Even though a statewide ballot initiative to boost natural gas for transportation was defeated soundly by California voters last month, T. Boone Pickens’ gas-powered transportation company, Clean Energy Fuels Corp., said Monday it has won a 10-year contract with the City of Glendale, CA, to build and operate a new large-scale public access compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling facility to support the city’s expanding CNG-powered vehicle fleets.

Just before Thanksgiving, Seal Beach, CA-based Clean Energy announced that it started regular operations at its liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant at Boron, CA, the largest LNG production plant in the Southwest producing vehicle-grade fuel and the first large-scale plant in California (see Daily GPI, Nov. 25). At that time the company also said its compressed natural gas (CNG) business was expanding throughout the Southwest.

In Glendale, Clean Energy said the new CNG fueling facility will be designed to serve what it called “a range of light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles,” including public transit buses, municipal vehicles, refuse hauling trucks, taxis, shared-ride shuttle buses and passenger cars.

Located near Bob Hope Airport, the Glendale station will serve more than 30 Beeline Transit buses and a growing fleet of residential refuse trucks operated by the city, said Clean Energy, calling the location “strategic” for taxis operating in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles and shuttling passengers over the 20-mile distance between the airport and downtown Los Angeles.

Glendale said that when it completes an ongoing program to replace all of its diesel-powered fleet vehicles with CNG-powered ones, the new station is expected to dispense more than 800,000 gallons of fuel annually.

Noting that Glendale has for many years been committed to using CNG in its fleets, Clean Energy Senior Vice President James Harger said that city’s level of commitment “continues to expand.” Harger said the diesel vehicle replacement over the next five years is further evidence of this commitment.

The ongoing effort, Harger said, will “contribute significantly to boosting local efforts to curtail air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.”

Oil billionaire Pickens, who has been pushing a national initiative for using more renewable energy sources to generate electricity and diverting more natural gas to transportation, put millions of dollars into promoting California’s Proposition 10, which sought to create $5 billion in state bonds to boost the use of natural gas in vehicles at a cost of nearly $10 billion over 30 years. But more than 60% of the state’s voters rejected the idea.

Some financial news media speculated that if the ballot measure failed, Pickens and other backers would face a tougher sell with governmental authorities regarding the wisdom of investing in infrastructure for natural gas-fueled vehicles, compared with spending the same money on biofuels or electric cars and trucks. So far Clean Energy is not slowing down its push for natural gas use in vehicles, particularly large fleet and heavy-duty vehicles.

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