Abstract
The abundance of natural gas in the United States because of the number of existing natural gas reserves and the recent advances in extracting unconventional reserves has been one of the main drivers for low natural gas prices. A question arises of what is the optimal use of natural gas as a transportation fuel. Is it more efficient to use natural gas in a stationary power application to generate electricity to charge electric vehicles, compress natural gas for onboard combustion in vehicles, or re-form natural gas into a denser transportation fuel? This study investigates the well-to-wheels energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from various natural gas to transportation fuel pathways and compares the results to conventional gasoline vehicles and electric vehicles using the US electrical generation mix. Specifically, natural gas vehicles running on compressed natural gas are compared against electric vehicles charged with electricity produced solely from natural gas combustion in stationary power plants. The results of the study show that the dependency on the combustion efficiency of natural gas in stationary power can outweigh the inherent efficiency of electric vehicles, thus highlighting the importance of examining energy use on a well-to-wheels basis.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 194-203 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Energy |
| Volume | 75 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 1 2014 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2014 The Authors.
Funding
This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. This work was supported by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Energy Science and Transportation Division and the ORNL Sustainable Transportation Program. The authors gratefully acknowledge the guidance of Jake Ward, Kevin Stork, and Steve Przesmitzki at the DOE Vehicle Technologies Office. Special thanks also goes out to Brian West, VJ Ewing, Charlie Horak, Karson Stone and Michelle Edwards at ORNL for editorial comments.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory |
Keywords
- Compressed natural gas
- Electric vehicles
- Natural gas
- Natural gas vehicles
- WTW (well-to-wheels)
