Clean Fuel News

NREL Announces New Projects to Advance Medium- and Heavy-Duty Natural Gas Vehicle Technologies

Originally posted as an NREL news release | March 6, 2019 | NREL | Original Article

$18 million awarded for research to diversify transportation energy use

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has selected nine projects as part of a multimillion-dollar effort funded jointly by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the California Energy Commission (CEC), and the Southcoast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) to advance the state of technology for natural gas vehicles (NGVs).

The selected projects will focus on reducing the total cost of ownership of NGVs, increasing vehicle efficiency, decreasing local air pollution, and advancing technology development to increase the use of more affordable medium- and heavy-duty natural gas engines and vehicles.

“Leveraging the technical expertise of industry partners can have a powerful impact on transportation technologies,” said Johney Green, associate lab director for Mechanical and Thermal Engineering Sciences at NREL. “Innovation that can change the paradigm for energy use in transportation is going to come by bringing together researchers from several areas. We are looking forward to partnering with these researchers to develop breakthrough NGV technology.”

These awards are the result of collaboration between NREL, DOE, CEC, and AQMD. The partners have a history of working together to identify and fund important natural gas vehicle projects, including supporting many of the technologies on the road today. Projects selected through this solicitation will complement DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO) research started in FY 2017.

For a list of funded projects and their descriptions, see the full article on the NREL website.