Regulations

Although interest in natural gas as a transportation fuel began to gain traction with passage of the Energy Policy Act of 1992, there have been no moves to attempt to implement mandates requiring broad, market-wide use of gaseous fuels as vehicular fuels. The act did establish a basic framework for defining alternative fuels and alternative vehicles, and sought to establish a critical mass of incentives in promoting these fuels, among them compressed and liquefied natural gas (CNG and LNG, respectively).

Thus, unlike biofuels (via the Renewable Fuel Standard), gaseous fuels have not benefitted from a regulatory-induced tailwind of much scale. Support for gaseous fuels has consisted of specific, targeted incentives that look to leverage specific applications in which thes