Compressed Natural Gas Tahoe Traveling from Texas to Boston - 6/1/10

T. Boone Pickens has been pushing for compressed natural gas (CNG) for some time saying it is a bridge to solar and wind power generation, but outside of states like California and Florida CNG vehicles are not practical or are they?

Castlen Kennedy, a student at the University of Texas in Austin, is driving a CNG Chevy Tahoe from Texas to Boston as part of her Master’s Degree thesis.  She hopes to spread the word about CNG and plans to meet people already involved with natural gas.  Kennedy is calling this project “The Green American Road Trip”.  Kennedy is about half way to Boston.

Kennedy is not doing this just for her thesis; she is very knowledgeable on the natural gas industry and speaks about natural gas like an industry insider.  Along with attending UT she works for Apache Corporation which is an oil and gas producer headquartered in Houston.  Before working for Apache she was a Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Fossil Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Half way through her trip so far it has been a success.  Kennedy always calls ahead to the CNG stations where she plans to refuel to make sure they are open to the public.  She has had a few almost empty tank scares but that is all. 

Natural gas is substantially cheaper than gasoline and natural gas is very abundant in the United States.  Simple switching over our eighteen wheelers to natural gas could be an enormous step toward the United States moving toward energy independence!

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