Pact to Mean Cleaner Diesel Truck, Bus Engines by 2004

Striking an unprecedented deal that will help clean up the air in the nation’s smoggiest cities, the Clinton Administration and engine manufacturers have agreed to set a stringent new pollution standard for diesel trucks and buses.

The agreement between industry and environmental regulators is considered a breakthrough in the tumultuous politics of air pollution and a big step in California’s quest for clean air.

The diesel industry is promising that it will overcome technological hurdles to create dramatically cleaner-burning engines by 2004. And the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has vowed to impose the costly pollution mandate in a political climate in which such regulations are unpopular with the Republican-controlled Congress.

California air quality officials helped broker the agreement in an unusual bipartisan effort conducted quietly over the past six months. The Wilson Administration has been pushing the EPA for more stringent national truck standards, stressing that California, especially the Los Angeles Basin, cannot achieve clean air without national aid in cleaning up interstate trucks.

“With this agreement, we pin down the federal government,” said California Air Resources Board Chairman John Dunlap. “To us this is a significant achievement. We’re going to benefit in California in 2004 and beyond. We’ll have cleaner trucks operating in California.”

The standard would also help bring healthful air to about 75 other metropolitan areas, including New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Houston and Washington, that violate the national ozone standard. More than 100 million U.S. residents breathe air deemed unhealthful because of ozone.

The partnership is unprecedented in that no major pollution standard has ever been adopted for motor vehicles without a vigorous fight from the companies that make them.

Under the terms, trucks and buses manufactured in 2004 will emit half as much nitrogen oxides as those made in 1998, and 60% less than today’s new trucks. The combined limit on nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons would be 2.5 grams per brake-horsepower hour, a unit measuring exhaust from heavy-duty diesels.

Nitrogen oxides, a byproduct of burnt fuel, mix in the air with hydrocarbons to create ozone, the most pervasive pollutant in the Los Angeles Basin’s air.

Tom Cackette, the Air Resources Board’s chief deputy executive officer, called the new diesel standard “the No. 1 measure” in the state’s battle plan against smog.

About 63 tons of nitrogen oxides per day would be eliminated in California, almost half the reduction required for the entire state to achieve the ozone standard, according to the air board.

The measure will also help urban areas, including the Los Angeles Basin, clean up the nitrate-based pieces of soot called particulates that shroud the skies and lodge in lungs.

“This is a very good deal for California and for the country,” said Mary Nichols, the EPA assistant administrator who oversees air issues.

Nichols, who was a Los Angeles environmentalist and California air board chair before Clinton appointed her to the EPA post, called the diesel agreement a “top priority for both this Administration and the states.”

“This will be one of the most important, if not the most important, new rules that we’ll be pushing for the next generation of pollution control from motor vehicles,” she said. “We will be looking at a 50% reduction from heavy-duty engines.”

By winning the solidified support of the nation’s major diesel manufacturers, the federal government and the California air board believe they have averted the political obstacles.

Before the agreement, the EPA had been procrastinating for years in setting national standards. Many California air-quality experts had suspected that the federal agency would not have the political will to tackle the issue as the presidential election neared and pressure from Congress mounted to scale back environmental regulations.

“It is a tremendous breakthrough,” said one California official involved in the negotiations. “It is a difficult regulatory climate, but an agreement like this with the manufacturers pretty much locks it in so we don’t have to worry about other factors like politics, especially since it would be 1996, around reelection time.”

The Engine Manufacturers Assn., which signed the agreement, called the standard “challenging” but “fully supported by the industry.”

“Knowing the targets we have to meet in advance, our industry can feel confident in investing the millions of dollars in research and development programs and tooling needed to produce these ultra-low-emitting engines,” said Glenn Keller, executive director of the Chicago-based group representing 30 companies.

The agreement means the industry has eight years to move experimental engine technologies from its research laboratories to assembly lines.

As they develop the new hardware, a major challenge is to ensure it does not cause maintenance problems or high prices for truckers.

“One of the big issues with heavy-duty engines is that they have to meet the demands of the marketplace and the marketplace is very demanding,” said Jed Mandel, a spokesman for the manufacturers group. “They require durability and reliability and a certain amount of fuel efficiency.”

Truck owners support the agreement, although they harbor some worries about the cost and reliability of new engine technology, said Allen Schaeffer, a vice president at the American Trucking Assns., which represent 40,000 trucking companies.

“It is no small feat we are supportive of this,” he said. “It is a significant push for technology, but we believe it is one that is going to take the industry where we need to be in the future.”

Still, some truckers, especially in rural clean-air areas of the Midwest and West, are likely to resent the mandate aimed at helping the nation’s polluted cities.

Schaeffer, though, said truckers’ opposition has diminished because a new engine standard is preferable to other anti-smog measures that EPA has considered, such as limiting truck trips in smoggy areas such as the Los Angeles Basin.

“There will always be some level of opposition, because any time you add new things to an engine, there is always the possibility they will be problematic,” he said. “But in turn we hope to get an engine that runs cleaner, lasts longer and will present a much more positive environmental image as well.”

Trucks and buses emit large amounts of nitrogen oxides because of the high combustion temperature and oxygen content of diesel fuel. Reducing the fumes has been difficult, since lowering the temperatures to fix the nitrogen increases the particulate pollution.

One of the most promising technologies is a sophisticated fuel-injection system that would insert the fuel into the engine more precisely.

Advances have also been made in developing catalytic devices for diesel engines, and a process that recirculates exhaust back through the engine, Cackette said.

No estimates are available for how much the low-emission technologies might increase the price of new truck engines, which today cost $15,000 to $20,000 apiece. Trucks and buses made before 2004 are unaffected.

In 1986, the last time EPA strengthened diesel standards, the manufacturers were adamantly opposed. But they succeeded in inventing electronic equipment to meet that standard last year, and gained so much technical know-how that they now believe they can meet a standard twice as stringent.

The negotiations began when Gov. Pete Wilson’s air board adopted its smog plan last November and made it clear that it counted on EPA’s help to regulate interstate trucks.

A bloc of northeastern states also has been pressuring the EPA for the stronger standard.