The Path to Clean Air

Southern California could see a faint outline of its future through the haze and smog last week when Arco announced that it would start selling methanol at 25 of its service stations within the next two years. Chevron has said it would match any effort that Arco makes.

There were, of course, far more than 50 gasoline pumps in Southern California very early in this century, but the important thing is that Arco and Chevron would be making an up-front effort to crack the “chicken-and-egg” dilemma that has plagued advocates of cleaner-burning methanol from the beginning: Should Detroit be forced to produce methanol-powered cars and create a demand for the new fuel or is the first step to make methanol available to encourage motorists to buy cars that burn it? Arco’s bold move is a breakthrough in the sense that it would make it possible to start a transition away from gasoline-burning automobiles and diesel-burning trucks and buses. Not guaranteed, but possible.

One master plan at the South Coast Air Quality Management District calls for converting 80% of the automobiles, vans and pickups in the region to methanol by the turn of the century. Why methanol? It burns at lower temperatures than gasoline and therefore creates fewer oxides of nitrogen, one of two principle ingredients of smog. Its hydrocarbons, the other ingredient, do not react as strongly to sunlight as those in gasoline. As a result, it takes less complicated smog controls on cars to prevent nitrogen dioxide and hydrocarbons that escape from tailpipes from turning into smog when sunlight hits them.

Getting 80% of the vehicles on Southern California’s roads to burn methanol by the year 2000 is a massive undertaking. It will take a commitment by Detroit’s engineers, or perhaps the kind of mandate outlined in a bill by Assemblyman William Leonard (R-Redlands), who wants to set year-by-year quotas for the number of methanol burners that must be offered for sale in California. Luring bus fleets away from smoky diesel fuel and into methanol may take the power to force conversions that Sen. Robert B. Presley (D-Riverside) would give to the south coast district. But putting methanol into even a few pumps is a welcome first step toward cleaner air.