Natural Gas Vehicles Crucial to Achieving European Emissions Goals

NGVA Europe, the region’s industry association that promotes the use of natural gas and renewable

methane as a fuel mainly in vehicles and ships, says in a press release issued 19 May that natural

gas vehicles offer large opportunity for rapid reduction of GHG emissions within Europe’s upcoming

strategy on decarbonisation of transport: “Changing to natural gas vehicles today makes it possible

to reach the 2030 target of 30 percent greenhouse gas emissions reduction coming from road

transport ahead of time.”

The shift to cleaner and more sustainable mobility will only work when using a mix of alternative

fuels, the association argues, and requires discussion to be based on a functioning market and take

into account the costs of the fuel, vehicles and components to achieve EU goals in a cost-efficient

way. A realistic analysis shows that we are still relatively far away from that. “The upcoming strategy

from the [European] Commission on decarbonisation should therefore recognise CNG and LNG

vehicles as crucial tools to achieve Europe’s GHG reduction and sustainability goals for the transport

sector.

NGVA Europe states several facts about natural gas vehicles, some of which are listed below:

 Natural gas contains less carbon than traditional hydrocarbon fuels and therefore emits much

less CO2 as a vehicle fuel: 25% on average, opening up the road to carbon neutral mobility when

blended with renewable methane (from anaerobic digestion of waste or electrolysis of excise

electricity). No technical blend limitations exit.

 Combustion of natural gas reduces emissions of particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxides

(NOx) by over 90% compared to the very strict emission standards for new heavy duty (Euro VI)

and light duty (Euro 6) vehicles, therefore making it an ideal “urban fuel” to clean the air.

 Natural gas engines emit much lower levels of other harmful and carcinogenic pollutants like non-

methane hydrocarbons (NMHC), including aromatics as benzene.

 Natural gas cars have lower emissions than the 95 g/km CO2 fleet average target by 2020 and

offer the most cost-efficient CO2-mitigation option (€/t CO2) compared with other solutions: The

break- even-mileage (km/year) for CNG vehicles is already reached at 13,000 km versus 47,000

km for plug- in hybrids or more than 100,000 km for electric vehicles (University of Cologne,

2014).

NGS INDIA