Nearly 100 trash companies in Colorado have begun converting to natural gas engines.

"The natural gas truck does cost you a little more than $32,000 more than a diesel truck, but you get all the environmental benefits, longer intervals between oil changes, and less of a carbon footprint," said Shannon Smith, general manager of Alpine Waste & Recycling, a Commerce City-based company that operates in metropolitan Denver.

"Trucks operating 10 hours per day burn 40 gallons of diesel. Switching to natural gas saves $41 per day, or $938 per month. At that rate, it takes two or three years to make back the original investment.

The federal government had previously offered tax incentives of $32,000 per vehicle, reducing the return on investment to almost no time at all. "That has since disappeared, but we are looking for it to come back," Smith says.

Alpine Waste bought its first natural gas-burning truck in 2009 and now routinely does so. Next year, for example, it will buy eight natural gas trucks to replace diesel-burning trucks that have reached 500,000...