Time to (finally) de-guzzle our cars?

Californians will get the last word in a trio of public hearings that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation launch this week over whether and how to slash the fuel appetite of the nation's car fleet.

In the wake of President Obama's May 19 accord with California regulators, U.S. automakers, the United Autoworkers and environmental groups, the federal agencies will listen to public comments in Detroit today, in New York on Friday and in Los Angeles on Tuesday. 

Vehicles covered by the proposed rules account for 40% of U.S. fuel consumption and about 20% of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions, a colorless, odorless gas that is trapping heat in the atmosphere and disrupting the climate. The new standards would increase fuel efficiency by 5%, reducing U.S. oil consumption by 1.8 billion barrels over the lifetime of the vehicles sold from 2012 to 2016. They would would slash carbon dioxide emissions from passenger vehicles by 21% by 2030.

It was California's first-in-the-nation 2002 law requiring automakers to slash greenhouse gases that got the ball rolling. After lawsuits from automakers and years of push-back from the Bush administration, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007 ruled that EPA had the right to regulate carbon emissions from vehicles. Lower courts upheld California's right to set its own greenhouse gas standards for cars, which had been adopted by more than a dozen other states."California's leadership paved the way for the national standards," said David Doniger, climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

According to the EPA,  the fuel economy rules now under consideration can be met with existing technology. 

But even with the Obama administration's agreement, the state is forging ahead with additional rules to meet the state's 2006 landmark global warming law.  The so-called "Cool Car" regulations passed in June would require automakers to reformulate paints and glaze windows to cut solar energy entering a vehicle by 45% by 2014 and 60% by 2016.  The California Air Resources Board says the rule will eliminate 700,000 metric tons of CO2 by 2020.

Last week, the Assn. of Automobile Manufacturers, representing Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai and other foreign manufacturers, released a letter objecting to the Cool Car rules, saying that they are not "consistent" with the proposed federal fuel economy standards.

-- Margot Roosevelt

Photo: Richard Hartog / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[bill magavern]

The proposed standards deliver on the goals laid out by President Obama in his May 19
announcement. They will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 950 million metric tons – the
equivalent of shutting 205 coal power plants for a year, or keeping nearly 5 million railcars
worth of coal in the ground. At the same time, more efficient vehicles will save 1.8 billion
barrels of oil and save the average consumer $3,000 over the life of a 2016 model year vehicle.

[Phil]

"Phil works for an oil or an automobile company."

No. Not even remotely close to either industry nor energy in general. No vocational or avocational association whatsoever. I'm just an informed consumer. We have bigger problems. Automotive efficiency is on a permanent improvement curve, and nothing will derail that. Let's move on to tasks that will make a real difference. Greens like blame and targets; I like results.

[pacific ocean]

Phil works for an oil or an automobile company.
Time to de-guzzle!

[Phil]

This is simply untrue. The LA Times itself last year analyzed the impact of dramatic gains in average efficiency of the US private transportation fleet. The authors of the article calculated that if the US passenger car fleet suddenly catapulted to an average vehicle efficiency equivalent to the Toyota Prius, the carbon emissions savings would be a mere 335mm metric tons annually. THAT is just a incremental 2% contribution towards the aggregate annual reduction in anthropogenic carbon emissions the UN panel on climate change says is needed to freeze the rate of climate change by 2050. And that hypothetical gain isn't in the cards for at least two decades. Folks, the leverage ISN'T IN CARS!

On the other hand, massive subsidy of scaled solar power generation and carbon mitigation / sequestering / chemical lockup at fixed-location power plants can be crash financed for meaningful gains within five years periods, and make carbon mreduction contributions in the US alone many times that possible by futile super-regulation of cars. There are several varieties of hyperbranched compounds that enable stable sidelining of carbon dioxide emissions from smokestakes, for example, if deployed with scale. Cars are an easy target emotionally, but environmentalists, climate scaremongers, doomsayers and everyone else who just despises individual choice have it wrong. If you're serious about reducing anthropogenic carbon contribution to climate dynamics, you'll understand cars are a sideshow. For real change, effective solutions lie elsewhere.

[Phil]

The real leverage in carbon reduction isn't in cars and trucks. It's in power generation. It takes decades to replace a fleet on a national or international level. On the other hand, fixed-location power generation offers opportunities for dramatic reductions in carbon emissions with large investments in relatively brief spans of time. Cars are not our problem. That sector is taking care of itself. It is and will continue to be self-generating in efficiency gains. For instance, hyperblanched aluminosilica compounds are showing great primise for real-time slashing of carbon emissions from power plant smokestacks. The leverage is in fixed-location power generation, not in cars. The automotive sector is on a one-way path to removing itself from the environmental equation.

All this of course ignores the real remaining doubt that climate change is induced anthropogenic, but let's go with the allegation that it is. If you believe that, then regulating cars is the slowest way to slash carbon contribution by man. Between mitigation of fixed-location power generation and the potential for large scale solar arrays (the US has massive land territory to support this), we have much more productive solutions available without interfering with the vast productivity benefits of unfettered, personal, private mobility.

[jeff r]

Big problem is weight of vehicles these days. With the mandates in crash protection along with creature comforts, cars today rival the big cars of steel from yesterday. What is considered "light" today weighs in at 3800 lbs. To accelerate that mass, and everything in it, you need a large motor. The fuel efficiency of the design only applies to constant speed. Americans, like their cars, need to go on a strict diet.

[jay]

Phil's argument ignores that the market is what caused the problem in the first place. Unregulated consumption is the end result of the tragedy of the commons. With public resources, everyone will first have interest in their own wants, without regard to others. Regulations are needed to affect demand to go in the right direction. Supply will have to follow.

Phil also ignores the end result of all these cars, even if more efficient, still produce greenhouse gasses. There will be a constant production of vehicles, which will result in ever increasing emissions. Ignoring cars ("leave cars alone") only shows ignorance to the problems we all face.

The solutions proposed (Carbon sequestration) is expensive and untested. The results and probabilities of carbon leaking from a sequestration site is also an unknown. The cheapest, fastest, and most efficient gains for environmental benefit lie in increasing the efficiency of cars, consumer products, electrical transmission.

Ostrich: Head: Sand.

[D]

Phil, its obvious as technology gets better, the overall fuel economy gets better. however, we are not doing nearly enough. There is no reason why SUVs cannot get over 40 miles per gallon and much more for smaller cars. Its sad that you are settling for the incremental improvements over the last 40 years. if European and Asian countries can have higher standards, so can we.

All this is moot however, since we should be going away from fossil fuels anyways.

[Phil]

It's an ignorance-fed press and green myth that our car fleet hasn't been "de-guzzled." The facts are that every vehicle type and weight class has become progressively more efficient and cleaner in a continuous trend of technical evolution over the past 40 years, and that includes today's SUVs. For example, if you replace a 10 year old 5700 lbs., 275hp SUV with a new 5700 lbs. 400hp successor, the new and more powerful model burns less fuel than what it replaced, and emits less carbon or true pollutants. The same is true for every car and pickup truck class. The reason our fleet economy gains stagnated was that the MIX of vehicles shifted to a class of heavier vehicles in a 15 year period, and technical gains were disproportionately directed to power gains, because that's what the market demanded. It still does. Hybrids are but a blip in total demand.

We do not need these new rules. The supply side of the market is introducing efficieny gains on its own. Mobility is instrumental to economic progress, so leave cars alone and put large, sustained effort into carbon sequestering, reduction and repurposing in fixed-location power generation where real gains could be realized in any five year period.

[Noel Ferguson]

Oil price hikes will hurt tourism. 8% Oil shortfall by 2015. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/19/oil-prices-rise-supply-warning-report