September 8, 2021. Georgia Public Service Commission Vice-Chairman Tim Echols’ stops in the City of Thomasville to extol the benefits of compressed natural gas (CNG), which fuels the truck he’s driving. “Natural gas is an important part of the fuel mix,” said Echols, who has been a Public Service Commissioner for 10 years.
Thomasville uses CNG to fuel many of its larger vehicles, including its trash trucks. “It’s worked out real well,” Thomasville City Manager Alan Carson said. “It’s more efficient for the bigger trucks.”
Echols has been a proponent for solar power and other alternative energy during his time on the PSC — he has a Clean Energy Roadshow that he has taken across the state every summer for the last eight years — and is pushing CNG use with the Ford F-150 he’s driving.
“We are getting a lot of electric vehicles out there, but we need both CNG and electric,” he said. “Electric trucks aren’t here yet. And there are some unique characteristics trucks need to have, whether you’re towing something or whether you’re out on a job site or you have to travel a long way, you want to have that flexibility.”
Echols said the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has been reduced because of the use of natural gas and he added that the gaseous fuel is a part of a cleaner energy future.
“Natural gas has replaced coal in many of our plants, allowing us to cut our emissions in half,” he said. “Natural gas and propane are both way cleaner than gasoline and diesel. It’s a very clean fuel.”
Atlanta’s MARTA has 1,200 buses running on natural gas, Echols noted, and Macon also has city buses running on natural gas. Blue Bird is making 25% of the engines for its vehicles to run on either natural gas or propane. UPS’ vehicles also are using liquified natural gas or compress natural gas, Echols said.