Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero pumps compressed natural gas (CNG) fuel into a city fleet truck alongside KUB President and CEO Mintha Roach and City of Knoxville Public Service Area Manager Alex Neubert at the grand opening of KUB’s publicly accessible CNG fueling station on April 19. The station, located at 1820 Third Creek Road in Knoxville, is open to the public 24 hours per day.
KUB on Wednesday celebrated the official opening of Knoxville’s first available-to-the-public compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling station and the receipt of a $67,500 state grant to help expand KUB’s fleet of alternative fuel vehicles.
Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero, who gassed up a City pickup truck at Wednesday's opening, applauded the $2.5 million investment. The publicly accessible CNG fueling station at 1820 Third Creek Road replaces an outdated station that was available only for KUB’s fleet.
“This station bolsters our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and make Knoxville greener,” Mayor Rogero said. “In addition to providing service to the City of Knoxville’s CNG vehicles, it fills a void in the state’s network of public CNG stations by adding service near the junction of interstates 40 and 75.”
CNG is an environmentally friendly gasoline and diesel alternative that's made by compressing natural gas to less than 1 percent of its volume at standard atmospheric pressure. It costs about half as much as gasoline or diesel fuel and releases about 90 percent fewer emissions.
KUB hopes opening the fueling station to the public will help broaden the use of CNG in the Southeast and across the country. According to General Electric, natural gas currently powers more than 12 million vehicles around the world, but only about 250,000 CNG vehicles currently operate in the United States.
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