Download White Paper: The Feasibility, Issues, and Benefits Associated with Expanded Use of Natural Gas at Seaports and Other High Horsepower Applications

Exploring the potential and hurdles of expanding natural gas use in California’s seaport high-horse-power applications for emissions reduction and cost savings

This report assesses the feasibility, issues, and potential benefits associated with the expanded use of natural gas in California high-horse-power (HHP) seaport applications. Using natural gas in HHP seaport applications can provide strong societal benefits, especially in high-impact sectors like marine vessels and locomotives. It can significantly reduce key harmful air pollutants, thereby improving ambient air quality. By switching to natural gas, HHP end users at California’s seaports have the opportunity to simultaneously comply with challenging regulatory requirements while potentially reducing life-cycle costs. Moreover, if these fleets can gain affordable access to growing volumes of renewable natural gas (RNG) in California, they will be able to realize deep reductions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The focus of this report is on using natural gas in California’s three major ports (Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland). These large seaports act as the anchors of California’s world-class goods movement system. To date, the actual use of natural gas to power HHP vehicles, vessels, and equipment at these and other North American ports has essentially been limited to proof-of-concept tests and a few early market commercial deployments. Moreover, very low oil prices over the last several years have inhibited further growth of demonstrations and deployments. However, the predicted return of higher oil prices, combined with recent phasing-in of stricter emission regulations, has stimulated new interest in switching to clean-burning natural gas engines at California ports and across the U.S. LNG fuel systems are receiving the most interest for these large HHP applications, but CNG fuel systems may also play a role in future niche applications. Gradually, RNG can be phased in to displace fossil-based natural gas, to sharply reduce GHG emissions, and maximize the climate change benefits.

As summarized in this report, there are important technical, policy, institutional, and economic challenges that must be addressed before California can realize the major benefits of using natural gas in seaport HHP applications. Recommendations are provided for actions that can be helpful to enable fuel switching in marine and locomotive applications serving California seaports. The recommendations generally fall within the jurisdictions of key California state agencies and state funding programs. However, they also broadly apply to federal and local agencies, industry groups, and academic institutions that seek to reduce criteria pollutant and/or GHG emissions from marine vessels and locomotives.