BAF Technologies Expanding its Reach with AT&T Natural Gas Vehicles

Natural gas vehicles are popular in markets around the world, with major automakers like Fiat and Volkswagen producing gaseous fuel vehicles to fit a variety of needs. It’s not the same in the U.S., where major automakers have largely been absent from the light-duty natural gas vehicle market in recent years. Customers – mostly fleets – opting for this alternative fuel often turn to specialty companies that can provide appropriate light-, medium-, and heavy-duty natural gas products for commercial, small business, and transit use ranging from shuttle buses and limousines to taxis.

Clean Energy Fuels Corp. has made a strategic move to bolster the market by acquiring Dallas, Texas-based BAF Technologies. Why is this important? BAF is the leading provider of natural gas vehicle systems and conversions in the United States, a good match for Clean Energy, which is the largest provider of compressed and liquefied natural gas transportation fuels in North America.

Clean Energy fuels more than 17,500 vehicles at 195 strategic locations across the U.S. and Canada and operates two LNG production plants in Texas and California, with a combined capacity of 260,000 LNG gallons per day. The company also owns and operates a landfill gas facility that produces renewable biomethane.

BAF is well positioned to churn out natural gas vehicles. In fact, as part of AT&T’s program to deploy more than 15,000 alternative-fuel vehicles over the next five years – with some 8,000 of these expected to be natural gas – BAF has become a major part of this alternative fuel program. Through AT&T, BAF is planning to convert a total of 1,850 Ford E-Series vans to compressed natural gas in 2010. This follows an initial conversion of 600 E-250 vans to natural gas as part of a 2009 contract with AT&T. BAF is also exploring additional conversions of other vehicle types, including Ford F-Series trucks, which could be made available through its national dealer network.

Natural gas vehicles of all types were especially popular with U.S. fleets in the early 1990s, prompted in large part by federal and state requirements that promoted the use of alternative fuels. The cleanest burning of all fossil fuels, natural gas has proved well-suited for transportation since it can be used seamlessly in modified internal combustion engine vehicles of all types.

This gaseous fuel produces up to 30 percent fewer CO2 greenhouse gas emissions in light-duty vehicles compared to gasoline and up to 23 percent lower CO2 emissions in medium to heavy-duty applications compared to diesel. Plus, there’s a strong energy security element to natural gas transportation. The Department of Energy estimates that 98 percent of the natural gas consumed in the country is sourced in the U.S. and Canada, a stark contrast to our situation today with petroleum fuels.

Even with these positive aspects in favor of natural gas vehicles, national attention has increasingly been geared toward plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles, reinforced by activities in Washington DC that have brought massive funding for these technologies to offset their high cost. In the midst of this, there remain solid reasons to continue developing natural gas transportation and the infrastructure to support it. Will it happen in the U.S., mirroring the considerable activities that continue to expand natural gas vehicle commercialization in other world markets? Let’s hope so.