Diesel’s Stranglehold on Economy Is Hard to Break

Trace a simple stalk of celery back to its raw roots and you get a lesson in how diesel fuels America’s economy.

Before it winds up in a grocer’s bin and is sliced into a salad, every step of the way--from field to kitchen--celery grown at A.G. Kawamura’s farm in Irvine is touched by dozens of machines, all powered by diesel.

First, tractors and plows prepare the rough land. Seedlings arrive by truck and are planted by machine. Fertilizer is sprayed, water is pumped; diesel provides the power. When the crop is ready, diesel drives harvesters and picking platforms. Big rigs haul the fresh celery from packing sheds to market. Then, it all starts over again: Diesel machines mulch and chop the field to prepare it for the next season.

“Every aspect of getting the crop grown and packed in a box--every step along the way has diesel involved in it,” said Kawamura, a third-generation farmer. His farm, average in size, consumes enough diesel fuel every year to drive a heavy-duty truck half-a-million miles.

From tractors, bulldozers and ships to big rigs, trains and buses, these rugged engines are the workhorses of America. Reliable, fuel-efficient and tough enough to log a million miles and haul loads up steep mountain passes, “diesels are in every aspect of commerce,” said Allan Zaremberg, president of the California Chamber of Commerce. “We may be moving things more and more through the communication highway, but remember that nobody has a computer unless we deliver it by truck.”

But while diesel powers the modern economy, it also makes thousands of people sick. How to eliminate the massive volumes of pollution these engines spew into the air without disrupting the society that depends on them poses a major dilemma for environmental officials and engineers.

Technology, experts hope, could provide the solution.

“The need to find something better than diesel has spurred a tremendous wave of research and development,” said Bill Van Amburg, a vice president of CALSTART, a business and government consortium promoting advanced transportation technologies in California.

For the first time in the 40 years that diesels have dominated heavy machinery, cleaner alternatives do exist.

Several thousand heavy-duty trucks and buses fueled by natural gas engines--which pollute about half as much as diesels--are plying the roads, carrying groceries in Sacramento, hardware in Irwindale, plasterboard in Los Angeles, mail in San Diego and garbage in Anaheim.

And even newer clean-air options are emerging. Last week, the state Air Resources Board unveiled an experimental big rig, powered by electricity and natural gas, that is almost exhaust-free and moves in near silence.

For the companies willing to be pioneers, however, switching to the alternative trucks has been complicated, risky and expensive. Just finding places to fuel up with natural gas is a major headache for a trucker.

Still, the few businesses that have tried natural gas trucks-- including Ace Hardware, United Parcel Service and Raley’s supermarket--are stalwart fans, raising hope that alternatives will, someday, catch on. And there are signs that interest among truckers is growing. In April, more than 400 fleet owners gathered in Downey to hear about the newest clean-fuel engines.

“We’re seeing people looking at other alternatives when they purchase an engine,” Van Amburg says. “Diesel is starting to be looked at as a legal liability, and companies are worried about their public image.”

Ten or more years from now, he predicts, perhaps only half of new buses and delivery trucks coming on the road will run purely on diesel; half could be powered by natural gas, exhaust-free fuel cells, or a hybrid of diesel and electricity.

But experts agree that how far new technology goes will depend on how hard government pushes. That remains somewhat up in the air, particularly after a federal appeals court ruling earlier this month that invalidated the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to limit fine particles such as those emitted by diesel engines. Without mandates or financial incentives, progress will remain slow.

Across the nation, diesels seem poised to remain king of the road for decades to come.

In Columbus, Ind., at the headquarters of Cummins Engine Co., by 10 a.m. a flashing sign above the assembly line reminds workers they have already churned out 77 diesel engines--well on their way to building 200 before they quit for the day.

With the country’s economy booming, orders for diesel trucks and buses are flooding in. Cummins, the world’s largest manufacturer of heavy-duty diesel engines, is celebrating seven straight years of record sales.

But Cummins and other manufacturers are bracing for a transformation that aims to put a new generation of cleaner-burning diesel trucks and buses on America’s roads.

Well aware that diesels remain in the cross hairs of cities like Los Angeles battling dirty air, engine and oil companies are spending tens of millions of dollars experimenting with more sophisticated technologies that can reduce pollution from diesels.

“I’m as offended as anyone when I’m behind a big rig belching out black smoke,” said John Wall, a vice president at Cummins in charge of technology. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to clean this mess up.”

Already, diesel trucks and buses made in the last 10 years are substantially cleaner than older ones. Computers attached to the engine precisely meter the fuel and eliminate much of the black smoke caused by unburned carbon and sulfur particles. A truck’s electronics are now more complex than a car’s.

More progress is due in 2002. New engines for trucks and buses must be redesigned by then to emit only half as much smog-forming nitrogen oxides as today’s engines. For new tractors, bulldozers and other heavy machines, the deadline is 2008.

But the pace of cleaning up the fleet remains painfully slow. A truck is driven for 20 or more years before it is scrapped and replaced, and farm tractors are handed down from generation to generation. About 350,000 heavy-duty diesel trucks are registered in California alone, plus a roughly equal number of tractors, bulldozers and other farm and construction vehicles.

Looking into the future, ideas for fixing diesels are ambitious, some a few years off, some mere dreams: “designer” fuels that contain little or no sulfur. Special catalytic converters that could work on diesels for the first time. Filters that zap soot with microwave pulses like a self-cleaning oven. Devices that dispatch quick, high-voltage plasma surges like a fluorescent light. Injections of ammonia that kill off nitrogen oxides.

“Diesel manufacturers have to throw everything they’ve got at it,” said Gary Yowell, a California Energy Commission engineer who specializes in heavy-duty vehicles. “Whatever they do will be too little, too late.”

John Fairbanks, a U.S. Department of Energy manager of diesel engine development, said many of the new technologies and fuels for cleaning up diesel exhaust have promise, but no one knows yet whether they will work under rigorous driving conditions, and be economical and practical for customers.

Engine makers, while dabbling in alternative fuels, are spending most of their resources struggling to keep diesels alive well into the 21st century. Their aim is to make diesels as clean as natural gas engines within 10 years--not just for trucks but for automobiles, because U.S. car makers hope to soon build sport utility vehicles powered by diesel.

“Our engineers will certainly put together a recipe that can produce a diesel engine as clean as a natural gas engine,” said Christine Vujovich, a vice president at Cummins in charge of marketing and environmental management. “And when they do, that’s when you’ve got to ask the question about whether natural gas is the technology that will bring us into the future.”

So far, the EPA and the state air board have been reluctant to set mandates for diesels as stringent as those regulating automobiles. A heavy-duty truck puts out 150 times more soot particles than a typical passenger car.

But as cleaner technologies emerge and concerns over health effects grow, tougher emission standards are likely to be phased in.

“Our objective is to push technology as hard as we can,” said Richard Wilson, the EPA’s former assistant administrator for air policy. “We’re not going to do anything to take trucks off the road and we’re not going to take diesel engines out of trucks. We’re confident that [the industry] can do a much better job with diesels.”

Environmentalists complain that the engine industry is so wedded to diesel that it isn’t promoting its cleaner alternatives, and that the EPA and state are not requiring, or even encouraging, companies to switch.

Taking matters into its own hands, the Natural Resources Defense Council last year sued five California supermarket companies for exposing neighborhoods near their trucking centers to cancer-causing particles in diesel exhaust. The pending lawsuit has frightened many trucking firms into considering a switch to natural gas.

“The money and power is with the oil lobby and the engine manufacturers, and they have consistently prevented our society from moving to cleaner fuels,” said Gail Ruderman Feuer, an NRDC attorney in Los Angeles. “Our principal goal is to move our society away from its dependence on dirty diesel vehicles.”

Truckers today can buy environmentally friendlier trucks. But few have been willing.

In 1997, Cummins began offering heavy-duty truck engines fueled by liquefied natural gas. Frozen at 500 degrees below zero, the gas requires special fueling stations.

Cummins sold only 4,000 of the cleaner engines in three years--nearly all for buses--compared with almost 300,000 diesels every year. The number of natural gas heavy-duty trucks, Vujovich said, “could be counted on two hands.” In March, the company ceased making them--it was bad business to keep the assembly lines running--although it continues to make smaller models for buses.

The only other alternative for truckers is a “dual-fuel” engine, sold by Caterpillar Inc. and Power Systems Associates, that runs 85% on natural gas and can limp home on diesel if the gas runs out. So far, only 120 dual-fuel trucks are on the road in the United States, although about 300 others are on order--mostly for California supermarkets and city sanitation agencies, said Kirk Fowkes of Power Systems.

Most truckers remain diesel die-hards, unwilling to experiment with their livelihood and try a new kind of engine in their $80,000 rigs.

In Las Vegas last year, an exhibition hall brimmed with trucks equipped with every imaginable creature comfort--televisions, soft beds, buckskin seats. Truckers climbed into the shiny red cabs, checked under the hood, and compared maintenance and fuel economy--the two most fundamental issues for a business trying to turn a profit.

No one at the International Truck Show was asking about exhaust or alternative fuels. Cummins didn’t even bother to display a natural gas engine.

“This is not one of those technologies that if you build it, they will come,” said Vujovich of Cummins. “Truckers run a business--they are not going to drive around the country in a clean truck if it’s not going to make money for them.”

Natural gas engines cost 2 1/2 times more than a diesel, although in California, government air-quality subsidies narrow the gap. Moreover, lack of fueling stations would make it difficult, although not impossible--to drive a load from Los Angeles to Sacramento in a natural gas rig. Also, clean-fuel trucks don’t generate enough torque to cross mountain passes without dropping to speeds of 15 mph.

Natural gas works mainly for fleets that drive fewer than 300 miles a day and return home to refuel every night.

Most California truckers are like Bill Smerber, owner of CPS Express Inc. Standing amid his fleet of 75 trucks in Mira Loma, Smerber pointed to the hazy horizon. “Sure, I want to see Mt. Baldy over there, I don’t want to see smog,” he said. But, he said, his rigs have to move throughout the state, and his drivers can’t worry about where to buy fuel or how they’ll get over the next hill.

“If there is something [cleaner] out there that works, absolutely, I’m more than willing to look at it,” he said, “But what’s out there today, it won’t work for us.”

Still, promoters of diesel alternatives say the momentum is switching their way. There are new government subsidies, threats of an air-quality crackdown, lawsuits against diesel users, and businesses working to improve natural-gas engines and resolve problems with fuel availability and cost, said Cliff Gladstein, a Santa Monica consultant and environmentalist who is working with trucking companies to promote alternative fuels.

Last year, Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature set aside an unprecedented $25 million to pay for improvements to old diesel engines and conversions to alternative fuels. Projects seeking the funds are now being reviewed.

But the pool of money is not nearly large enough to convert California’s entire truck fleet, much less trains, ships, tractors and other vehicles.

The California Trucking Assn. estimates that 25% of trucking companies could switch to natural gas because their fleets make local runs. But the cost of the new trucks is so high it would take billions of dollars in government incentives and subsidies, says Stephanie Williams, environmental manager of the association.

It would cost $2 billion a year through 2005, at $38,000 per engine, to switch all truck engines to natural gas--an increase in trucking costs of 11% to 16%, according to a report by M.Cubed, economic consultants for the California Trucking Assn. Keeping old trucks on diesel but upgrading them to meet new exhaust standards is cheaper, but still costs $5,000 each.

The very durability of diesels limits how quickly new, cleaner engines appear on roads. One-third of the engines driving California roads are more than 9 years old, which means they do not have to meet current exhaust standards. Typically, the dirtiest trucks wind up in urban cores such as Los Angeles.

One of every 11 trucks on California roads puts out illegal, excessive smoke--essentially unburned fuel, according to the Air Resources Board’s roadside inspections. It usually means the truck needs a tuneup or similar repairs costing about $650.

“With diesel, smoke is a telling factor about the condition of the engine,” said Darryl Gaslan, manager of the Air Resources Board’s diesel division in Southern California.

California’s roadside inspections of truck exhaust began in 1991 but were suspended by the air board two years later after truckers complained about the reliability of the tests. The inspections started again last June. So far, 91% of 16,600 trucks randomly selected have passed--a substantial improvement in recent years as word of the inspections spreads, ARB officials say.

Some of the dirtiest diesels aren’t on roads--they’re on farms.

Unlike trucks and buses, no alternative-fuel engines exist for tractors and other farm equipment.

“I’d love to see the day--but only when the technology’s there,” said Irvine farmer Kawamura. “You have to be careful with industries that are critical to the nation’s well-being.”

A farmer who invests $150,000 in a tractor needs high horsepower and a reliable machine that can be used daily and endure for decades. Making them as clean as trucks is a challenge because pushing soil at low speeds requires higher torque, and the engines encounter a wide variety of uses under harsh conditions.

There are three basic ways to clean diesel exhaust--electronics that improve the engine’s combustion, devices that treat exhaust before it is released into the air, and cleaner fuels.

Today’s truck and bus engines already are equipped with advanced electronics that reduce the amount of unburned fuel that comes out the exhaust pipe.

“It’s a much more complex engine today,” said Wall. “We have electronic controls, we have fuel injection systems, we have advanced materials. We have much better control over the engine.”

The big question is: What’s next?

So far, filters that could capture more particles in the exhaust have been too delicate, complex and expensive. The glitch is finding a filter that cleans itself and doesn’t have to be frequently replaced.

Nitrogen oxides pose the other major problem. In cars, catalytic converters work well, but in a diesel, the combustion chamber contains too much air for a conventional catalyst to work--as much as 10 times more air than a gasoline engine.

Experimental catalysts cut the nitrogen oxides 40% in laboratory tests--but only if the engines burn fuel with nearly no sulfur, which would poison the system.

Engineers predict new fuels will dominate the effort to clean up diesels. One of the most promising new technologies is a fuel called Fischer-Tropsch. Made from natural gas that is converted into a liquid, it contains no sulfur and can be burned in any conventional diesel engine.

The fuel is so clean that experts say putting it in a diesel engine and using a catalyst to convert some of the remaining pollutants to harmless fumes could cut truck exhaust in half--as clean as natural gas engines.

Economics, however, may stand in the way. Without EPA mandates or incentives, a fuel like Fischer-Tropsch may never be marketed because of its high cost. Crude oil would have to rise about 25% to $20 per barrel to make diesel fuel prices comparable with the cost of Fischer-Tropsch fuel, Fairbanks said.

Others are banking on fuel cells for the future. A super-advanced technology, cells that are powered by hydrogen and spew nothing but water vapor are already powering a few experimental buses. Can trucks be far behind?

“Ultimately,” said Air Resources Board Deputy Executive Officer Tom Cackette, “there could be a zero-emission truck on the road. I really think it’s going to happen. It’s just a question of when.”

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Diesel Pollution Declining

Pollution from diesel trucks and other engines has declined in California since the late 1980s because of sophisticated electronics on new vehicles. But diesels are so plentiful that they remain a major source of particulates--tiny pieces of soot linked to respiratory diseases--and nitrogen oxides, which form smog.