对我国发展天然气汽车的建议

A Little Advice on Developing Natural Gas-powered Vehicles in China

我国正面临空气污染的严重威胁,而多个国家的经验告诉我们,推广天然气汽车是改善空气质量的有效手段。我国目前重点出台扶持政策推广纯电动汽车,但效果欠佳,主要原因一是充电不方便,二是充电时间长,三是销售价格高且性价比低,这些问题在短期内恐无法解决。相对于纯电动汽车,天然气汽车不存在上述问题,更具有在短期内推广的优势。天然气加气站普及建设更加便利,完全可以将效益不好的加油站改装为加气站,或改装为油气混合站;天然气汽车一般几分钟就可完成加气,与加油时间基本相当;同时价格低,成本回收快,更易被市场和用户所接受;另外在二氧化碳减排方面,天然气汽车也不逊于电动汽车。目前影响我国天然气汽车发展的主要问题是优惠政策少,油气价差小,加气困难,管网建设未能大范围普及。建议应推行差别定价,对天然气汽车充气实行比工业和化工用气更低的价格,并辅以财税优惠;研究推行油气混合站,加强在加油站增设充气设施的研究和实践;同时要加快天然气管网建设,充分利用国内外两个市场,推动我国天然气汽车的发展。

China is facing a serious threat from air pollution.Experience from a host of countries tells us that promoting the use of natural gas-powered vehicles is an effective approach to improving air quality.China ′s policy incentives for new energy vehicles focus on fully electric vehicles but have not produced satisfactory results primarily due to three factors.Firstly,such vehicle is not easy to charge.Secondly,charging takes a long time.Thirdly,prices are high and cost performance is low.These drawbacks may not be solved in the short term.Compared with fully electric vehicles,natural gas-powered vehicles do not have the above problems and are more suitable for wider use in the short term.Natural gas-filling stations are easier to develop and build.It is fully feasible to modify a service station to a gas filling station or to convert it to a facility that supplies both conventional fuels and natural gas.Filling gas to a natural gas-powered vehicle is just a matter of a few minutes and basically takes the same time with filling conventional fuels.Furthermore,natural gas is cheaper and capital investment is easier to recover.Thus,using natural gas as fuel can be easily accepted by the market and consumers.In addition,the performance of natural gas-powered vehicles is no worse than that of electric vehicles as far as carbon dioxide emission is concerned.The main challenges faced by China ′s natural gas-powered vehicle industry are the lack of more policy incentives,the small gap between prices of conventional fuels and natural gas,the difficulty in gas filling,and the shortage of a pipeline network across the country.The author of this article suggests pushing differential pricing and offering a lower price for natural gas-power vehicles than for the industrial and chemical sectors,supported by fiscal incentives.The author also suggests developing facilities that supply both conventional fuels and natural gas,and conducting study into adding natural gas filling facilities to service stations and putting the study results into use.Other suggestions proposed by the author include quickening the construction of natural gas pipeline networks and utilizing both the domestic and overseas markets to push the growth of the natural gas-powered vehicle industry.