As much as I hate government "good ideas", this conference, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy held in Oxton Hill, Md., was very interesting, with the Methane Opportunities for Vehicular Energy particularly exciting. $30 million dollars will be made available for high energy density tanks for CNG and low cost home refueling. 2500 people were there for an event that hopes to generate thought and action for energy technology breakthroughs. Now, this is not much money when compared with the government's bio-fuel and solar panel adventures but it is at least something and may imply an understanding of the area's importance, if not the degree.
We are awash in natural gas. If you do a search before 2008 for natural gas discovery stories, the only one was Haynesville in Louisiana. All the talk was about building new importing facilities.The Bakken, the Marcellus, Utica all, miraculously, came to be realistic gas sources within the last four years. They are now planning to reverse those port facilities and make the gas importing sites exporting. We might be saved.
Storage of the fuel is more complex than conversion but we have a lot of this fuel, should use it and perhaps this is an early good sign. That said, it is difficult to understand the thinking of any lawmaker, but especially the Republicans, who voted against New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions Act (NAT GAS) this week, a bill aimed at encouraging the adaptation of natural gas as a transportation fuel. This bill, known as the Pickens Bill, has some annoying qualities and certainly subsidizes some businesses, especially Pickens' . But denying that this kind of thing is routine in Washington is simply insincere purism and all of the bill's opponents should suffer for it.
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