To suggest California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) diesel engine rules are controversial is an understatement and their mere existence stokes significant confusion amongst most truckers. Part of the reason for the confusion is because CARB’s website is hard to navigate and their communication of the rules to truckers, especially out-of-state truckers, has been minimal.
With nearly 1.3 million commercial motor vehicles in North America paying registration fees to operate in California – a number that does not include over 400,000 trucks registered just in California alone, compliance costs associated with CARB regulations will be measured in the billions of dollars and mostly assumed by owner-operators and small-business truckers.
Team Run Smart has been presenting information about CARB since July 2012, but we thought we could really “clear the air” (pun intended) about how CARB regulations came into being, where their authority to regulate came from, and how they impact your operation.
How did CARB get their authority?
The answer stems from California’s unique topography and huge population densities that are packed into geographic regions surrounded by mountains. Add in millions of automobiles and their cumulative emissions from sitting on California’s eternally clogged freeways and poor air quality was the not-so-surprising result.
To address poor air quality at a time of exploding growth, California Governor Ronald Reagan signed the legislation creating CARB in 1967, and the state became the first to regulate automobile tailpipe emissions. California’s special status to independently regulate engine emissions is because they were the first to do it.
In 1970, President Richard Nixon created the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and signed the federal Clean Air Act (CAA). CARB was given “special status” under the CAA because it was regulating air quality prior to the federal government. The CAA also granted every state the option to choose between U.S., EPA, or adopting CARB regulations. Perhaps most important to truckers, CARB can regulate “in-use” engines. This is authority the U.S. EPA does not possess.
The CAA puts requirements on states to achieve certain levels of air quality. Failure to make targets could trigger certain federal sanctions against a state that would conceivably limit economic growth. In 2006, California’s then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger became a champion of “climate change” and signed AB 32 – the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which has been used by CARB ever since to further regulate the trucking industry. Governor Schwarzenegger believed California could lead an economic “green revolution” and reduce carbon footprints to 1990 levels (which is a key requirement of AB 32).
U.S. EPA diesel emissions regulations.
U.S. EPA has authority to establish emissions standards at time of manufacture and certifies the configuration of trucks and engines. The EPA targeted a reduction in diesel emissions beginning with 2004 Model Year (MY) engines. The subsequent steps with 2007 and 2010 MY engines did reduce overall emissions by over 90 percent compared to an engine manufactured in the late 90s – primarily particulate matter (PM) and nitrogen oxides (NOx).
In conjunction with the step down in diesel engine emissions, EPA mandated all diesel fuel sold in the U.S. conform to the ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) standard of 15 parts per million (ppm). The previous low sulfur diesel contained 500 ppm of sulfur. The ultra-low standard was necessary for the proper operation of all the new emissions technology. Sulfur content in fuel directly affects overall PM emissions.
If you use a yardstick to visualize emissions from diesel engines, an engine manufactured in the late 90s would have equivalent emissions equal to the full yardstick. A 2010 EPA emissions-compliant engine barely registers on the yardstick. Both the EPA engine emissions standards and conversion to ULSD accomplished the EPA’s goal of emissions reductions, but the cost has been high for the industry.
Back to why CARB decided to regulate in-use trucks.
Diesel engines in on-road trucks contribute only about 2.5 percent of total PM in California air (over 90 percent of the PM in the air you breathe is naturally occurring ranging from sea salt to atmospheric dust). Yet that contribution to air quality became a focus of regulators since there is nothing they can do about the other 90 percent plus contribution to air quality coming from natural sources.
Ultimately, the CARB Board voted to impose the diesel engine regulations in spite of significant pushback from a majority of the small-business trucking community.
Stay tuned for Part II of Understanding CARB Regulations coming next week on Team Run Smart!