Cheaper Fuels for the Light-Duty Fleet: Opportunities and Barriers

Arthur G. Fraas (), Winston Harrington () and Richard D. Morgenstern ()
Additional contact information
Arthur G. Fraas: Resources for the Future
Winston Harrington: Resources for the Future
Richard D. Morgenstern: Resources for the Future

RFF Working Paper Series from Resources for the Future

Abstract: The shale gas revolution in the United States has dropped the price of natural gas (NG) significantly. Combined with new fuel and vehicle technologies, an opportunity exists to expand the use of NG throughout the economy, including in the light-duty fleet of cars and trucks. This expansion could involve the direct combustion of the gas in the form of compressed natural gas or liquid petroleum gas or, alternatively, the use of natural-gas-based liquid fuels such as ethanol or methanol. This paper examines the potential economic, environmental, and national security gains from replacing a portion of the domestic gasoline use in the light-duty fleet with these various NG-based fuels. Also examined are the regulatory barriers to the expanded use of the fuels. We find that these NG-based fuels could yield significant fuel cost savings relative to conventional gasoline in the light-duty fleet, along with gains to national security and, possibly, some environmental benefits.

Keywords: energy; natural gas; alternative fuels (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q42 Q48 Q53 Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-09-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-res and nep-tre
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-13-28.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-13-28.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-13-28.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-13-28

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RFF Working Paper Series from Resources for the Future Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Resources for the Future ().