Firms Can Earn Pollution Credits by Buying Old Cars : Environment: AQMD approves groundbreaking plan to let companies delay costly smog-reduction efforts.
Regional air quality officials on Friday approved the nation’s first widespread old-vehicle scrapping program, which will let factories delay their own smog-reduction efforts by buying heavy-polluting automobiles and taking them off the road.
There are an estimated 1.9 million such old cars and trucks in the four-county South Coast Air Quality Management District.
“This would allow us to obtain emission reductions in the most cost-effective manner,” Mike Nazemi, AQMD manager of mobile source regulations, said in a public hearing before the agency’s governing board voted 10 to 2 to approve the measure. “If you adopt this rule today, you will be the first in the country to do so.”
The program, which goes into effect immediately, is not without its critics, including those who argued that it discriminates against the poor by cutting the pool of inexpensive autos and parts, and increases their price.
“This is inherently discriminatory” and could “force (poor residents) to get rid of the only vehicle they have to get to work,” board member Larry L. Berg said. “And it’s a gift to those who are going to use the (emissions) credits to avoid doing something they ought to.”
Berg and board member Jon D. Mikels voted against the regulation.
Many environmentalists argued that such programs delay vital air quality improvements, particularly in Southern California, which continues to violate nearly every federal air pollution standard.
Collectors of antique and classic cars protested that many of the cars that qualify are “a part of history.” They also argued that destruction of clunkers will dry up the supply of spare parts.
Automobile dismantlers said they will be economically strapped by the program because it mandates that the scrapped cars be destroyed and that most parts cannot be salvaged and resold.
The voluntary program allows regulated industries--including furniture makers, aerospace firms, utilities and oil refineries--to buy vehicles built before 1982. The companies must take them to a licensed dismantler, have them crushed and document the destruction. Although participating companies will set the price they pay for the cars, the agency estimates an average price of $700 per vehicle and $100 to cover paperwork and the costs of scrapping.
In return, the AQMD will issue the companies emissions credits, which are based on a complicated formula.
The credits are equivalent to 80% of the hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide emissions the AQMD calculates the cars would have spewed into the atmosphere if they had continued to travel the Southland’s roads. When hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides are baked by sunlight, they form ozone, the most intractable pollutant in the area.
With those credits, the companies will be able to put off complying with new air pollution regulations. The more credits they amass, the more time they can buy--up to a point. Because the district figures that old cars have an average driving span of three years, the emissions credits will last up to three years.
Because the program is voluntary, the AQMD cannot estimate how much of an air quality benefit it will provide or how many companies and individuals will take part. Although a staff report said the district hopes for 30,000 cars to be scrapped each year, board members and other AQMD officials estimated that 10,000 to 50,000 cars would be purchased and destroyed.
Claudia Keith, a district spokeswoman, guessed that big companies such as Unocal Corp., Southern California Edison and the Southern California Gas Co. would participate.
But John Rafuse, manager of government relations at Unocal, said although his company supports the program and ran a pilot scrapping program in 1990, there are no plans to participate.
“I think Unocal will take a look, and see what project they have coming up, and take a look at the costs of doing this kind of thing,” Rafuse said. “Would it be cost-effective in every case and does the company have something in mind now? No.”
Thomas J. Hightower, vice president and general manager of Ferromet Inc., an auto dismantler in Etiwanda, Calif., said he does not expect to see much participation or benefit. “I don’t think it’ll have a huge impact (on us), but I think it will help.”
Although many environmentalists applaud taking vehicles off the road, the issue of credits is where they part company with the AQMD. Why, they ask, should companies be allowed to continue polluting at all?
“It’s sort of like the Cheshire cat approach to pollution control,” said Daniel F. Becker, director of the global warming and energy program for the Sierra Club. “The pollution . . . continues after the auto is gone. . . . If someone’s grandmother leaves them a ’66 Buick that wasn’t driven for 15 years but was registered and is scrapped, would that offset pollution from a factory?”
Joseph Goffman, senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund, says yes. The EDF and General Motors have written their own protocol for a scrapping program, which is being tried as a pilot program in Chicago.
“We’re behind the principle of vehicle scrappage,” Goffman said. “We think, as environmentalists, if we’re credibly going to be arguing for ambitious pollution control programs, we have to really support every effort to find the cheapest reductions to comply with those programs.”
