California – Page 2 – Peter Fairley

Will Obama Get EPA Off the Road?

President Obama’s first move for clean tech could simply be getting the federal government out of the way in one area where the states are already poised to move aggressively: fuel economy. Candidate Obama promised to do as much on the campaign trail and yesterday Lisa Jackson, his nominee for EPA administrator, provided some hope that he will follow through in office.

Jackson, formerly New Jersey’s top environmental regulator, pledged in a Senate confirmation hearing yesterday that she would “immediately revisit” whether to allow states to set CO2 emissions limits on automobiles.

The CO2 tailpipe standards at issue were set by California in 2004 and subsequently adopted by 18 other states, which are more stringent than the tightened Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards approved by Congress in December 2007. Federal courts rejected auto industry challenges against the tougher state standards, but the Bush EPA rode to the rescue by denying California (and by extension its partner states) a federal waiver needed to implement the rules.

Jackson, if confirmed by the Senate, will thus have the power to immediately take an obstructionist EPA off the road. This could have a significant impact on technology development, given that minimal innovation is required to meet the tightened CAFE standards.

Jackson’s pledge to reconsider the state emissions waiver is an “early challenge for automakers” as Obama takes office next week, according to business journal Automotive News:

Automakers and their allies oppose state-by-state regulation of greenhouse gases. They say such rules are an indirect attempt to regulate fuel economy, which is a federal responsibility. They also say state rules would add costs and create market chaos, especially for dealers near borders with states that don’t have their own rules.

Natural Resources Defense Council vehicles policy director Roland Hwang suggested recently in a provocative report that automakers could solve such problems itself: “The obvious solution to all of the automaker concerns — including their desire for a uniform national standard — is to adopt California’s [greenhouse gas] standards nationwide.”

Hwang analyzed fuel economy projections in business plans that GM and Ford Motor submitted to Congress last month during their pursuit of a federal loan package. (His analysis excludes Chrysler, whose business plan was short on fuel economy details.) He concludes that GM and Ford could comply with the California standards with little to no effort:

All three companies state that they will at least comply with future federal fuel economy (“CAFE”) standards. This analysis demonstrates that GM and Ford are now positioned also to comply with the more stringent California greenhouse gas standards if they were extended to apply nationwide. (my emphasis)

Postscript: Jackson’s home state of New Jersey just joined the list of states implementing California’s Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) program, according to the Daily Record of Parsippany, NJ. The ZEV program was declared dead along with the battery-electric vehicle by the award-winning 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?. In fact, the program helped drive hybrid vehicles onto car lots across the country and will likely accelerate future adoption of plug-in hybrids and battery-electrics according to my ZEV report in IEEE Spectrum magazine.

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This post was created for the Technology Review guest blog: Insights, opinions and analysis of the latest in emerging technologies

January 15, 2009January 16, 2009 by pfairley

California Counts the Ways to Decarbonate

Trying to track California’s developments in climate change policy is a full-time job these days. Carbon-Nation has followed the state’s efforts to drive the electrification of the automobile, but this is but a scratch at the surface. California’s initiatives also include: incentives for renewable energy, taxes on high-carbon fuels, tough vehicle fuel economy standards (in the absence of real leadership from Washington), and, in partnership with other western states and British Columbia, a regional cap-and-trade system that should ratchet down industrial emissions of greenhouse gases.

This broad frontal attack on climate complacency is helping to change the politics of climate change across the U.S. and Canada. It is also driving innovation. Today, California’s Air Resources Board reviews an innovative report from its Global Warming Economic and Technology Advancement Advisory Committee that lays out no less than 55 opportunities to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The proposals span the realms of finance, transportation, industry, commerce, residential energy use, electricity and natural gas, agriculture, forestry and water policy.

Let no one say that its too late to stop climate change.

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February 28, 2008December 6, 2008 by pfairley

Tech Talk on Plug-in Hybrids

Going forward, some of Carbon-Nation’s posts will now be copublished via IEEE Spectrum’s Tech Talk blog, beginning with this report on California plug-in mania: “Plug-in hybrids win big in ZEV tweaks” (full text follows)

Plug-in mania has an influential new fan: the California Air Resources Board, which looks set to elevate plug-ins several notches in its zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate.

The ZEV directive requires car manufacturers to market ultraclean and emissions-free vehicles (or buy credits earned by others making such vehicles). The California Air Resources Board unleashed intense lobbying this winter among battery EV start-ups, major automakers, hydrogen fuel-cell developers, and coalitions promoting plug‑in hybrids when it promised to tweak the level of credits earned by various technologies. From the Air Resources Board staff proposal released late last week, plug-ins appear to be the big winners.

Presently the ZEV credit ratios favor fuel cells and offer relatively little help for plug-ins. The staff proposal would change this by enabling manufacturers to meet most of their ZEV requirements through 2014 with plug-in hybrids and hydrogen combustion vehicles. While not pure ZEVs like battery EVs and fuel cell vehicles, the California regulators bet that manufacture of plug-ins will yield components and infrastructure that will hasten the day when the pure EVs go mainstream.

“The goal continues to be to accelerate the development of pure ZEVs,” says Air Resources Board member Daniel Sperling, director of the University of California, Davis, Institute of Transportation Studies. Sperling says promoting plug-in hybrids is the “only realistic way” to push car makers forward in light of the continued high cost of batteries and fuel cells.

Sperling and his fellow Air Resources Board members will take up the staff proposal after a public hearing in Sacramento scheduled for March 27-28.

Meanwhile, Arizona regulators seem to be feeling considerably more bullish about the viability of pure electrics. The Arizona Republic reports that Airzona’s Department of Environmental Quality has drafted rules mandating that 11 percent of all cars sold in the state must be ZEVs from the 2011 model year. In 2018 the mandate would jump to 16 percent.

This post was created for Tech Talk – Insights into tomorrow’s technology from the editors of IEEE Spectrum.

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February 11, 2008March 6, 2008 by pfairley