03:07 PM EDT on Wednesday, May 24, 2006

BY DANIEL BARBARISI
Journal Staff Writer

WARWICK -- Hate the gas-guzzling SUV? Worried about greenhouse effects and smog? Fearful that we'll someday run out of oil? Rhode Island's eco-conscious, your day has come.

Environmentalists have long offered the benefits of compressed natural gas vehicles as a solution to all of these problems. The engines burn immaculately clean.

But if you wanted to drive a CNG-powered car in Rhode Island, you were out of luck.

The problem? There was nowhere to fill it up.

Monday, the Rhode Island Airport Corporation opened the state's first public-use CNG station at T.F. Green Airport, finally giving eco-friendly drivers an option and opening Rhode Island to retail sales of CNG-powered cars.

Vehicles powered by CNG produce only 10 percent of the carbon monoxide and particle discharge of gasoline-powered engines, and half the nitrogen oxides. Carbon dioxide discharge is reduced by 30 to 40 percent.

The fuel, which is primarily methane, is cheaper than gasoline -- at T.F. Green, the natural gas will retail for $2.69 for the equivalent of one gallon -- and natural gas-powered cars get better mileage.

The new station at T.F. Green Airport will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and looks and acts just like a regular gasoline station. You slide in your credit card, shoot the compressed gas in through the cylindrical nozzle, and you're on your way within two or three minutes, according to James Forte, vice president of the airport corporation's board of directors. The station is owned by Boston's Alternative Vehicle Service Group, which built the facility on airport land.

Compressed natural gas is not a new technology, but it requires a large support system that has made it slow to catch on. Without a gas station pumping up CNG from pipes or from large storage tanks, the only way to refuel is an hours-long process using a cumbersome machine stored in a driver's garage.

Because of the relative ease of operation, hybrid gas-electric cars such as the Toyota Prius have become much more popular than CNG vehicles in the last few years. But they are still operating a gasoline-powered engine, and so the ecological benefits pale in comparison to CNG-powered vehicles, which are the true darlings of the environmental movement.

According to the Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition, there were 130,000 natural gas vehicles operating in the United States and 5 million worldwide as of last year.

The states have been the leaders in buying them: In 2005, Governor Carcieri signed an order mandating that 75 percent of all new state vehicles purchased use some sort of alternative fuel -- CNG, hydrogen, ethanol, biodiesel, or others.

Rhode Island chose to use CNG.

"Initially, Rhode Island invested very heavily into natural gas," said David R. Sheldon, principal engineer with the Department of Administration's Environmental Compliance Unit.

In the last three or four years, the state has added roughly 300 CNG vehicles to its fleet, about 10 percent of its total vehicles, Sheldon said. The state has three CNG fueling stations available for its own vehicles.

Dealers in New England have made CNG vehicles sales in other states to cities and towns, and to shuttle services, such as the parking vans that serve the airport's parking lots at Logan Airport.

But without a CNG station open for public use, nearby dealers have not tried to sell to Rhode Island's fleet customers.

"Now that this is open to the public, I can start to market around the whole area," said Craig J. Peters, sales manager at Manchester Honda in Connecticut.

Your average driver is another matter, however. Without gas stations available, there has been no reason for companies to market the CNG cars to private citizens.

In California, where there are hundreds of CNG stations across the state, Honda has been the leader in selling CNG vehicles to the public. Several California dealerships sell the CNG-powered Honda Civic GX to individual drivers. The company is planning to start retailing the Civic GX in New York this fall, and Rhode Island dealers should be selling the Civic GX to the public by 2008.

While the gasoline-powered Civic GX gets an average highway mileage in the high 20s, the CNG version will average in the mid 30s, officials said.

The airport station cost roughly $800,000 to build, with AVSG paying about $350,000 and federal grant money covering the rest, according to AVSG President Babak Alizadeh.

In exchange for allowing AVSG to operate on its grounds, the Airport Corporation will receive a discount equivalent to 10 cents per gallon.

dbarbari@projo.com / (401) 277-8062