A new Harvard study indicates that of two new types of alternative fuels for urban buses, it might be better in the long run to go with the cheaper fuel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
A new Harvard study indicates that of two new types of alternative fuels for urban buses, it might
be better in the long run to go with the cheaper fuel. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports:
Soot spewing diesel buses will soon be a thing of the past. But two different alternative fuels are
being considered for mass transit buses. One is compressed natural gas. The other is a low
sulfur-filtered diesel called emission controlled diesel.
A Harvard School of Public Health study of the fuel systems appears in the current issue of the
journal Environmental Science and Technology. Senior Researcher, Joshua Cohen says
compressed natural gas buses might be cleaner, but the health benefits cost six to nine times more
than the same health benefits of the clean diesel.
“If you spend your money on compressed natural gas buses, you’re not going to be able to buy as
many new clean buses as you could if you bought the clean diesel buses. So, that’s an important
consideration to keep in mind.”
So, while a single bus burning compressed natural gas might be cleaner, it’s so much more
expensive that, system-wide, it might be more beneficial to the environment to use the cheaper
clean diesel system in more buses.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.