All the wrong signals or is the US heading for cleaner skies?

By Pete Sweeney

Date: 24/03/05

Is the regulation of auto emissions a lost cause in the US? The signals are mixed.

The Bush administration's proposal to replace the current Clean Air Act, the Clear Skies Act, died in committee this month. Bush's critics assert that it would have weakened existing standards. "Clear Skies is a dramatic weakening of the Clean Air Act," says Nat Mund, senior Washington representative for the Sierra Club, the largest environmental lobbying group in the US. "It delays clean-up deadlines for soot and smog pollution, and removes protections in the existing Clean Air Act, replacing them with a pollution trading scheme."

In the absence of the Clear Skies Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is about to set rules for immediate and long-term targets for reducing auto emissions.

President George Bush, seen as a friend of the oil industry, said that the EPA's would provide "some of the same benefits" but added that, "they are not a substitute for effective legislation".

Effectively, there are two primary regulators when it comes to setting automobile emissions standards in the US: the EPA and the California Air Resource Board (CARB). The EPA has nominal authority over national standards but the Clean Air Act of 1970 allows California and other states to set individual standards related to emissions as well. CARB, which sets standards for the world's largest automobile market, has the de facto ability to force the automobile industry to cater to its local requirements. CARB's influence is reinforced by seven other US states which have adopted CARB standards with few or no modifications, making it more efficient for manufacturers to produce "fifty state" cars designed to come up to California's standards. According to CARB, their new standards will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from new California cars and light trucks by 22% in 2012 and about 30% in 2016.

Ulrich Müller, a corporate strategist at DaimlerChrysler, says: "We want to make 'fifty state cars', so we take the most stringent standards and try to meet them. But we need clean fuel, free of sulphur, ten or less parts per million."

This has already proved a challenge for DaimlerChrysler brands like Mercedes, whose diesel passenger vehicles like the E320 are currently unable to meet California standards - thanks to the high sulphur content of US diesel - and can therefore only be used in 42 states. "The investment we made in the past was in the engines," says Müller. "Inbetween came the regulators from the Euro 5 and California. Now we have to go into after-treatment [filtering technology used to clean emissions after combustion]."

Some in the car industry lobby are unhappy about the variety of regulatory regimes that have ensued since California and other states started unilaterally - and unevenly - raising or changing local emissions standards. Minnesota, for example, has not synchronised its standards with California but has instead drafted a mandate to increase the required dosage of ethanol mixed into its fuel. Ethanol is a corn-based biofuel additive that supports the local corn-based farm economy, a popular idea in the American midwest.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a group representing nine of the largest automobile manufacturers, has lodged legal complaints about the situation, asserting that California's proposed carbon dioxide emission standards are forcing national fuel economy standards upwards in the absence of national consensus. They contend that unlike sulphur or other pollutants caused by dirty petrol, carbon dioxide is an unavoidable by-product of petrol combustion. So California's regulations usurp the EPA's mandate to set national fuel economy standards. The Alliance also claims that CARB's regulations could add $3,000 (e2,275) or more to the price of new cars.

But even CARB's regulations leave loopholes. Despite advances in fuel technology and the increasing popularity of hybrid cars, the net fuel efficiency of the US motor fleet has dropped in recent years thanks largely to the popularity of oversized, inefficient sport utility vehicles (SUVs) specifically designed to take advantage of incentives and evade fuel standards for passenger cars. Despite tax breaks and credits extended to purchasers of biodiesel and hybrid cars, SUV owners continue to accrue tax breaks and violate passenger car fuel economy standards.

• Pete Sweeney is a freelance journalist based in Washington DC, United States.

Article considers targets for reducing car emissions in the United States.