Pact Signed on Curbing Diesel Emissions

Clouds of smoke wafting from bulldozers, tractors and other construction and farm equipment will shrink considerably under an agreement among the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, engine manufacturers and the state of California.

The national standards, to be phased in between 1999 and 2008, will reduce exhaust from each new machine by up to two-thirds, a major step toward controlling air pollution throughout the country--especially in smoggy Southern California.

The technology for cleaner diesel engines will raise the cost of equipment purchased by farmers, builders, golf courses and others. The price tag on a new farm tractor or backhoe, for instance, is expected to increase by several hundred dollars, according to preliminary EPA estimates.

The pact is the second breakthrough in fulfilling the Clinton administration’s promise to assist California with sources of smog that cross state borders and come under federal control. Last year, the EPA and the state signed a groundbreaking agreement with manufacturers to cut emissions from heavy-duty trucks and buses in half starting in 2004.

Cleaning up diesel exhaust has been the most challenging aspect of pollution control over the last three decades, and farm and construction machines have some of the dirtiest engines still legal in the United States.

Nationally, the EPA’s regulation will cleanse the air of about 800,000 tons of nitrogen oxides in the year 2010, when the new engines will be widely used. In the Los Angeles Basin, the reductions are equivalent to removing 2 million cars from the roads, based on state auto emission data.

“When fully implemented,” EPA Assistant Administrator Mary Nichols said, “this agreement will produce one of the largest emission reductions resulting from any single mobile source standard in the history of EPA.”

After more than a year of negotiations, the pact emerged from an unusual, voluntary alliance between the Clinton and Wilson administrations and 12 corporations, including Caterpillar, Deere & Co., and Navistar International Corp. The signatures of high-ranking environmental aides to the governor and the president appear side by side with those of the corporate executives.

“This . . . opens a new frontier in environmental protection,” Nichols said, “one in which a complex and pervasive source of air pollution will work in cooperation with government to develop cleaner, more efficient technology.”

Although the regulation will be national in scope, California air quality officials played a lead role in drafting it because the Los Angeles region faces the most dire need for the pollution controls to achieve health standards. The cleaner equipment should also help cut smog in the farm belt areas of Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley. More than 90% of the decrease in pollution, however, will come in the other 49 states.

“These pollution controls are necessary if California is to attain--and of course maintain--healthy air quality,” said California Air Resources Board Chairman John Dunlap, who signed the agreement. “National limits . . . also have a benefit throughout the rest of the nation, so we are pleased to provide the leadership here.”

For two years, the Wilson administration has pushed for the federal government to regulate nationwide pollution sources such as trucks, planes, trains and ships to avoid putting the entire anti-smog burden on California consumers and industries. Under the terms, the EPA must propose a regulation outlining the farm and construction machine standards early next year.

“This approach keeps California on a level playing field with national competitors,” Dunlap said.

Walter Brown of the Engine Manufacturers Assn., a Chicago-based trade group, said the companies welcomed the chance to avoid the usual contentious process of setting government standards. Corporations representing 85% of the market signed the agreement, which will prompt a multimillion-dollar investment in research and development of new engines.

“We are optimistic that these standards can be reached and we signed the agreement committing to reaching them,” Brown said. “Our customers will have both cleaner engines and engines that can maintain the fuel economy and good performance that they’ve come to expect from diesel engines.”

The effort is aimed at nitrogen oxides, which react in the air to create the urban ozone that is the predominant gas in smog, and particulates, the fine pieces of soot that stain the air. About 90 million Americans breathe unhealthful levels of the pollutants.

Tractors, graders, combines, cranes, forklifts, compressors and other “non-road” diesel equipment, on an individual basis, are far dirtier than most cars. Nationwide, the engines put out 2 million tons of nitrogen oxides per year--almost half as much as all the automobiles in the country, said Don Kopinski, the EPA’s program manager for non-road engine standards.

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Diesels have been difficult to clean up because the high temperature needed for combustion of the fuel creates favorable conditions for producing the nitrogen fumes. Reducing temperatures can lower the nitrogen but it increases soot, so the manufacturers have to find ways to balance the temperature, pressure, timing and air content when fuel is injected into the engine.

An initial, less stringent phase of EPA standards had already begun to kick in with 1996 models of the largest diesel machines.

But to comply beginning in 2001, the manufacturers say new engines will need an array of internal changes, such as alterations in the pressure and patterns of fuel delivery and redesigning of the combustion chamber.

Also, high horsepower models such as farm tractors and backhoes will probably need new, sophisticated components, such as electronic fuel injectors like those in automobiles, and air-cooling systems for turbochargers. Some new heavy-duty trucks are already being built with similar engine make-overs.

Existing machines do not have to be retrofitted, and because they have an average life of 15 years--some as long as 30 years--the clean air benefits of the new engines will emerge gradually, reaching a 40% cut in current emissions by 2010, the EPA estimates.

Farmers, construction firms, golf courses, transportation agencies and others buy about half a million pieces of the equipment each year.

EPA officials have not yet done a full cost analysis, but the agency predicts that the price of each new high horsepower machine will rise “in the low hundreds” of dollars beginning in 2001, Kopinski said.

The manufacturers, however, declined to estimate the costs. They say they are working to ensure that the new diesels will be attractive to customers.

“We do know, as an industry, we’ll be spending millions of dollars, investing it in research and development programs and tooling to develop these new engines,” Brown said. “Our role is to produce engines that people will buy and that are cleaner, and we feel both responsibilities. If nobody buys them, it doesn’t do the environment any good.”