Sunday, July 8th 2012

From State Impact:

“If a shop­per was weigh­ing whether or not to buy a nat­ural gas-fueled car, the top item on the “pro” side would with­out a doubt be the cost of fuel: right now the gallon-equivalent of com­pressed nat­ural gas costs less than  half as much as a gal­lon of gasoline.

That is, if you can find a place to fill up. Because the top “con” would be the fact there are only a dozen publicly-accessible nat­ural gas fuel­ing sta­tions in Penn­syl­va­nia.  That $1.75-a-gallon price tag doesn’t look so great when you’re stranded on the side of the Turn­pike with an empty fuel tank.

The Cor­bett Admin­is­tra­tion has made expand­ing the num­ber of nat­ural gas-fueled vehi­cles on Penn­syl­va­nia roads a pri­or­ity, and is prepar­ing to spend $20 mil­lion on the effort over the next three years. Gov­er­nor Corbett’s moti­va­tions are three-fold: nat­ural gas-run vehi­cles release far fewer emis­sions into the air than gaso­line or diesel cars and trucks; they’re also a step, he argues, in the direc­tion of Amer­i­can energy independence.”

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