U.S. OKs Rules to Cut Diesel Fumes by 95%

The Clinton administration Thursday approved final regulations to cut diesel fumes from big trucks and buses by 95%, a breakthrough for clean air and a boost for California truckers.

The action will usher in a new generation of virtually smokeless diesel-powered vehicles nationwide, replacing the heaviest polluters on the highways. Billowing plumes of soot from those engines are a chief source of air pollution complaints and big contributors to two of the worst pollutants--ozone and microscopic particles--in California’s skies.

“Anyone who has ever driven behind a large truck or bus is familiar with the smell of diesel fuel and the clouds of thick exhaust emissions,” said U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Director Carol M. Browner. Thursday’s action “will dramatically cut harmful air pollution. New trucks and buses run as cleanly as those running on natural gas.”

EPA officials said new engines, anti-smog devices and fuels to be introduced in 2006 will eliminate nearly 3 million tons of smog-forming emissions annually from diesel-powered big rigs, buses, delivery vans and mid-size trucks. In pollution terms, this is equivalent to removing 13 million trucks from the road and should go far toward helping America’s smoggy cities achieve federally mandated clean-air targets.

The regulations--more sweeping than any the EPA has approved to attack soot from tailpipes--are the latest in a string of environmental protections enacted by the Clinton administration as it prepares to hand power over to George W. Bush next month. It is unclear what action the new president’s administration might take, but repeal of the regulations would be a lengthy and politically difficult process.

Critics in the oil industry and among engine makers said that the controls go too far and that shortages might result if refiners decide not to produce the costly fuels. The oil industry predicts the regulations will add 15 cents per gallon to the cost of diesel fuel; EPA said the added cost will be 4 cents.

“What EPA proposed is going beyond the practical. We could get tremendous cleanup without going so far,” said Bill Hickman, spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, a coalition of oil companies that sought more lenient limits.

Those concerns struck a sympathetic chord within the Energy and Commerce departments, where intense debate has resulted in minor revisions to the rules since they were unveiled in draft form in May. In Congress, Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) has threatened to roll back the new rules early next year, although new committee assignments in an evenly divided Senate could affect that effort.

But EPA officials said the measures are necessary to protect people from sooty particles. Smaller than the diameter of a human hair, particulates are inhaled deep into the lungs and are implicated as a cause of cancer, respiratory illness and premature death for people living in smoggy cities.

The EPA backers are supported by a peculiar alliance of environmentalists, two oil companies, a major maker of diesel engines and the California Trucking Assn.

“This is the biggest vehicle pollution news since the removal of lead from gasoline, and will lead to the most significant national public health advance in a generation. It’s a real watershed,” said Rich Kassell, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Although diesel-powered buses and trucks are a major source of air pollution, they have largely escaped stringent control over the last 25 years while factories, power plants, consumer products, cars and gasoline have been cleaned up. Tackling diesel pollution is difficult because it is a highly efficient fuel that powers the nation’s interstate commerce as well as off-road farm and construction equipment. Diesel engines also are quite long-lived, and it can take decades for new technologies to be widely adopted.

The regulations unveiled this week affect only vehicles that ply the streets and highways and target both diesel engines and fuel.

Beginning in June 2006, refiners must begin producing diesel that contains not more than 15 parts of sulfur per million parts of fuel--a 97% reduction. Although sulfur is an air pollutant, it’s a greater threat to add-on emissions-control devices such as particle traps and catalysts. Getting sulfur out of fuel is a major breakthrough that will lead for the first time to widespread use of those clean devices, according to EPA.

Two oil companies, BP and Tosco Corp., already provide low-sulfur diesel in California. Nonetheless, to ease the transition for the rest of the refiners, the regulations permit as much as one-fifth of the fuel to be high-sulfur until December 2009.

About 144,000 big rigs are registered in California, and operators said the new regulations will boost fuel costs for their competitors in other parts of the country. A state law already in place for clean-diesel fuel adds at least a dime to the cost of a gallon of diesel here, said Stephanie Williams of the California Trucking Assn.

New engine specifications in the regulations require a 90% reduction in soot emissions and a 95% cut in nitrogen oxide gases. Half the engines produced must meet those standards beginning in 2007, and the rest by 2010.

Engine makers said they will be hard-pressed to meet those limits.

“The levels of emissions reduction that the rule requires and the technical challenges that manufacturers need to overcome are unprecedented,” said Jeb Mandel, legal counsel for the Engine Manufacturers Assn.

But at least one company, Chicago-based International Truck and Engine Corp., a leading manufacturer of mid-size diesel engines, already produces a so-called green diesel engine that meets those limits.

It will take perhaps 30 years before the full benefit of the new regulations is realized, but in the end the nation’s fleet of heavy duty trucks and buses will be among the world’s cleanest, EPA officials said.

“It’s very good news for air quality in California. These trucks should have invisible smoke and be much less polluting than today’s trucks,” said Jerry Martin, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board.

The total cost of implementing the rules is estimated at $4.3 billion by 2030. EPA estimates that the regulations will add as much as $1,900 to the price of a new truck or bus, which costs as much as $250,000. Those expenditures, however, represent a fraction of the savings that the agency said should be realized by improved health and environmental benefits.