Ohio might join with neighboring states and convert government vehicle fleets to run on natural gas, which would boost demand for gas from the region’s shale formations, Gov. John Kasich said yesterday.
The governor spoke about the plan in the closing address of his two-day energy conference. He also said his office will announce a comprehensive energy policy by spring, although he gave few details about what it might include.
Kasich said he spoke with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett about the natural-gas-fueled vehicle idea, and members of his staff have brought up the idea with counterparts in Indiana and Michigan.
If several states worked together, they could create enough demand to drive down costs and encourage the manufacture of more natural-gas-fueled vehicles, Kasich said.
“Maybe some of those new cars will be built in Ohio,” he said.
Ohio’s state fleet has more than 12,000 vehicles. It is not clear how many of these would become natural-gas-fueled or how much such a project would cost.
The country had 114,270 compressed-natural-gas vehicles, according to 2009 figures, the most-recent available from the Department of Energy.
The Honda Civic Natural Gas, made in Indiana, is the only mass-market passenger car sold in the United States that runs on natural gas.
Other passenger models can be converted to run on the fuel.
The larger issue at the conference was the promise of natural gas from shale — and the potential that regulatory and environmental issues might hinder the industry’s development. Critics have said that “fracking” — the drilling technique used to extract resources from shale — is bad for air and water quality.
“We cannot stop fracking,” Kasich said, later adding that the process needs to be done in a way that respects the environment, or else “we’ll never forgive ourselves.”
Also at the event, executives of some of the country’s top automakers spoke about the role of energy in their businesses, and about the obstacles they face when deciding whether to expand in Ohio.
“Over the medium term and long term, auto manufacturing will be sustained in Ohio and grow in Ohio,” said Rick Schostek, vice president of Honda of America Manufacturing, based in Marysville. His company has more than 13,000 employees in the state, more than any other automaker.
Chrysler, Ford and General Motors also have plants in the state.
At least one other automaker considered Ohio in the early 2000s. Toyota decided to build elsewhere, partly because the state had a large number of plants, which would have lead to competition for workers and suppliers, said Dennis Cuneo, a former Toyota executive who is now a site-selection consultant.
“We didn’t want to be in Honda’s backyard,” he said.
Since then, though, with the closing of several plants in the state, he thinks there is room for an automaker to build a plant in the Dayton or Cincinnati areas.
The greatest impediment to attracting an auto company might be the state’s tradition of organized labor, Cuneo said, a comment he prefaced by asking the audience not to “kill the messenger.”
Contacted for a response, Ken Lortz, a regional director for the United Auto Workers in Ohio, said it is “absurd” to suggest that unions are an impediment to attracting employers. He listed examples of unionized auto plants that repeatedly have won awards for quality and productivity.
Other panels covered regulatory issues and the environmental concerns related to oil and gas production. The latter topic led to this comment about fracking:
“You can frack responsibly, but you have to use proper earth-control methods,” said Robert Chase, chairman of the petroleum-engineering department at Marietta College.
Source: Columbus Dispatch
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment