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Renewable Natural Gas
What about RNG?
Proponents worry renewable
natural gas isn’t getting a fair shake
By James Menzies
Renewable natural gas (RNG) doesn’t get
much love from environmental regula-
tors such as the U.S. EPA and California
Air Resources Board (CARB).
Engine makers don’t earn credits for
selling natural gas engines. Government
agencies that regulate the transportation
sector’s pollutants don’t consider the gas
to be a zero-emission fuel.
But this frustrates fleets that have
proven renewable natural gas offers a
relatively simple way to substantially
slash overall emissions.
In the case of CO2, the fuel can actu-
ally be carbon-negative. That’s possible
because RNG is produced from methane
– generally collected from landfill sites
or dairy farms – which is much more
dangerous to air quality than CO2. When
captured and converted to RNG, meth-
ane is eliminated from the atmosphere.
Proponents of RNG discussed the
issue at length during a panel at the
American Trucking Associations’ (ATA)
Management Conference & Exhibition in
October.
“RNG is here today, the engines are
here today, and they’re certified to the
cleanest standards today. If we want to
make improvements to the environment
and try to address climate change issues,
18 TODAY’S TRUCKING
we should be taking more advantage of
what is available today rather than 10-20
years in the future,” said Matt Spears,
executive director, regulatory affairs with
Cummins.
He added the technology “could be a
game-changer for being able to comply
with those [impending emissions regu-
lations] without forcing fleets into bat-
tery-electric.”
Waste Management runs North
America’s largest fleet of RNG-fueled
Class 8 trucks, with more than 13,000 on
the road today. By 2026, it hopes to fuel
its entire fleet with RNG produced at the
landfill sites it manages, and by then it
will even have additional capacity it can
sell publicly.
Marty Tufte, corporate fleet director
for Waste Management, said it has been
a welcome tool for the fleet, whose stop-
and-go, high-idle application was not
ideal for diesel engines or their related
exhaust aftertreatment system require-
ments. He also noted natural gas pricing
has been stable for decades, unlike vola-
tile diesel prices.
But it’s not just vocational fleets that
are interested in the fuel. Matt Copot is
vice-president of fleet management of
LTL carrier Saia.
(Photo: Dairy Cares)
“We’re rather new to this space,” he
said. “We just started a couple years ago
realizing this isn’t a gap technology. It
has opened our eyes. Right now we’re
in the early stages of adoption. ESG
[environmental, sustainability and gov-
ernance] is a big initiative for Saia and
we’ll continue down this path realizing
it’s a bona fide fueling option for us mov-
ing forward.”
Clean Energy has more than 600 nat-
ural gas stations for commercial vehicles
available in the U.S. and Canada, and
the capacity to double volumes, said
Brett Lindsay, vice-president, national
accounts. He showed a map that indi-
cates it’s easy to find CNG on longhaul
routes right across the U.S.
“Operationally, we view these vehicles
as something that’s easier to ­ transition
into [than battery-electric],” said Saia’s
Copot. “We tried other alternative-fueled
vehicles and there was more
­ learning involved. These are a little more
­ traditional.”
Cummins has come to market with a
15-liter X15N engine that addresses con-
cerns fleets may have about power and
payload capabilities. Ryan Bankerd, cor-
porate director of sustainability for UPS,
is encouraged by early performance data
coming off that engine in his fleet.
“We have some good mpg data
coming out of it,” he said, adding RNG
compares favorably to battery-electric
and other technologies when it comes to
total cost of ownership.
Spears said it’s a simpler design.
Instead of a diesel particulate filter and