CNG Love’s Travel Stops has agreed to buy Trillium CNG for an undisclosed amount. William Zobel, vice president of market development and strategy at Trillium, called the acquisition a “game changer for the industry” that will be good for both companies and their customers.
“The timing is right for a major petroleum marketer to step into the CNG space,” Zobel said. “This sends a strong statement at a critical time that CNG will play a bigger part in the nation’s mix of fuel.”
The purchase expands the Love’s network of public CNG facilities from 37 to 65 stations nationwide, enabling the company to offer CNG to its existing heavy-duty and light-duty truck customers as well as extend its services to local transit authorities, school districts, airport fleets, and civilian drivers. Trillium, which designs, builds, and maintains CNG stations, delivers more than 55 million gge of CNG each year.
NGV Solicitation The CEC will hold two public scoping workshops—on Feb. 19 in Long Beach and Feb. 22 in Fresno—to help identify the market potential and technology requirements for off-road NGVs. The staff also hopes to learn about any barriers that prevent the heavy-duty off-road vehicle sector from reducing emissions. The agency will release a competitive solicitation in the fall seeking projects that apply innovative on-road natural gas technologies to off-road NGVs.
The city of Long Beach is moving 18 percent of its vehicle fleet to RNG and renewable diesel to cut its fueling costs and reduce its carbon emissions by as much as 6,000 tons each year. Officials expect to save the city $27,000 annually by switching to RNG from LNG, due in part to credits from the Low Carbon Fuel Standard Program.
Sales of Redeem, Clean Energy’s RNG vehicle fuel, more than doubled last year, growing from 20 million gges in 2014 to 50 million gges in 2015. Fleet customers using Redeem include UPS, Republic Services, the city of Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus, and UC San Diego. Clean Energy debuted Redeem in 2013 at its public-access stations in California, and has since expanded availability to Oregon and Texas.