State's hitting red lights on emissions law

If state officials have their way, new motor vehicles sold in California will come equipped with engine accessories like variable flow turbochargers and dual cam phasers, designed to reduce global warming.

The improvements are supposed to begin late next year, with the arrival of the 2009 models and the implementation of Assembly Bill 1493, a state law requiring automakers to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The law rolls out gradually, with emissions to be slashed 30 percent by 2016.

But don't hold your breath. AB 1493, adopted in 2002 and conceived as California's first major shot in the war on global warming, is running into friction from automakers, the White House and members of Congress. Litigation, red tape and politics are threatening to delay, weaken or kill the law altogether.

The saga of AB 1493 shows the difficulties of translating bold ideas on global warming into concrete action. It also reveals how the problems that occur when a single state -- even one as influential as California, with a high-wattage governor who's adopted the cause -- tries to wrestle Detroit and Washington into line with its environmental goals.

California officials know they alone can't solve global warming. Instead, the state hopes its efforts will bring carbon-cutting religion to the rest of the world. Already, 11 other states have copied AB 1493. But that hardly guarantees success.

"There is room for skepticism here," said David Bookbinder, a Sierra Club attorney who's helping California defend AB 1493 in court. "California is trying to do this on their own, with a few other states. ... We need to do this on a national level."

The U.S. Senate has proposed increasing mileage standards that would cut greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles by roughly the same amount as required under AB 1493, though with a target date of 2020, rather than 2016. But the prospects for full congressional approval remain uncertain.

AB 1493 is just part of California's effort to reduce greenhouse gases. But it's a major part, taking aim at a segment of the economy -- transportation -- that's responsible for 40 percent of the state's greenhouse gases.

Although state officials say complying with AB 1493 won't be hard, the world's carmakers are up in arms.

Most are suing California, calling the law an unworkable mess that would add thousands of dollars to sticker prices, force motorists into ever-smaller vehicles and do little about global warming. They say the law is a poorly disguised and wildly unrealistic scheme to improve fuel economy, violating the federal law giving Washington sole power to regulate gas mileage.

Just as important, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has failed to act on California's 18-month-old request for a waiver it needs to enforce AB 1493. Though the agency was recently ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court to clamp down on greenhouse gases, the EPA is free to reject the waiver request.

State officials are convinced they will have to sue the EPA to get their way -- a development that could delay implementation of AB 1493 for years.

"We believe that the policy of the Bush administration is to not give California the authority to move into this area," said Robert Sawyer, who until Thursday was the chairman of the California Air Resources Board, the agency enforcing AB 1493.

To some extent, this fight represents familiar ground. In the 1970s, automakers said they would be ruined by California's insistence that they develop catalytic converters to control smog-forming automobile emissions, said Jim Marston, who oversees state climate initiatives for Environmental Defense. Instead, the converters became an accepted technology worldwide.

But the fight over AB 1493 illustrates the special complications involved with global warming.
Most air pollution is local. If Los Angeles can reduce the emissions coming from its smokestacks, its residents will generally breathe cleaner air. But when emissions of gases from around the globe are trapped in the atmosphere, scientists say a greenhouse effect is generated that heats the entire world's climate. Reducing one state's greenhouse gases won't fix that state's global warming problem.

Indeed, critics use that point to shoot down AB 1493. The law will have "no more than a trivial effect in reducing the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions," automakers said in a lawsuit attacking the law.

California's response: It must do what it can, because others will follow. "What we do gets automatically multiplied," Sawyer said.

Unique among states, California has the authority under the federal Clean Air Act to set its own air pollution standards -- if it can convince the federal EPA that the state faces "compelling and extraordinary conditions." If the EPA agrees, it issues the state a waiver, which opens the door for other states to adopt similar regulations. Since the federal law was passed in 1970, California has been granted more than 40 waivers, according to the air resources board.

But when the state in December 2005 applied for a waiver to implement AB 1493, it got no answer. The EPA contended it had no jurisdiction over greenhouse gases. State officials felt they were being stonewalled.

In April, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the EPA has the authority and duty to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Although the ruling didn't address the California waiver, it prodded the EPA into action. Since then the agency has held two hearings on AB 1493.

"With the highest law of the land on our side, it becomes a question of not 'if,' but 'when' " AB 1493 will be implemented, said Roland Hwang, vehicles policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

But the California law faces opposition from other quarters.

Two congressional Democrats, Richard Boucher of Virginia and John Dingell of Michigan, are pushing a federal bill that would pre-empt AB 1493 and replace it with a weaker version. The congressmen agreed earlier this month to hold off until fall.

Major automakers are suing California in U.S. District Court in Fresno to block enforcement of AB 1493. Similar suits are pending in Rhode Island and Vermont, two of the 11 states with copycat laws.

The automakers say California's law forces them to make improvements "on a time scale that could prove difficult or impossible to meet," according to a statement filed in the Fresno case. The only practical way to meet the standards, they say, is through gas mileage improvements of 57 percent for passenger cars, effectively forcing automakers to make much smaller vehicles.

But California says AB 1493 is no big deal, particularly when compared with previous regulations, such as those requiring automakers to reduce smog-forming emissions.

"The technology which was brought to bear on that problem -- that was truly major," said Sawyer, the former air board chairman. "By comparison, to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by the amount asked for in AB 1493 is really very modest."

He said emissions-reduction targets can be achieved by outfitting new vehicles with a combination of technologies -- the dual cam phasers and such -- most of which already exist. Some already have been deployed on selected vehicles.

The board said the new technologies would increase sticker prices by $700 to $1,800, depending on the vehicle. Adding more hybrid and diesel vehicles to fleets also would help carmakers reach the targets. Diesel cars long have been banned from California as big polluters, but new technology has cleaned them up to state standards.

Automakers say they're committed to fighting global warming. But California's emissions- reductions targets will cost as much as $3,000 to $6,000 per vehicle, said Charles Territo, spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

While it's true that many carbon-reducing technologies already exist, implementing them isn't nearly as simple as Sawyer believes, Territo said.

"All of these technologies are not interchangeable," he said. "Vehicles are not a la carte. You can't just add technology to a vehicle and expect that the vehicle will operate the way a (computer) model suggests it will work."

David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., agreed that outfitting engines with a medley of new gadgets is not trivial.

But Cole, whose group is partly funded by the auto industry, also said significant emissions reductions are well within reach.

"I think in the gasoline engine, you've got about 20 to 25 percent improvement potential at a cost of around $1,000," he said. "But the ability to implement that quickly is a real challenge."

Source: Sacramento Bee
July 1, 2007

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