Letter to White House Chief of Staff William Daley

January 21, 2011

Mr. William Daley
Chief of Staff
The White House

Dear Mr. Daley:

I am writing to urge inclusion in the President’s State of the Union address of a concrete proposal to move our country quickly away from its dangerous dependence on foreign oil. The U.S. is far behind much of the rest of the world in tackling this problem effectively. The attached two charts tell the story. Instead, we should be the world’s leader. Can that happen? Absolutely!

Much of the focus has been on promoting electric vehicle technology for the light-duty market. That certainly should continue.  However, little attention is being paid to the greatest immediate area of opportunity: America’s 10 million medium- and heavy-duty trucks and buses. These vehicles are the economic lifeblood of the country, transporting 85% of our GDP by value. They are essential to the life of our cities: transporting their people, taking their children to school, and picking up their wastes and recyclables. And they are most affected by rising petroleum prices.  Fortunately, a clean, domestic and cost-effective answer is available to us –shift those vehicles to natural gas.

Buses and trucks, which operate mainly on diesel fuel, make up just 4% of vehicles on the road, but consume almost 25% of all our on-road fuel. Accelerating the shift of these vehicles to cleaner domestic natural gas does not require any technological breakthroughs. The technology is commercial and cost-competitive today. A shift in this sector would mean cleaner air for Americans. It would cut fleet greenhouse gas emissions by a third. And it would free up more than $100 million a day to invest in our domestic economy that now goes abroad to buy the oil needed for these fleets.

Importantly, an expanding natural gas vehicle market today paves the way to use of our first truly sustainable fuel, namely “biomethane,” a renewable form of natural gas made from landfill gas, sewage, animal or crop waste or any other organic waste.

There are now over 12 million vehicles running on natural gas around the world, but only 110,000 in the U.S.  We’re 14th among nations – just ahead of Armenia!  But President Obama can help make us first in the world. 

Put most briefly and simply:  President Obama should call for a systematic strategy to protect the highly economically crucial trucking and bus sectors against foreign oil supply disruptions – by stepping up the incentives for converting 10 million trucks and buses to domestic natural gas and for simultaneously building a job-intensive industry to make renewable natural gas from urban, farm, and industrial wastes in every state in the union

Thank you for considering this proposal.

Joanna D. Underwood
President, Energy Vision

See Appendix 1 - Growth of Natural Gas Vehicles Worldwide

See Appendix 2 - Natural Gas Vehicles in the US