Greenhouse Gas Emission Metrics White Paper Released

Washington, D.C. – NGVAmerica, the national trade association for natural gas fuel in transportation, today released a white paper on greenhouse gas emission metrics, Understanding Global Warming Potential and Other Greenhouse Gas Emission Metrics.  The white paper offers a high-level overview of emission metrics and their associated timeframes, while explaining when one might use different metrics.

“To understand the impact of different policy options on climate change, the scientific community developed emission metrics for calculating potential climate impacts of different greenhouse gases,” said Dan Bowerson, NGVA’s Director of Technology and Development.  “There are several metrics for analyzing greenhouse gases, and there is some debate about which methods are most appropriate.  This white paper explains the differences in emission metrics and when one may be used over another.”

Natural gas use in transportation provides an immediate reduction in long-lived CO₂ emissions. The NGV industry is demonstrating its ability to dramatically reduce the amount of methane emitted along the whole supply chain, minimizing the short-term impact of methane and leading to a stronger contribution to overall climate change mitigation than many other currently available fuels used in the transportation sector.

The white paper is a product of NGVAmerica’s Emissions & Environmental Work Group comprised of multiple NGVAmerica members:  Gas Technology Institute, Shell, Hexagon Composites, Gladstein, Neandross & Associates, Clean Energy, Agility Fuel Solutions, Cummins Westport, Westport, Puget Sound Energy, SDJ Industries, American Gas Association, Clean Fuels Consulting, SoCal Gas, and Argonne National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy.  Ted Barnes (Gas Technology Institute), Roxanne Bromiley (Shell), and Dan Bowerson (NGVAmerica) led the document’s drafting.

A copy of the white paper is publicly available for NGVA members and partners here on the new ngvamerica.org website.

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About natural gas as a transportation fuel: Natural gas vehicles (NGVs) have long been the choice of fleet managers interested in escaping the volatility of ever-changing gasoline and diesel prices.  NGVs are powered by American fuel, American technology, and American innovation.  They have the cleanest emissions profile of any fuel on the market today, and NGVs make a difference through a variety of applications – trucks, trash, transit, marine and rail.  No commercially-available heavy-duty powertrain solution today runs cleaner than natural gas.