San Bernardino Associated Governments is the Council of Governments and Transportation Planning Agency for San Bernardino County located in Southern California. They partnered with the California Energy Commission, United States Department of Energy/Clean Cities, and Ryder System, Inc., to deploy 202 state-of-the-art compressed natural gas and liquefied natural gas heavy-duty tractor-trailer trucks in leased service. The objectives of the project were to 1) demonstrate the feasibility of using cleaner-burning, lower-carbon content natural gas in commercial trucking operations; 2) provide a low-carbon supply chain transportation solution to Ryder System, Inc. customers seeking to displace petroleum diesel fuel with domestically produced natural gas; and 3) achieve substantial, quantifiable reductions in ozone precursor and greenhouse gas air pollutant emissions. In addition to the deployment of 202 heavy- duty natural gas tractors, the project also constructed two publicly accessible natural gas refueling stations.
The project successfully deployed 182 heavy-duty Freightliner M2112 natural gas trucks equipped with the Cummins Westport ISL engine and 20 heavy-duty Peterbilt 386 trucks equipped with the Westport high-pressure, direct-injection liquefied natural gas 14.9 liter engine. During the 20-month demonstration period, the natural gas trucks accrued greater than 8.67 million revenue miles and displaced more than 1.4 million gallons of diesel fuel, exceeding project goals. This corresponds to a reduction in ozone precursor oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions exceeding 3 US tons, and carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2E) GHG reductions exceeding 2,900 US tons.
Author(s)
Duane Baker, Ghassan Dagher, Raymond Gorski, Jenny HerreraKelly Lynn
