The New Guardian of California’s Zero Emissions Rule Speaks : Automobiles: Jacqueline Schafer defends Gov. Wilson’s commitment to tough anti-pollution standards.
California’s rule forcing production of the first modern, mass-market, zero-emission vehicles--most likely electric cars--has become increasingly controversial as the 1998 deadline approaches.
The state’s electric utilities, alternative-fuel vehicle and parts manufacturers and environmentalists--along with many political and business leaders--support the state mandate.
But big U.S. and foreign auto makers want to shelve the rule, one segment of a plan to drastically reduce health-endangering air pollution from transportation sources.
Car makers say the limitations of current battery technology make practical, reasonably priced electric cars impossible by 1998. Last Tuesday, Ford Motor Co. turned up the industry’s lobbying effort, announcing that it may cancel a program to develop a new electric vehicle; one official termed the effort a waste of money without better batteries.
As the dispute heightened last fall, Gov. Pete Wilson alarmed electric-car proponents by removing Jananne Sharpless, an eight-year proponent of tough air pollution measures, as chairwoman of the state Air Resources Board.
Her replacement: Jacqueline E. Schafer, who spent most of her 20 years in the environmental field in Reagan and Bush administration posts.
Since then, there has been much speculation about Schafer’s views on the zero-emissions rule. At the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show earlier this month, she met with reporters to talk about electric cars and other issues. Here are excerpts from her remarks:
SCHAFER: For the last 25 years, the California Air Resources Board has been setting challenges for the automobile industry. Our emission standards have long been the world’s model, since even before the federal EPA began in this business. And the ability of the automobile manufacturers to respond to those challenges is evident in millions upon millions of cars on the road today throughout the world.
The list of technologies that have been developed to meet those emission standards is long and impressive. It includes catalytic converters and other add-on equipment, of course. But those standards have also produced more precise fuel systems, electronic and computerized engine-management systems, and lightweight materials. So it’s no coincidence that stricter emission standards have produced cars that also have better performance and higher fuel economy. Simply put, in responding to the challenges that we have posed so far, car manufacturers have produced cars that are good for the consumer and good for air quality at the same time.
Emissions from a new car today have been cut by more than 90% compared to the models that were being built when we started the Air Pollution Control Program for Mobile Sources. The air quality results have been impressive. Population exposure to ozone in Los Angeles has been cut in half over the past decade.
But despite that progress, the challenge for us as a public-health agency continues. California continues to be one of the nation’s most popular places to live. The automobile population is increasing. And the mileage that these cars collectively are being driven is increasing at an even greater rate, because people choose to live in suburbs that stretch ever farther from our central cities and places of employment.
As a result, motor vehicles continue to be the single greatest source of air pollution. And there is no other place where the effects of that are more acute than here in California, which experiences 75% of the nation’s health threat from excessive air pollutants. And there is no place in California that feels the effect of that pollution more than where we are sitting here today in Los Angeles.
So our challenges are the auto industry’s challenges: To improve public health by making more environmentally acceptable vehicles. An ever-cleaner transportation system has been the greatest reason for the air-quality improvements we’ve achieved over the past 25 years. And advances in technology developed in response to emission standards have been the key to cleaner cars and fuels.
It’s a policy we must continue if we are to meet our public health goals . . .
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QUESTION: What is your position on the zero-emissions rule?
SCHAFER: I have a bias toward retaining the ZEV rule for a simple reason: It has generated the production of a whole new set of incentives . . . and high-technology applications for transportation systems that will serve us well into the 21st Century.
My boss--my big boss, the governor of the state of California-- . . . in his state (of the state) message pointed out that technologies that once built jet fighters are now being used to build electric cars, and that here in California environmental cleanup is a particularly exciting opportunity, in order to create many new jobs for Californians.
I think our regulation is part of that. I also point out that as part of the board’s adopting that regulation, we resolved to review progress toward meeting that 1998 goal periodically. One of those periodic reviews will be conducted in 1994.
I don’t regard the automobile industry as a monolith, nor the fuels industry as a monolith, and there are lots of entrepreneurs out there working hard to make this happen. So I look forward to hearing the kind of testimony that will be brought to the board, and I hope that we can work with the industry to make this standard produce the car of the 21st Century.
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QUESTION: Have you seen information from the auto makers that would encourage you personally to repeal the standards?
SCHAFER: I’ve been reading the newspapers. I am waiting to hear from them in their own words, (to hear them) speak for themselves. I understand that some manufacturers have had some difficulty in pursuit of a particular technology that they’ve been investing in, but I think that our hearing process will bring these out. And I think you will see some people making advances faster than others. That just remains to be seen.
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QUESTION: Should the board maintain the ZEV rule so that those who have made advances can keep going, or stop the whole process, or delay it, so others can catch up?
SCHAFER: I’d like to think that it’s good public policy to continue the incentives in place to get people to behave in the way that we would like them to behave . . . I do not like to turn around and disincentivize the people who are succeeding in doing what we would like to see done . . . Obviously, we also have to sell automobiles, in this state and we’ll see how the consumers react.
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QUESTION: Is anyone at the board looking at alternative schemes that would meet clean-air goals without ZEVs?
SCHAFER: Our low-emission vehicle program, of which the zero emission vehicle is a part, is over and above that which is required by federal EPA, because the problem we have here is so much larger than any other state. In California, the number of days out of compliance with the ozone standard is 10 times the next worse case, which happens to be the New York City metropolitan area. So we have a larger problem. We have standards to meet that larger problem, and as a consequence we have to push the technology that much harder.
The fact is that automobile emissions account for the single largest source of the air pollution problem that we face. What we want to do is get at the large sources in the most cost effective way possible, and that has argued for a strong program of cleaner cars and cleaner fuels as the most cost effective way of meeting the particular clean-air problem we have here in California.
There’s no Plan B right now. But, of course, we will review anything that’s presented to us as we undertake the review of the ZEV standard this year.
BIO
Jacqueline E. Schafer
Position: Chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board.
Age: 48
Born: Greenport, Conn.
Education: She received a bachelor of arts in economics in 1967 from Middlebury College, Vt.
Resume: From 1990 to 1993, Schafer was an assistant secretary of the Navy, in charge of environmental policies at all U.S. Navy and Marine facilities. She served on the White House Council on Environmental Quality from 1984 to 1989 and for two years before that she was a regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. From 1977 to 1982, Schafer was a staffer for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. For five years before that, she served as a legislative assistant to Sen. James L. Buckley (R-N.Y.).
