The Canadian government is considering building a network of hundreds of compressed and liquefied natural gas fueling stations along the country’s busiest highway corridor, Highway 401, from Quebec City to the U.S. border at Windsor, Ontario.
The federal government was approached about the project by EnCana, one of North America’s biggest suppliers of natural gas. EnCana is also advocating tax incentives for trucking companies that convert their 18-wheelers from diesel to natural gas engines.
Reporter Nathan Vanderklippe points out that the “past several years have brought a stunning change in the supply of natural gas, which was first considered in short supply, before technological advances made more gas accessible. North America is sitting on a century’s worth of gas, based on current consumption.”
The news report, which ran in Monday’s Globe and Mail, also details how natural gas engines typically “provide similar performance to their gasoline and diesel equivalents, but create a smaller carbon footprint and promise cheaper operating costs, since natural gas often sells for half the price of other fuels. As a result, they have begun to gain traction in urban transit and garbage fleets, and have been adopted for some specialized applications, like port drayage. But lack of familiarity, a dearth of infrastructure and, until recently, worries that natural gas was running out, have kept it from gaining adoption.
“It is a big step,” said Eric Marsh, EnCana’s executive vice-president of natural gas economy. “We’ve moved into a new time period where natural gas is going to be abundant and affordable, and we need to explore these ideas to use natural gas a lot more than we have in the past … So we’re going to push forward with trying to help others find natural gas to be an acceptable fuel for the future.”
Read more HERE.