Bradley transport among Conn.'s alt-fuel efforts

HARTFORD - Come next spring, Yellow cabs and shuttle buses running on compressed natural gas will be driving to and from Bradley International Airport after fueling up at the Shell station on Route 75, one of 10 statewide alternative fueling stations funded by $29 million in matching federal and private monies.

The nonprofit groups implementing the four-year Connecticut Clean Cities Future Fuels Project were on hand to promote the use of alternative fuels and alternative-fuel-powered vehicles at Thursday's Clean Fuels and Vehicles Technology Expo at the Connecticut Expo Center. Also on display were 25 state-of-the-art "green" buses, vans, passenger cars and taxis, some of the 260 alternative-fuel-powered vehicles the project will deploy.

The program - funded by $14 million in federal stimulus and U.S. Department of Energy cash plus $15 million in matching money from 30 participating businesses and cities and towns - is the largest public/private partnership in the state's history and involves compressed natural gas, liquid natural gas, hydrogen fuel cell, biodiesel and electric battery charging.

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All 10 charging stations - at Windsor Locks, Bloomfield, Bridgeport, Fairfield, Glastonbury, Hartford, Meriden, Norwich and West Haven - will at least offer compressed natural gas starting in March or April. Meriden's station has already opened. Bridgeport's will open this month. The stations at Bradley and in Norwich will also have an electric battery charger.

"The mission is to promote alternative fuel vehicles and alternative fuels so we can lower our dependence on imported oil," said Craig Peters, coordinator of Hartford's Capitol Clean Cities of Connecticut Coalition, one of the state's four Clean Cities coalitions implementing the $29 million fund. "Right now, compressed natural gas is the cleanest fuel that's available. You lower your greenhouse gases from 20 to 30 percent and your toxic emissions from 70 to 90 percent, and it's less expensive, and it's an American fuel."

The most important fact, said Peters, who is also Manchester Honda's fleet sales manager, is that 96 percent of the available natural gas is from North America. "We're not importing from Iraq or Iran or anywhere else," Peters said. "The U.S. is spending an average of $26 billion a month on imported oil, and that's what we're trying to stop, because that's unsustainable. You don't want to send $26 billion to countries that don't like us."

When the Windsor Locks station opens, Executive Valet and R+G Services will be the first two valet parking companies to provide natural-gas-powered shuttle buses.

Also using the Bradley station next spring will be Bloomfield-based Yellow Cab Co., which has committed to buy 110 natural gas-powered vehicles - 40 taxis and 70 handicapped-accessible vans. And in August, Connecticut Transit will have a hydrogen fueling station for five hydrogen fuel-cell-powered buses at its Hartford garage in the North Meadows.

General Motors and BMW are two other participants. GM has selected Connecticut, California, Michigan, New York, Oregon and Texas as the states to get the first batch of its new electric Volt models in January. BMW will also bring its electric cars to Connecticut and five other states in mid-2011.

Northeast Utilities, which brought GM and BMW executives to Connecticut to convince them to launch their vehicles here, is now helping municipalities and businesses set up electric charging stations. NU has already installed three stations on its own properties and is working on 20 to 25 other stations for various businesses.

"We've learned what does work and what doesn't work," NU Business Development Manager Watson Collins said.

NU is in talks with Pratt & Whitney on setting up a charging station. "Pratt & Whitney could install charging stations that their employees could take advantage of when they're parked," Collins said. "It's not just fleets. It's a great benefit to show that they're progressive companies trying to attract top talent to their locations."

Vehicles that use alternative fuels can have a big impact, said Lee Grannis, coordinator of the Greater New Haven Clean Cities Coalition.

"Natural gas costs about $1.80 a gallon. Liquified natural gas, which would replace diesel fuel, costs under $2 a gallon," Grannis said. Reducing emissions is the big savings, he said. "No. 2, it would greatly decrease our dependence on foreign oil, but we've got to get more vehicles on the road to make that happen."

It will happen, Grannis said. "It will have to, because we're running out of fuel. Plus we have a 200-year supply of natural gas, way more in the ground here in the U.S. and Canada than we thought we had."

But natural gas is not the only answer, Grannis said.

"There's no direct fuel replacement, no silver bullet. It's multiple fuels, and each one of them has their own niche that they're going to fill, and that sucking noise, the money going overseas to pay for petroleum, it will greatly decrease that. But we've got to get more people to use it and more infrastructure in."

Buck