Southern California鈥檚 anti-smog regulators opened a new front on the war on heavy-duty diesel trucks by joining a coalition of agencies stretching from Washington state to New York last week. Their goal? To lobby the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require all new trucks to emit near-zero emissions by Jan. 1, 2024, a strategy that includes wiping out the diesel engine, the standard in long-haul trucking and replacing it with compressed natural gas truck engines.
Even if such battleground rules could be approved by EPA and the courts, with help from aggressive anti-smog agencies such as the California Air Resources Board and the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the changeover to near-zero emission trucks would take another 20 years because of long phase-in periods, slow turnover rates and unique market forces that include out-of-state truckers hauling goods from the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach using older vehicles.
California Last in New Trucks
According to a May report from the Diesel Technology Forum, a lobbying group in Washington, D.C., California is dead last in the number of new trucks on the road meeting the six-year-old 2010 standard set by the ARB of 0.2 grams of nitrogen oxides (NOx) per horsepower hour.
Only 18 percent of the heavy-duty or big-rig trucks on the road in California are year 2010 models or newer, the lowest compliance rate of all 50 states. Indiana, for example, topped the list with 45 percent of its truck fleet 2010 or newer. Nationwide, 26 percent of commercial heavy-duty trucks are model year 2010 or newer, according to the report which relied on registration statistics from each state. 鈥淪o basically, the trucking industry is not investing in new technology within California as are states around the country,鈥� said Allen Schaeffer, executive director.
Diesel industry groups want the state and EPA to allow the existing rules to work themselves into the market, instead of pushing for stricter, 鈥渘ear-zero鈥� emissions and forcing unproven technologies that don鈥檛 work for long-haul truckers. The report criticizes the state spending $70 million to help increase natural gas trucks which amount to 2 percent of the commercial fleet in the state as of last year.
Schaeffer wants to see trucking companies receive cash incentives from the state鈥檚 Cap and Trade fund, money from polluting industries paid to the state per the amount of carbon emitted, to help them buy newer, less-polluting, diesel trucks. By concentrating on cleaner diesel engines and low-emissions diesel fuels, the state will see faster drops in NOx, a contributor to lung-damaging ozone, than developing CNG or electric trucks, which can take decades.
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