California ARB to hold public workshop on new GHG and emissions standards for heavy-duty engines and vehicles

The California Air Resources Board (ARB) will hold a public workshop on 11 March to discuss proposals for several regulations and regulation amendments related to on-road heavy-duty vehicles.

At this workshop, staff will be soliciting input on proposals multiple proposals: a new regulation to harmonize with GHG emissions standards for medium- and heavy-duty engines and vehicles that US EPA adopted in 2011; amendments to ARB's existing Heavy-Duty Vehicle GHG EmissionReduction Regulation to align with the proposednew GHG regulation; a new set of optional oxides of nitrogen (NO_x) standards for heavy-dutyvehicle engines more stringent than the current 2010 model year standard; and amendments to the Airborne Toxic Control Measure (ATCM) to LimitDiesel-fueled Commercial Motor Vehicle Idling to expand compliance responsibility.

ARB intends that this workshop, to be held in Sacramento, be the only one prior to Board consideration of these proposals in October of 2013.

• In September 2011, US EPA adopted a new regulation for controlling GHG emissions from new medium and heavy-duty engines and vehicles. (Earlier post.) ARB staff proposes aligning with the federal regulation in order to provide California with the ability to certify engines and vehicles to the new standards as well as enforce them. This new regulation would be the first California regulation to set GHG emission limits for heavy-duty truck and engine manufacturers.

  The federal regulation is currently in the implementation phase, with compliance requirements beginning with 2014 model year and extending through 2018 model year engines and vehicles.

• In December 2008, ARB approved the Tractor-Trailer GHG regulation which reduces GHG emissions from long-haul tractor-trailer combinations by requiring them to utilize US EPA SmartWay verified or designated technologies that will improve fuel efficiency. The recently adopted federal regulation establishes national GHG emission standards for 2014 and newer model year heavy-duty tractors. To harmonize the tractor requirements of the federal and California regulations, ARB staff is considering modifications to its Tractor-Trailer GHG regulation.

• ARB staff will be also propose optional NO_x emission standards for California certified 2015 and later model year engines. Staff may propose more than one optional NO_x emission standard that would be below the existing 2010 model year standard. If the optional standards are adopted, ARB's existing incentive programs such as the Carl Moyer Memorial Air Quality Standards Attainment program could be modified to give preference to engines certified to the optional standards.

• In 2004, ARB adopted an ATCM to Limit Diesel-fueled Commercial Motor Vehicle Idling. The ATCM, among other things, requires that drivers of diesel-fueled commercial motor vehicles with gross vehicle weight ratings greater than 10,000 pounds not operate the vehicle's primary diesel engine at idle for more than five minutes at any location.

  ARB staff is proposing to extend responsibility for complying with the requirements of the idling ATCM to the owner of the vehicle. Specifically, the owner may be held responsible for violations by the driver in instances where the owner failed to provide the driver with a compliant alternative to engine idling during rest periods.

  In addition, staff's proposal would require California-based shippers and California-based brokers to share responsibility for compliance with the idling restrictions in the event that they utilized the services of motor carriers that violated the regulation and/or they did not settle their outstanding fines.

The workshop will be divided into three sessions to facilitate independent discussion of the individual rules.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/02/arb-20130221.htm

Senators Sanders, Boxer propose legislation to institute GHG price on large stationary sources and remove support for fossil fuel industries

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) introduced legislation that would set an escalating fee on greenhouse gas emissions from large stationary sources to fund investments in energy efficiency and sustainable energy technologies and also provide rebates to consumers to offset increases in energy prices. The legislation also proposes numerous actions against financing and support for fossil fuel industries.

The proposal was drafted as two measures, the Climate Protection Act-which sets the carbon price and finance programs for sustainable technologies-and the Sustainable Energy Act-which ends federal support for fossil fuel companies and research and extends tax incentives for renewables. Among the financing provisions of the legislation are:

• Price on carbon. The legislation would enact a fee of $20 per ton or carbon or methane equivalent, rising at 5.6% per year over a 10-year period. Applied upstream, the fee would apply to 2,869 of the largest stationary sources, covering about 85% of US greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Congressional Research Service.

  The Congressional Budget Office estimates this would raise $1.2 trillion in revenue over 10 years and reduce GHG emissions by approximately 20% from 2005 levels by 2025.

• Investment in energy efficiency and sustainable energy. A portion of the revenues raised would be used to weatherize 1 million homes per year; triple the budget for ARPA-E; create a sustainable technologies finance program to leverage $500 billion for investments; invest in domestic manufacturing; and fund $1 billion per year in worker training.

• Rebate program. The Family Clean Energy Rebate Program would use 60% of the funds from the carbon fee and use the model developed by Alaska's oil dividend to provide a monthly rebate to every legal US resident to offset potential energy price increases.

• International sources. Imported fuels and products would also be charged the same carbon fee that domestic fuels and products play, unless the exporting nation has similar climate program and already charges a fee on carbon.

• Debt reduction. Approximately $300 billion would go to debt reduction over 10 years.

The Sustainable Energy Act eliminates a number of areas of financial benefit for fossil fuel companies and research, including the elimination of royalty relief. It also repeals sections of existing energy legislation dealing with ultra-deepwater and unconventional natural gas and other petroleum resources; removes limits on liability for offshore operations and pipeline operators; rescinds all unobligated funds to the World Bank and the Ex-Im Bank for financing projects that support coal, oil, or natural gas; terminates the DOE Office of Fossil Energy Research and Development; prohibits the use of DOT funds to award any grant, loan, loan guarantee, or provide any other direct assistance to any rail or port project that transports coal, oil, or natural gas; terminates fossil fuel tax breaks; and institutes numerous other accounting and tax changes on the fossil fuel industries.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/02/sandersboxer-20130215.htm

EPA Climate Change Adaptation Plan sees likely increase in tropospheric ozone, with more difficulty in attaining NAAQS in many areas

Among the many climate-related vulnerabilities that can impact its mission, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cites a likely increase in tropospheric ozone pollution as potentially making it more difficult to attain National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) in many areas with existing ozone problems. The analysis comes in a draft Climate Change Adaptation Plan that the agency has released for public comment.

In the plan, EPA examines the different ways in which its programs are vulnerable to a changing climate and how it might adapt to continue meeting its mission of protecting human health and the environment. Every program and regional office within the EPA is currently developing an Implementation Plan outlining how each considers the impacts of climate change in its mission, operations, and programs, and carrying out the work called for in the agency-wide plan.

Many of the outcomes EPA is working to attain (e.g., clean air, safe drinking water) are sensitive to changes in weather and climate. Until now, EPA has been able to assume that climate is relatively stable and future climate will mirror past climate. However, with climate changing more rapidly than society has experienced in the past, the past is no longer a good predictor of the future. Climate change is posing new challenges to EPA's ability to fulfill its mission.

It is essential that EPA adapt to anticipate and plan for future changes in climate. It must integrate, or mainstream, considerations of climate change into its programs, policies, rules and operations to ensure they are effective under future climatic conditions. Through climate adaptation planning, EPA will continue to protect human health and the environment, but in a way that accounts for the effects of climate change.

EPA has not yet conducted a detailed quantitative assessment of the vulnerability of its mission to climate change. This Climate Change Adaptation Plan uses expert judgment, combined with information from peer-reviewed scientific literature on the impacts of climate change, to identify potential vulnerabilities. It then presents priority actions the Agency will take to begin integrating climate adaptation planning into its activities.

-Draft Climate Change Adaptation plan

NAAQS
The Clean Air Act (CAA) requires EPA to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for pollutants considered harmful to public health and the environment.
EPA has set National Ambient Air Quality Standards for six principal pollutants, which are called "criteria" pollutants: carbon monoxide (CO); lead; nitrogen dioxide (NO2); ozone; particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5); and sulfur dioxide (SO2).
Under the CAA, each state must develop a plan describing how it will attain and maintain the NAAQS-the State Implementation Plan. In general, the SIP is a collection of programs (monitoring, modeling, emission inventories, control strategies, etc) and documents (policies and rules) that the state uses to attain and maintain the NAAQS. A state must engage the public in approving its plan prior to sending it to EPA for approval.
In some cases where the EPA fails to approve a SIP, the Agency can issue and enforce a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) to ensure attainment and maintenance of the NAAQS.

The relationship between temperature changes and tropospheric ozone formation is well understood, EPA notes in the draft. Higher temperatures and weaker air circulation will lead to more ozone formation even with the same level of emissions of ozone forming chemicals. Studies project that climate change could increase tropospheric ozone levels over broad areas of the country, especially on the highest-ozone days.

Climate change might also lengthen the ozone season and increase individuals' vulnerability to air pollution.

Increases in ozone due to climate change may make it more difficult to attain or maintain ozone standards that the EPA establishes; this will need to be taken into account when it designs effective ozone precursor emission control programs, the agency noted.

A related concern in terms of air quality is potential that climate change will affect PM levels through changes in the frequency or intensity of wildfires. The potential increase in PM resulting from wildfires may increase the public health burden in affected areas and also complicate state efforts to attain the PM NAAQS and address regional transport of air pollution.

Additionally, climate change may alter the effects of and strategic priorities within EPA's regulatory and voluntary programs to help restore the stratospheric ozone layer, the agency notes. Climate change affects the ozone layer through changes in chemical transport, atmospheric composition and temperature. In turn, changes in stratospheric ozone can have implications for the weather and climate of thetroposphere.

EPA recognizes that the integration of climate adaptation planning into its programs, policies, rules, and operations will occur over time. This change will happen in stages and measures should reflect this evolution. The earliest changes in many programs will be changes in knowledge and awareness (e.g., increase in the awareness of EPA staff and their external partners of the relevance of adaptation planning to their programs). Building on this knowledge, they then will begin to change their behavior (e.g., increase their use of available decision support tools to integrate adaptation planning into their work). As programs mature, there will be evidence of more projects implemented as a result of increased attention to climate-related programmatic issues. Finally, in the long-term, adaptation planning efforts will lead to changes in condition (e.g., percentage of flood-prone communities that have increased their resilience to storm events) to directly support EPA's mission to protect human health and the environment.

-Draft Climate Change Adaptation plan

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/02/epa-20130210.htm

Hong Kong Will Ban Dirtiest Diesel Vehicles From City Limits

It doesn't take a genius to link air pollution with old vehicles, and the powers-that-be in Hong Kong have tried for decades to reduce the constant smog smothering one of the world's most populated cities. Now a new initiative will ban the dirtiest diesel vehicles from the city limits while offering companies financial incentives for modernizing their delivery fleets.

While Hong Kong's ruling party hasn't laid out specifics, city leaders have noted that since air quality goals were enacted 25 years ago, the city has not met its own self-imposed goals once. In fact, last year saw 175 days of "high pollution" days, meaning almost half of 2012 was spent under a cloud of smog and engine emissions. While Hong Kong says that just 3,000 premature deaths a year are attributed to heavy pollution, the real number is probably a lot higher.

The main factor is the more than 120,000 diesel-powered heavy vehicles, including delivery trucks and buses, that operate in the city limits. 40% of these vehicles are older diesel models that comply with the Euro II model, emitting more than 12x the emissions that more modern diesel vehicles complying with the Euro V standard. While it is cheaper to run these older diesel vehicles rather than replace them, the long term health costs to society as a whole can no longer be tolerated, even in places like China, where the welfare of the working class is rarely cause for concern.

Hong Kong plans to get companies to phase out these older diesel vehicles by offering substantial government subsidies, while banning older diesel vehicles from operating in the city limits. City leaders hope that threat of banning businesses from operating their fleets in Hong Kong proper, along with generous subsidies, will lead to a cleaner, greener fleet of modern diesel vehicles. Other efforts to clean up air pollution include Hong Kong's police department buying and using a fleet of Brammo electric motorcycles, which have been met with unabashed enthusiasm.

Other cities, including Paris, France and London, England have experimented with ways of reducing urban congestion and pollution. While London enacted a congestion charge for downtown that exempts EV and plug-in hybrid vehicles, Paris has talked about banning older, larger, and dirtier vehicles from the city limits, though without the draconian efficiency of Hong Kong. Beijing has also toyed with such

If Hong Kong's efforts prove fruitful, other cities could follow their model. But it could also drive the cost of doing business in Hong Kong up as well. Will business owners adapt, fight, or flee these new stringent diesel restrictions?

Source: Bloomberg

The post Hong Kong Will Ban Dirtiest Diesel Vehicles From City Limits appeared first on Gas 2.

http://gas2.org/2013/01/02/hong-kong-will-ban-dirtiest-diesel-vehicles

What Does The Fiscal Cliff Debacle Say About Our Chances To Avoid The Far More Worrisome Climate Cliff?

What a sorry spectacle it has been in Washington, DC these last few weeks. Our political leaders failed to meet their self-imposed deadline for dealing with the deficit in a manner that doesn't mean austerity-driven recession.

And while it looks like they do have a bipartisan deal - assuming it can pass the House after winning easy Senate approval - the plan avoids many of the toughest choices (details here).

The deal isn't terrible - it extends the wind tax credit, for instance. In the top story on its website, the NY Times asserts that the plan "while containing many concessions that angered Democrats, still favors the latter party's priorities and imposes a tax increase on the wealthiest Americans."

Perhaps, but as Nobelist Paul Krugman explains in a blog post this morning, we won't know if the deal was sort-of-okay or dreadful until we see what happens next (in the debt ceiling fight):

If Obama stands his ground in that confrontation, this deal won't look bad in retrospect. If he doesn't, yesterday will be seen as the day he began throwing away his presidency and the hopes of everyone who supported him.

That final sentence is true only if you don't count Obama's failure on climate as the day(s) he began throwing away his presidency and the hopes of countless generations (see "Obama Wins Reelection, Now Must Become A Climate Hawk To Avoid Dust-Bin Of History, Dust Bowl For America").

The NY Times concludes that one big lesson from the debacle is "Grand Bargains Give Way to Quick Fixes" and "bipartisan legislative dreams seem all but certain to be miniaturized" - but that has been obvious for a while. It's not like Obama got any House GOP votes to support either the stimulus bill or health care plan.

Indeed, the fiscal cliff was a largely manufactured crisis, as Krugman explained in his Sunday NYT oped, "Brewing Up Confusion." The truth is for all the political hand-wringing, all the media sturm und drang, neither party considers the deficit the preeminent or most urgent economic threat to the nation. Progressives understand slow economic growth and high unemployment are the top problems and that the solution is more investment plus help for the unemployed. The Tea Party crowd that have taken over the conservative movement (and GOP) thinks government spending is the problem (otherwise they would have hardly been so adamant against tax hikes being part of a grand bargain).

Cartoonists, at least, get that the fiscal cliff is a mild soar throat compared to the early-stage emphysema that is the climate cliff.

Image by Matt Bors/Daily Kos via Buzzfeed.

So perhaps the headline question should have been "Does The Fiscal Cliff Debacle Say Anything New About Our Chances To Avoid Climate Cliff?" To answer that question, it's worth pointing out what we already knew about those chances from the last truly big economic threat to the nation - which I discussed in an October 2008 post, "Is 450 ppm (or less) politically possible? Part 7: The harsh lessons of the financial bailout." I'm excerpting it below because the piece shows how little has changed in 4+ years:

No, 450 is not politically possible today. Nor is 550. Nor is action sufficient to stave off 1000 ppm and 6°C warming.

OK, that was clear before because Congressional conservatives can certainly block the necessary action and demagogue the energy price issue - and they obviously intend to (see "Part 6: What the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill debate tells us").

But I think the financial bailout bill story has yet more sobering lessons:

1. Multi-hundred-billion-dollar-sized government action happens only when there is a very, very big crisis. Yes, lots of people out there think happy talk about clean energy and green collar jobs is mainly what you need to get a massive government spending program. Not gonna happen. The happy talk can help sell the needed policies, but without the crisis, it leads nowhere.
2. A necessary, but not sufficient, condition for a crisis to be "very, very big" is that it must be labeled as such by very serious people who are perceived as essentially nonpartisan opinion leaders. In this case, it was the panic from people like uber-billionaire Warren Buffet and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan and even people like CNBC's Jim Cramer (yes, he shouts a lot, but he called this meltdown a year ago and has a lot of credibility with the media).
3. In addition, bad things must be happening to regular people right now. It was quite interesting that the House in particular voted down the original bailout but reversed itself in large part because of the ensuing stock market meltdown and in part because they started to hear from all of the small and large businesses in their districts that the credit market was freezing up.
4. The credible people must say that the government action is going to solve the problem.This is a crucial point also missed by lots of people. If Buffet and Bernanke and Cramer said the sky is falling but your plan ain't going to stop it, then your plan is dead, dead, dead.

What does this say about the climate predicament?

1. We have one very big crisis that requires unprecedented government action. The "good news," if one can call it that, is the crisis is real and imminent - and it does lend itself to government-led solutions. Also, like the bailout, the total dollar "cost" of the solution is not the total dollar cost to the taxpayer, since, for the bailout, the underlying financial assets the government will buy have value and, for global warming, the cap-and-trade bill plus clean tech push will create massive energy savings and whole new industries.
2. But we simply don't have a critical mass of credible nonpartisan opinion leaders who understand the nature of our energy and climate problem (see "Most opinion leaders just don't get global warming"). When the heck are people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates going to speak up on dire nature of the global warming situation, rather than, say, scoping out climate-destroying investments in Canada (see "Gates and Buffet to invest in tar sands and spawn more two-headed fish")? Yes, we have virtually the entire scientific community begging for strong action, but they aren't opinion leaders in this country anymore and indeed they aren't credible to a large segment of U.S. society (see "The Deniers are winning, but only with the GOP"). Meeting this necessary condition for serious action is greatly complicated by the conservative crusade against climate action, which is not just a disinformation campaign but a concerted effort to label any scientist or journalist or opinion maker who speaks out on global warming as just a stooge of the left-wing eco-imperialists - "environmental activists, attended by compliant scientists and opportunistic politicians, are advocating radical economic and social regulation," as Charles Krauthammer put it, or "more government subservience to environmentalists and more government supervision of our lives" as George Will put it (see "The real reason conservatives don't believe in climate science"). In short, the disinformation campaign seeks to discredit all credible calls for action.
3. Bad things are happening to real people right now thanks in part to human-caused climate change - droughts, wildfires, flooding, extreme weather, and on and on. But many environmentalists and journalists downplay the causality or think it is a mistake to talk about those things (see "The NY Times Blows the Wildfire Story" and "The NY Times Blows the Drought Story, too" and "Gustav, climate, drilling - Some enviros self-censor, but should progressives?" and "The Washington Post's Joel Achebach doesn't understand basic climate science"). And, of course, we have the disinformation campaign telling everybody either that the future won't be too bad. [The late] Michael Crichton says he is "underwhelmed" by the problem after his "review" of the science. George Will says that climate change might even be "beneficial," and NYT columnist Jon Tierney writes, "There's a chance the warming could be mild enough to produce net benefits." Heck, we even have the GOP Vice Presidential pick telling 70 million Americans last week that climate change impacts stem from "cyclical temperature changes on our planet." In this classic denier myth, all we have to do is wait and the storm will pass.
4. The government-led climate and energy actions that might be politically possible today won't solve the crisis. That was certainly true of the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner bill (see "Boxer bill update: Probably no U.S. CO2 emissions cut until after 2025").

I find only one glimmer of hope from the financial crisis. Congress and the executive branch acted before the real disaster happened, before we ended up in another Great Depression, indeed before we even technically entered a recession.

So perhaps we can act on climate before the real disaster happens. Yes, I realize that Washington acted because everyone understood we were only days or weeks away from complete financial meltdown and we obviously can't wait to act until we get anywhere near that close to the climate precipice.

We must act on climate within the next few years - decades before the real, preventable disaster happens. Indeed, no plausible action the nation and the world will take could have significant impact on the the climate for probably the next three decades. It is the post-2040 Hell and High Water scenario, crossing the point of no return to 6°C (or higher) warming, that we are trying - or rather, should be trying - desperately to prevent.

The response to the financial bailout crisis obviously offers no comfort to people hoping we can act decades before the true climate catastrophe hits. But I choose to see the glass as one-tenth full. Why?

The unknown wild-card factor here is presidential leadership. We have never had an inspirational president who was genuinely committed to serious climate action and who actually campaigned on a broad and deep agenda that would put us on a path to solve the problem (see "Obama's excellent energy and climate plan").

Right now, Obama's plan is not politically possible. And not just because conservatives oppose it and will demagogue it, but also because moderates don't get the problem and have been politically intimidated by the demagoguing. And because scientists, environmentalists, and progressives have had poor and inconsistent messaging. And because the traditional media still does a grossly inadequate job (see "Media enable denier spin 2: What if the MSM simply can't cover humanity's self-destruction?").

But true leaders have transformed what is politically possible in the past. That is where hope lies today.

Yes, that was all written before we elected a leader who promised strong climate action and a Congress where Democrats had big majorities.

The bottom line remains the same, though. We aren't going to get serious action until we have our climate Churchill - and probably not until climate impacts get so bad that at least those in the persuadable middle start demanding action (see "What Are the Near-Term Climate Pearl Harbors? What Will Take Us from Procrastination To Action?").

The fiscal cliff debacle primarily tells us that the recent election changed nothing for political leaders of either party. We're stuck with the climate status quo and, unlike our various economic woes, that is a prescription for irreversible, civilization-destroying disaster:

• Shocking World Bank Climate Report: 'A 4¬∞C [7¬∞F] World Can, And Must, Be Avoided' To Avert 'Devastating' Impacts
• IEA: World on Pace for 11¬∞F Warming, "Even School Children Know This Will Have Catastrophic Implications for All of Us"
• An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Global Warming Impacts: How We Know Inaction Is the Gravest Threat Humanity Faces

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/01/hr8eas-20130101.htm

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/01/1381751/what-does-the-fisc