Panel Moves to Weaken Bush Clean Air Plan : Legislation: House subcommittee votes against requiring auto makers to produce vehicles that burn ‘clean fuels.’

Led by Republican lawmakers, a House subcommittee Wednesday voted against a Bush Administration proposal to require the automobile industry to produce millions of cars designed to operate on “clean fuels” instead of gasoline or diesel fuel.

Opponents of the change said that the subcommittee vote effectively guts the President’s far-reaching clean air bill, and they promised a fight to roll back the decision when the bill is taken up by the Energy and Commerce Committee and--if necessary--on the House floor.

The amendment, adopted by a 12-10 vote in the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health and the environment, would allow auto makers merely to certify that they have the capability to produce alternative-fuel vehicles rather than requiring that they produce them.

The amendment would also base the performance standard for alternative fuels produced by oil companies on the emission reductions achievable with “M85”--a mixture of 85% methanol and 15% gasoline.

Supporters of the M85 standard, avidly backed by the oil and automobile industries, claimed that it was intended to remove a bias in favor of pure methanol. But opponents said that it would significantly lessen the beneficial impact of the legislation on tailpipe emissions.

The vote was taken as the subcommittee completed a month’s work on the complex 304-page package of clean air provisions. The measure was approved unanimously and sent to the House Energy and Commerce Committee for consideration.

In softening the alternative fuels provision, the subcommittee dealt environmentalists their first key setback in considering the President’s program.

Earlier, the panel had reached a compromise calling for adoption of California’s tough tailpipe emission standards throughout the country. It also rejected a proposal that would have allowed auto makers to exceed pollution standards for some cars by averaging the emission of all their models.

Ironically, all of the subcommittee’s Republican members except one voted to weaken the alternative fuels provision, which has been hailed by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly as “the most innovative component” of the Bush clean air program.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), the subcommittee chairman, led the fight to keep the Administration’s proposal intact.

“This is not going to be the end of this fight,” Waxman said. “There will be a fight in the full committee and on the House floor.”

In the spirited showdown, Democrats who supported the Bush proposal blamed the Administration for inept management in allowing Republicans to seriously weaken the President’s program.

Rep. Norman F. Lent (R-N.Y.), who led the charge to water down the alternative fuels section, said that he had talked with White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu and was told that the Administration neither opposed nor supported the amendment.

Waxman said, however, that he had just talked by telephone with EPA Administrator Reilly, who was in Chicago, and was told that the Administration did, in fact, oppose the amendment. “I asked him if I could say that this was the Administration’s position,” Waxman told the panel, “and he said, yes, I could.”

The President’s clean air initiative, which would significantly update federal clean air laws for the first time in a dozen years, would require the auto industry to produce 500,000 alternative fuel vehicles by the 1995 model year and 1 million per year in model years 1997 through 2004.

Language adopted by the subcommittee dropped a requirement that “clean fuel vehicles shall be produced, sold, and distributed.” Instead, the amended bill would require auto makers merely to “certify to the administrator” of the EPA that the capability exists to satisfy the clean fuels standards.

By accepting the 85% methanol-15% gasoline blend, the amendment adopted by the House panel would make it possible for oil companies to comply with the law by using reformulated gasoline, thus getting around the intent to move toward massive use of alternative fuels.

Supporters of the amendment called it “fuel-neutral,” insisting that, as written, the Administration proposal is biased in favor of methanol and does not provide equal opportunity for ethanol, natural gas and other potential alternatives.

Disputing Waxman’s assertion that the amendment amounted to a “dramatic retreat” from Bush’s commitment, Lent said: “We do not seek to weaken the President’s bill and this amendment does not do that.”

Waxman and the Democrats who opposed the amendment maintained that the methanol-gasoline blend would make a sham of the alternative fuels program because it basically is no cleaner than gasoline. It would, Waxman said, produce only a third or less of the emission reductions that could be achieved by other clean fuels, such as 100% methanol.

Although Waxman said that Reilly opposed the amendment, an EPA report on alternative fuels last month said that “one likely option in the near term is to utilize methanol in an 85% methanol-15% gasoline blend in a flexible-fuel vehicle that could utilize gasoline, or any blend in between.”

Opponents of the amendment had worked feverishly for the last several days to muster enough support to stop it.

Environmental advocacy groups were quick to criticize the vote. Blaming the Administration’s “disorganization” for the outcome, Daniel J. Weiss, Washington director of the Sierra Club’s pollution and toxics program, said: “General Motors and Exxon won’t have to produce the cars or the fuel they don’t want to sell” if the modified proposal becomes law.

NEXT STEP

The Bush Administration’s clean air legislation moves to the House Energy and Commerce Committee from its subcommittee on health and the environment. Several amendments are expected to come to a vote in full committee after work begins in two to four weeks. An effort will be made to reverse the alternative fuels amendment adopted Wednesday by the subcommittee.