Thursday, January 15, 2009
Should Obama Take the EPA Off the Road?
California's tailpipe standards could accelerate clean-auto tech development.
By Peter Fairley
President Obama's first move for clean tech could simply be getting the federal government out of the way in one area where individual states are already poised to move aggressively: fuel economy.
Candidate Obama promised to do as much on the campaign trail, and yesterday, Lisa Jackson, his nominee for EPA administrator, provided some hope that he will follow through in office.
Jackson, formerly New Jersey's top environmental regulator, pledged in a Senate confirmation hearing yesterday that she would "immediately revisit" whether to allow states to set their own CO2 emissions limits on automobiles.
The CO2 tailpipe standards at issue were set by California in 2004, and subsequently adopted by 18 other states. They are more stringent than the tightened Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards approved by Congress in December 2007. Federal courts rejected auto-industry challenges against the tougher state standards, but Bush's EPA rode to the rescue by denying California (and by extension its partner states) a federal waiver needed to implement the rules.
Jackson, if confirmed by the Senate, will have the power to immediately take an obstructionist EPA off the road. This could have a significant impact on technology development, given that minimal innovation is required to meet the tightened CAFE standards.
Jackson's pledge to reconsider the state emissions waiver is an "early challenge for automakers" as Obama takes office next week, according to business journal Automotive News.
Automakers and their allies oppose state-by-state regulation of greenhouse gases. They say such rules are an indirect attempt to regulate fuel economy, which is a federal responsibility. They also say state rules would add costs and create market chaos, especially for dealers near borders with states that don't have their own rules.
Natural Resources Defense Council vehicles policy director Roland Hwang suggested recently in a provocative report that automakers could solve such problems themselves: "The obvious solution to all of the automaker concerns--including their desire for a uniform national standard--is to adopt California's [greenhouse gas] standards nationwide."
Hwang analyzed fuel-economy projections in business plans that GM and Ford Motor submitted to Congress last month during their pursuit of a federal loan package. (His analysis excludes Chrysler, whose business plan was short on fuel-economy details.) He concludes that GM and Ford could comply with the California standards with little to no effort:
All three companies state that they will at least comply with future federal fuel economy ("CAFE") standards. This analysis demonstrates that GM and Ford are now positioned also to comply with the more stringent California greenhouse gas standards if they were extended to apply nationwide. [My emphasis]
Postscript: Jackson's home state of New Jersey just joined the list of states implementing California's Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) program, according to the Daily Record of Parsippany, NJ. The ZEV program was declared dead along with the battery-electric vehicle by the award-winning 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? In fact, the program helped drive hybrid vehicles onto car lots across the country and will likely accelerate future adoption of plug-in hybrids and battery-electrics, according to my ZEV report in IEEE Spectrum magazine.
Peter Fairley, an independent journalist and editor of the Web journal Carbon-Nation,
tracks energy innovation around the globe, from the solar-powered
villages of Bolivia's Cordillera to China's mechanizing coalfields.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
Each increment lower you go, the price goes up per mg. The difference between CA and everone else is a tiny amount, but it is an expensive amount. Electric cars are city dweller NIMBY BULLSHIT! You want EV and not power plant in your city. You are just exporting your pollution to someone else. Generating power in one county and moving it through wires to your car is not efficient. It is just putting the making you feel good. No less smog just more SMUG.
The other thing is ENFORCE THE LAW.
That one old truck belching smoke, causes more pollution than the other 100 new cars on the highway.
But it would evil to take the truck away from that poor man. Waa
SirLanse
01/16/2009
Posts:43
phoenix
01/16/2009
Posts:172
Engines in small cars must make many tradeoffs in their operational efficiency and pollutant capture due to size, weight, and affordability concerns. Vaguely about 33% of the chemical energy in gas is converted to movement in a typical car gas engine. Power plants can approach 40% efficiency in converting fuel to energy.
This is tempered by the fact long distance transmission of power can lose about 6% of the energy. And I think the additional conversion of mechanical energy by an electric motor instead of directly through the gas engine will cost you another 2%.
colinnwn
01/16/2009
Posts:43
How much pollution does solar power create?
Not too much, how about clean burning coal plants? (yes they do exist and have ridiculusly low emissions when run efficiently)
Mosfett
01/26/2009
Posts:1
True, interpretation of the intent of legislation often evolves over time, often through litigation and court decisions. But I've seen enough absurdity in many reinterpretations of the scope of legislation to be uncomfortable with that approach. Several examples come to mind, including widely variant interpretations of the ambiguous language of the Clean Water Act concerning wetlands and "waters of the United States", and court decisions directing EPA's regulatory approach to the pollution-load carrying capacity of stream segments in making water quality permit decisions. In the latter instance environmental groups won battles in court, but the resulting regulatory conundrums tend to make it a loss in the war against water pollution, urban/suburban sprawl and some other issues.
If a law needs to be changed, I think that the actual changes to the law should be by the legislative branch rather than by the judicial branch of government.
Although Congress often doesn't understand what it is doing, I have even less faith in the courts. :-)
2) THE IMPORTANCE OF STANDARDS. Both from the perspective of many years of regulatory work in government and participation in developing technical standards in ASTM, I believe in the importance of standards. They become especially important when they affect interstate commerce, for example vehicle emission standards.
I'm a proponent of an open, often contentious process when standards are being developed; I'm also a proponent of a Federal lead for standards that are required under Federal law -- although I've often criticized EPA and other agencies in the process.
I'll also comment that I don't hold California's abilities and performance in environmental regulation and standard-setting in very high regard, certainly not high enough to accept such performance and standards as the benchmark. On the contrary, I've seen California allow poor environmental practices that would be regarded -- very properly -- as criminal in many other parts of the U.S. (Please don't ask me for examples. I once got a California environmental official fired on the spot when I commented on some regulations there. I felt rather sorry for him, and hadn't intended to cause him to lose his job. So, rather than asking me, take a close look.)
wbdeville
01/16/2009
Posts:14
As you yourself point out, "Congress did not have carbon dioxide in mind in establishing the authority of the Federal government to set standards and regulations to control air pollution." So where is the logic in using the same outdated federal legislation to thwart contemporary legislation such as California's specifically designed to control CO2?
pfairley
01/18/2009
Posts:10
As a practical matter, we're back again to interstate commerce issues. There's an old story about a state that legislatively redefined the value of Pi. As Pi can be important in many engineering calculations, such as bridge design, such a change in a standard could have both amusing and terrifying implications -- and certainly many and varied implications for interstate commerce.
I'm all for improved energy efficiency standards, which should be considered a national issue requiring national standards. California's argument for extension of their grandfathered authority under the Clean Air Act isn't based on any conditions unique to California.
I would push for Federal lead. True, progress at the Federal level is often best described as taking place in fits and starts. But my concern about individual lead by states on standards that affect everyone is that progress would take place in starts and fits -- all too often, just fits as the result. :-)
wbdeville
01/23/2009
Posts:14
It's time for Congress to, "Cite it, chapter and verse." Where do they derive their authority? When they pass new laws or spend taxpayer money, they should be required to point to specific language in the Constitution. The Enumerated Powers Act would require them to do precisely that. Help us bring this bill to a vote.
Go to DownsizeDC.org's campaign page for the "Enumerated Powers Act" : https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/campaigns/87
BenDoubleCro...
05/19/2009
Posts:1