Living Like Ed (13 page)

Another option, when it comes to natural gas, is a flex-fuel vehicle, one that can run on natural gas and that can also run on either gasoline or diesel fuel. As the name suggests, a flex-fuel vehicle gives you more flexibility, since you can run on readily available gasoline or diesel when you can’t find a natural gas filling station—and they’re not easy to find as of yet.

                  We had some, um, adventures with a flex-fuel car that Ed used to own, which ran on natural gas and gasoline. We traveled cross-country in that car one time, and Ed had this old map of all the natural-gas filling stations. Now, they don’t have an infrastructure for this stuff. It doesn’t exist. We’d go to these places where there’s supposed to be a tank of natural gas, and they’d be like, “Oh, no, three years ago they got rid of that.”

But Ed was determined that he would find natural gas. So he would drive around for an hour in a city—burning natural gas while looking for natural gas—instead of just going to a gas station and filling up with gasoline until we could get to the next natural gas station.

On more than one occasion, we would go to a place and it would living like just be a stump. And then we’d be in the boondocks with not enough gas. And I would always be on pins and needles, wondering if we were going to make it across the country. It was never dull. But I did it once. One time. That was it.

Oh, and remember how I wouldn’t take the electric car to the hospital when I was in labor with Hayden? Well, that meant we had to take the
other
car, which was this same natural gas flex-fuel car. So we get in, and we go out of the driveway toward the street, and Ed takes a left, and that’s a funny way to go, because the hospital is in the other direction. Then he gets on the freeway and heads completely in the opposite direction. I asked, “Where are we going?” And Ed says, “We’re out of natural gas, so we have to go to Glendale.” Now, we live in Studio City, and Glendale is a good 10 miles away by freeway, so I was like “No way! Pull the car over! Get off the freeway! Get to a gas station immediately!”

I think he thought I was going to deliver right then and there, so he pulled off and went to a gas station, but even then he would not get out of the car and pump the gasoline. So I had to get out of the car—in labor—and pump gasoline. And I said, “I hope some-one’s taking your picture right now.”

We finally made it to the hospital, with time to spare, but you never know about these things. My feeling is, get natural gas on your own time, buddy! Not when I’m in labor.

I’m not sure our marriage could have survived all this craziness for too many years. Thank goodness the car companies have come out with some really good green vehicles that are easy to live with, like my Prius and Ed’s Phoenix SUT.

Well, Rachelle may be a bit dramatic about all this, but she does bring up a good point. If you’re determined to use the greener fuel and avoid using gasoline, then a natural gas flex-fuel vehicle probably is not your best choice.

Natural gas does have some distinct advantages, though:

•
It emits 60 to 90 percent less smog-producing pollutants than gasoline.

•
It emits 30 to 40 percent less greenhouse gases.

•
It’s less expensive than gasoline.

However, natural gas intrinsically has less energy than gasoline, and that means you can’t travel as far on a single tank of fuel. Also, flex-fuel vehicles have to have two separate fuel tanks (one for gasoline or diesel and the other for natural gas), so that cuts into your cargo-carrying space.

Propane

Propane is another clean-burning fossil fuel. Like natural gas, it’s still a limited resource, but, again, it comes primarily from domestic sources—85 percent of the time. A propane-powered vehicle—such as a forklift or a propane-powered personal vehicle—runs much cleaner than one powered by gasoline. Propane is derived from crude oil, so it’s not as environmentally friendly in many ways as other alternative fuels. But it is definitely cleaner. Vehicles powered by propane produce fewer toxic and smog-forming emissions, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is less expensive than gasoline.

You can retrofit a gasoline or diesel vehicle to burn LPG—or to burn natural gas, for that matter. And propane is relatively easy to find. You just go to the same place you would go to refill the propane tank for your barbecue or your space heater.

For a while, no one was offering a vehicle that operated solely on propane. Then a company called Roush, a supplier to the automakers that has a long-standing relationship with Ford, introduced the 2007.5 Roush Ford F-150. It’s got a liquid propane injection (LPI) system. Roush converts a Ford F-150 pickup with the 5.4-liter Triton V-8 engine to run on propane, and the truck’s got the same horsepower and torque ratings as the gas version. You even order it and have it serviced at a Ford dealer. So it should be about as easy to live with as the gas-powered version of this truck, while reducing emissions.

Biodiesel

Traditional diesel fuel has been a big problem. What we’ve suspected for years—what your nose and lungs tell you, what your breathing apparatus tells you—is that diesel emissions are very bad for your health. And now that’s been proven.

The problem is the particulate matter (PM) that comes out of a diesel vehicle’s tailpipe. The allowable threshold for this sooty matter has changed. Once upon a time it could be up to PM 10; that’s 10 microns in size. Now nothing over 2
¹
?
₂
microns is allowed, and it’s a fraction of the width of a human hair. Still, diesel exhaust has a lot of PM 2.5, and these little particles are very damaging to your lungs. Because they’re so small, they get in there really deep and really far.

Clean diesel
has a lot less sulfur in it than traditional diesel fuel, and that’s a step in the right direction. Still, we’ve long viewed “clean diesel” as an oxy-moron, because even the clean diesel is made from traditional crude oil products, so it’s just not as clean as so many other things available today, including natural gas. Electric cars are much cleaner, as are hybrids.

However, there is something called
biodiesel
that’s cleaner than clean diesel—and, more important, it’s not refined from crude oil, like regular diesel fuel. Biodiesel is made from vegetable oils, animal fats, or recycled restaurant greases. You can even take vegetable oil, refine it slightly in your garage, and then run your car on it. That burns pretty clean.

But keep in mind, on the plus and minus sides, even biodiesel emissions have some PM 2.5 and NOx, that is to say, oxides of nitrogen in it. If it’s made from vegetable oil, I imagine it’s less harmful than crude oil particles, but the exhaust still contains particulate matter that’s not good for your lungs. Simply stated, the tailpipe of a hybrid is cleaner than the tailpipe of a biodiesel car.

The reason I mentioned biodiesel at all is because it’s not a refined product coming from crude oil. There’re none of the challenges that we get with Mideast oil and all the many forms of pollution that come from drilling and what have you. But I’m not strongly in favor of biodiesel either, because there’s an energy stream that’s involved in making biodiesel. It’s made from
new
corn and
new
soybeans, which are harvested with lots of John Deere equipment, which may or may not run on biodiesel. All the equipment used to harvest the crops—and all the fossil fuels used to make the fertilizers to grow the corn and the soybeans—tax the environment, too. Now, biodiesel can be good for U.S. farmers—it’s a great cash crop for them—and I want to support the farmers just like Willie Nelson does. I want clean fuel, and I want to help the farmers, too. But maybe we can help the farmers in other ways, by making biodiesel from AG (agricultural) waste. Grow the corn to feed
people,
and what have you got left? A big old cornstalk, a huge stalk with lots of cellulose in it that can be turned into biodiesel. Lots of other crops have AG waste that can be used to make biodiesel, too. It’s another win-win.

Maybe we also can help farmers by having them plant switchgrass, which is so easy to grow, it grows wild. If we can make the biodiesel from switch-grass or from AG waste, then I’m really in favor of it. It’s much more desirable economically, environmentally, in every way.

Even as is, biodiesel is biodegradable and nontoxic, so if it does spill, it doesn’t require a hazardous waste cleanup program.

In short, biodiesel has great promise. And can they clean up the problem with oxides of nitrogen in biodiesel exhaust? Absolutely. Can they clean up the problems with PM 2.5 in biodiesel? No question. And they should right away, because that’s something you can address with a particulate trap—an existing technology.

You can use biodiesel in its pure form, 100 percent biodiesel, also called B100. But few people do. The people who manufacture biodiesel usually blend it with petroleum diesel. The most common blends are B2 (2 percent biodiesel), B5, and B20.

Most vehicle manufacturers
do not
recommend using blends greater than 5 percent. In fact, using a higher blend will void some engine warranties. Car companies generally do say that B2 and B5 can be used safely in most diesel engines.