Union Gas, City of Hamilton partner to grow natural gas transit fleet

Clean, affordable natural gas offers up to 40% savings, 25% fewer emissions

HAMILTON, ON, May 30, 2014 /CNW/ - Union Gas is partnering with the City of Hamilton to build and maintain a compressed natural gas (CNG) station that will fuel the city's transit bus fleet.

The new station will have the capacity to allow the city's fleet of natural gas buses to grow from the current complement of 35 to a total of 120 vehicles over the next six years and will replace an existing station at the city's transit facility on Upper James Street that is nearing end of life.

"We are pleased to be working with the City of Hamilton, a pioneer in natural gas transit vehicles, to modernize and grow its natural gas transit fleet," said Dave Simpson, vice president of in-franchise sales and marketing and customer care for Union Gas. "CNG significantly reduces operating costs and contributes to a cleaner environment, making it an ideal transport fuel for buses and other heavy truck fleets."

The transportation sector is Ontario's largest energy consumer, using 34 per cent of all energy consumed in 2010, and represents the single largest remaining share of Ontario's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At the same time, only 0.1 per cent of all energy supplied to the transportation sector is from natural gas.

Natural gas prices are lower today than 10 years ago, which means savings of up to 40 per cent compared with diesel or gasoline, and experts agree that natural gas will continue to be competitively priced well into the next decade. Natural gas also produces up to 25 per cent fewer GHG emissions compared with diesel or gasoline, and almost no sulphur dioxide or particular matter.

"We are excited about the opportunity that the use of natural gas as a transportation fuel presents for the City of Hamilton to benefit both from an economic and environmental perspective," said Geoff Lupton, director of energy, fleet & traffic for the City of Hamilton's corporate assets & strategic planning division.

Replacing the existing fleet of 35 buses with CNG versus diesel will save the City over $1.9 million in fuel costs over the next two years, and reduce C0² emissions by the equivalent of removing over 18,100 passenger cars from city streets.  And as the City's CNG fleet expands, the savings will be even greater.

Details of the project will be further developed in the coming months as the city and Union Gas work together to structure contracts surrounding the construction and maintenance of the station.

About Union Gas
Union Gas has over 100 years of experience in the natural gas acquisition, storage, distribution and transmission business and has safely owned and operated the only existing Ontario-based liquefied natural gas plant in Hagar since 1968. The distribution business serves about 1.4 million residential, commercial and industrial customers in more than 400 communities across northern, southwestern and eastern Ontario. Union Gas's storage and transmission business offers a variety of storage and transportation services to customers at the Dawn Hub, the largest integrated underground storage facility in Canada and one of the largest in North America. The Dawn Hub offers customers an important link in the movement of natural gas from Western Canadian and U.S. supply basins to markets in central Canada and the northeast U.S. Union Gas is a Spectra Energy (NYSE: SE) company with assets of $6.4 billion and approximately 2,200 employees. For more information, visit uniongas.com or find us on Twitter: twitter.com/uniongas, Facebook: facebook.com/uniongas and YouTube: youtube.com/user/uniongas.

SOURCE: Union Gas Limited

Union Gas   
Andrea Stass
Manager, External Communications and Media Relations
Ph: 519 436-5490 or 1-800-571-8446 ext. 5005490
Cell: 519 365-1010
[email protected]

City of Hamilton
Kelly Anderson,
Public Affairs Coordinator, Public Works Department | City of Hamilton
Ph: 905-546-2424, ext. 1430
Cell: 905-973-4230
[email protected]