Electric Car Projections to Cut Smog Scaled Back : Environment: Officials also lower estimates of reduced pollution from energy conservation. But they insist they can still meet clear air goals.

Air quality officials have dramatically scaled back estimates of future smog reductions from energy conservation and shifts to electric cars but insist that they will still be able to realize their goal of meeting federal clean air standards in the next 20 years.

Officials with the South Coast Air Quality Management District said sufficient reductions in polluting emissions from other sources will compensate for fewer electric cars and they contended that the conservation revisions were not significant in terms of overall air quality.

Instead of the all-electric fleet of cars envisioned in a sweeping clean air plan approved last year, the AQMD is estimating that only 17% of the cars on the road in the year 2010 will be powered by electricity.

Instead of a 30% gain in energy conservation over the next 17 years in the residential and commercial sectors, officials say that a 15% improvement may be more realistic. They predict that energy conservation in the industrial sector will improve by just 5%.

Even with the revised estimates, however, AQMD officials remained confident Thursday. “We don’t believe it’s going to change the bottom line,” said AQMD Planning Director Barry R. Wallerstein.

But, he said, while fewer electric cars may not seriously hamper the region’s ability to meet the federal ozone standard, it will make it far more difficult to meet the stricter state ozone standard. Unlike the federal standard, however, there is no firm deadline for meeting the state limit.

Ozone is a health-threatening air pollutant that leads to respiratory distress and illness. It accounts for about 95% of smog and is formed when organic gases and nitrogen oxides react in the presence of sunlight. The federal standard limits ozone to 0.12 parts of ozone per million parts of air for one hour. The state standard is 0.09 p.p.m.

The difference in emission reductions from an all-electric fleet and cars running on a mix of fuels is comparable to the reductions achieved by some of the district’s most stringent and hard-fought controls on other pollution sources.

One control, for instance, that was approved after protracted negotiations with the electrical utility industry will cut nitrogen oxide emissions from power plant boilers by 29 tons a day. But a fleet of passenger cars running on gasoline, methanol and other fuels will pump 44 more tons of the pollutant into the air than would an all-electric fleet.

Wallerstein also said the mixed-fuel fleet also would produce 17 more tons a day of smog-forming organic gases and 519 more tons a day of carbon monoxide than the electric cars.

But, Wallerstein said, in the 21 months since the clean air plan was approved, there have been a number of technological advances, such as an electrically heated catalytic converter that supposedly will reduce tailpipe emissions from gasoline-powered cars.

In addition, the state Air Resources Board in September approved new tailpipe emission standards that are so stringent that in addition to electric cars, auto makers also may be forced to turn to cleaner-burning alternative fuels like methanol, ethanol, compressed natural gas or propane.

“There are a lot of advances to other alternative technologies that can get us to lower emission levels,” Wallerstein said.

Under the ARB plan, 2% of all new car sales in 1998, or about 40,000 vehicles, must be electric. By the year 2003, 10% or 200,000 of new cars sold would have to be electric.

But, these numbers fall far short of those envisioned in the 1989 clean air plan.

The downward revisions were forced in part by skeptical state officials who are members of AQMD task forces assigned to re-evaluate the clean air plan. State and federal officials had long complained that a number of the district’s assumptions about future technological advances were speculative.

Although auto makers and electrical utilities have launched electric car research and development programs, formidable problems remain in building a car capable of going long distances without being recharged. The AQMD task force believes that the lowered numbers more accurately reflect what consumer demand is likely to be.

Among the critics of the AQMD’s initial energy projections was California Energy Commission Chairman Charles R. Imbrecht, who said the district paid scant attention to his state agency and others in developing their original estimates. As a result, he said, the estimates were “extremely optimistic.”

“The 30% conservation goal in the air quality plan is additional conservation. It’s on top of all existing conservation programs in California--and we have the most stringent conservation program in the nation,” Imbrecht said.

To reach such a conservation goal, he said, new laws probably would be needed to force homeowners to bring their homes up to the latest insulation standards when they sellthem.

“The AQMD has not worked as collaboratively as well as they might,” Imbrecht said. “They operated on the assumption that everybody was going to do what was necessary to make their plan work.”

But more recently, Imbrecht said, the AQMD has undertaken new efforts at collaboratingwith the energy commission, state Air Resources Board, and California Public Utilities Commission.

BACKGROUND

The South Coast Air Quality Management District in March, 1989, approved a far-reaching clean air strategy aimed at bringing the South Coast Air Basin into compliance with federal clean air standards by the year 2007. It was based in part on more than 100 air pollution controls the AQMD planned to impose, as well as technological innovations such as electric cars. At the time, the AQMD said every passenger car on the road would be powered by electricity by the year 2010. In addition, the plan called for such things as reformulated barbecue lighter fluids to reduce smog-forming emissions and new controls on oil refineries and electrical utilities.