More environmentally friendly vehicles may be on the roads as early as April thanks to a joint venture between Evanston, Northwestern University and Skokie.

The new project, funded by a nearly $300,000 federal grant, would create a compressed natural gas facility on the 2000 block of Asbury Avenue to serve the three partners and eventually the public. The facility would take compressed natural gas from a pipeline and dispense it like a gasoline station to special cars equipped to run on this kind of fuel.

This project, named Evnorsko after the names of the three founding members, was created to meet the standards of the Clean Air Act of 1990, which requires operators of a fleet of 10 or more vehicles to purchase clean-fuel vehicles.

Though none of the three partners owns natural gas vehicles, a number of models on the market run either on natural gas or both natural gas and gasoline. These vehicles include the Dodge Ram pickup, Honda Civic and Chevrolet Cavalier. Clean-fuel vehicles eventually would replace some vehicles the three members use in their current fleets.

Brian Peters, NU’s director of university services, said the university is likely to begin buying natural gas vehicles this summer if the plan goes through, although he does not know how many NU will buy.

Both NU and City Council have approved the project, and Peters said he expects Skokie’s Board of Trustees to approve the program at tonight’s meeting. If the board does approve it, Peters said he expects the plan to be finalized by the end of the month and the station to be in place by the end of April.

The three forces joined together to apply for the Congestion, Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program grant because none was large enough to qualify on its own. Although there are about 1,300 natural gas fueling stations around the country, Cathy Radek, Evanston’s superintendent of fleet services, said this is the only such cooperative in the country.

Two of the partners in this alliance, NU and Evanston, have a history of strained relations. Because of its 1851 charter, NU does not pay property tax. The university has a lawsuit pending against the city concerning the Northeast Evanston Historic District.

But Peters said this is a positive example of how how the university works with the city.

“There are a lot of unpublicized successes with the city and this is one of them,” Peters said. NU also is contributing financially to the facility’s infrastructure.

According to the Alternative Fuels Data Center, a part of the U.S. Department of Energy, natural gas is the cleanest alternative motor fuel available. It reduces exhaust emissions of carbon monoxide by 70 percent and carbon dioxide, the most significant greenhouse gas, by 20 to 30 percent. Compressed natural gas also runs about one-third lower in cost than gasoline.

Natural gas is also beneficial because unlike gasoline, it is also a mostly domestic fuel source and reduces the dependency on motor oil.

“It’s like killing two birds with one stone,” Radek said.