Natural Gas Fuel

Natural gas is a mixture of hydrocarbon compounds in gaseous state, mostly methane (EIA, 2019). 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.

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, 2018), 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.

Definitions

For detailed definitions, see:

CO₂e emissions

Fuel price

NO_X emissions

PM emissions

Scenarios

SO_X emissions

Well-to-tank emissions

Well-to-wheels emissions

References

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