Natural Gas

Natural gas is a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds in gaseous state, mostly methane (EIA 2019d). For additional background, see the Alternative Fuels Data Center's Natural Gas Fuel Basics.

On this page, explore the fuel price and emissions intensity of natural gas.

Key Assumptions

The data and estimates presented here are based on the following key assumptions:

  • The fuel price (e.g., Lowest Cost, Lowest Emissions) is associated with a single year. Because we do not provide a time-series trajectory, here we show fuel price at a frozen level for all years so we can offer a range of fuel price values. In the levelized cost of driving and emissions charts, this approach clearly distinguishes effects of fuels from those of vehicle technologies, because fuels remain constant while vehicle technologies change over time.
  • The current market natural gas price is based on 2018 national average retail prices for compressed natural gas reported by Clean Cities (DOE 2018a), which include taxes.
  • The emissions estimates are from GREET 2018 (Argonne National Laboratory 2018).
  • The data downloads include additional detail on assumptions and calculations for each metric.

References

The following references are specific to this page; for all references in this ATB, see References.

Argonne National Laboratory (2018). GREET Model: The Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation Model. Argonne National Laboratory. https://greet.es.anl.gov/

DOE (2018). Clean Cities Alternative Fuel Price Report, January 2018. U.S. Department of Energy. https://afdc.energy.gov/files/u/publication/alternative_fuel_price_report_jan_2018.pdf

EIA (2019). Glossary. https://www.eia.gov/tools/glossary/

Developed with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.