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Natural Gas Station Spurs Economic, Environmental Innovation


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New Hampshire community officials embrace natural gas, expect new station to drive business to region.

​PEMBROKE, N.H. July 18, 2014; NACS online reported that Clean Energy Fuels cut the ribbon this week on a first-of-its kind natural gas fueling station in Pembroke, New Hampshire, and officials at the ceremony touted the economic and environmental benefit the facility brings to the region, according to a report in the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Though there are more than 500 Clean Energy stations throughout the United States, Mark Riley, eastern region vice president for the company, said the newest site was chosen because it sits right on the Tennessee interstate pipeline, providing the station with a high-pressure, high-volume source of natural gas.

“This is our first facility in New Hampshire that has both vehicle fueling and trailer filling,” he said in an interview with the Union Leader. “Actually, this is the first facility we’ve built with the trailer-filling component.”

Clean Energy, which has been in business for about 18 years, typically serves transit buses and automobiles, but Riley said his company partnered with NG Advantage to deliver natural gas to manufacturing facilities and large industrial facilities throughout New England.

According to the news report, Vicki Quiram, assistant commissioner for New Hampshire’s Department of Environmental Services, said the facility is a “fabulous example” of the connection between a healthy economy and a healthy environment.

Quiram said on-road motor vehicles emit more than half the air pollutants that contribute to ground-level ozone, the primary ingredient in smog. More than half the emissions of greenhouse gases, she added, come from energy use in the transportation process of heating.

“When you’re dispensing [natural gas] into your vehicle, there’s no opportunity for leakage, and if there is any sort of escape of natural gas, it goes into the air ... and it dissipates very quickly,” he said. “And when it actually combusts in your vehicle, it’s extremely clean. You know, some of the cleanest vehicles on earth are natural gas vehicles.”

The facility is expected to attract more innovative businesses to the area.