These are highways that have natural gas fueling stations between cities, just like the one that folks at UPS, South Coast Air and Clean Energy Fuels are opening today between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City.
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And, Qatar-based businessman Hesham Ismail AbdulRahman Al Emadi is leading an ambitious project to create a global network of " Energy Cities" to house the oil and gas industry.
Cities are particularly keen to tackle landfill gas, says Mr Blumenfeld of San Francisco's Department of Environment, because it is one of the few sources of emissions over which they have jurisdiction.
Like Mr. Pfeiffer, many people connected to the shale and natural-gas industry are relocating to major cities in Texas.
Chinese leaders want to clean up smog-shrouded cities and rein in reliance on oil and gas imports they see as a strategic weakness.
Other steps discussed at the conference range from the practical, such as replacing biomass fuels with kerosene or natural gas, to the idealism of cities developed so that no cars are needed, and thus no car-related pollution is generated.
Los Angeles had the worst traffic of the cities measured with more than 30% longer drives, despite an increase of gas prices of 16% year-over-year.
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But 12 states, three cities, 13 environmental groups and a ski resort want the EPA to cap the gas in an effort to help slow global warming.
The authors predict that falling costs of auto transportation will favor exurbs over large cities, and provide some statistical evidence that the elasticity of density with respect to gas prices is 1.1.
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Some observers such as Dr. Robert Lang, an expert on urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech University, say the gas crunch could be a turning point in perceptions of public transportation and how cities plan development.
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Cities consume around 75 percent of the world's energy and produce 80 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions.
Its "Promoting Sustainable Transport Solutions for East African Cities" project aims to reduce growth in private motor vehicles, thus reducing traffic congestion and greenhouse-gas emissions.
However, it raises costs in yen terms of the imported crude oil and natural gas that resource-scarce Japan must rely on to keep its industries humming and power its cities.
The need to build pipelines from gas fields to utilities and the requirement to build networks of charging stations on highways and in major cities will require a whole new massive infrastructure effort, which in turn will need the services of construction workers, engineers and other assorted building folk.
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