Australia moves closer to law establishing carbon tax

The Australian government's goal of implementing a carbon tax passed its toughest test today as the lower house of Parliament overwhelmingly approved a package of bills that institutes a phased-in carbon tax, to be followed by a carbon-trading system.

The 18 bills now go to the Senate, where the law is all but assured of passage in mid-November.

According to Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the system will reduce Australia's carbon emissions by 159 million tons by 2020. Australia is the largest per-capita carbon polluter, with an economy deeply dependent on coal.

The first phase of the law will tax carbon at $22.90 a ton beginning in the middle of next year. The surcharge will rise modestly until mid-2015, when the carbon-trading system will take effect. Other bills call for a national emissions caps, exempting farming and other agricultural sectors.

The tax will not extend to the price of gas for consumers, although rail, shipping and large trucking businesses will pay the tax indirectly on fuels such as diesel.

Australia’s biggest carbon emitters -- power companies, mining companies and industrial manufacturers -- immediately attacked the legislation, and the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, vowed a “pledge in blood” to repeal the law should he become prime minister.

The Australian law would go well beyond what the California Air Resources Board is considering. The board voted in August to reaffirm its cap-and-trade plan, which put the nation's first state carbon-trading program back on track.

California's on-again, off-again rules have been years in the making and are meant to complement AB 32, the state's landmark climate-change law that mandates a reduction in carbon pollution to 1990 levels by 2020. The air board adopted a preliminary carbon-trading plan in late 2008 but was sued by environmental justice groups in 2009.

The state plan calls for capping greenhouse gases at more than 600 industrial plants and allowing companies to buy and sell emissions permits. It is modeled on Europe's 6-year-old cap-and-trade system. California is considering whether to work with Canada under the Western Climate Initiative, a collaboration involving the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

California's program would be North America's biggest carbon market, three times larger than a utility-only system in 10 Northeastern states. By 2016, about $10 billion in carbon allowances are expected to be traded through the California market.

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-- Julie Cart

Photo: People walk across the frozen Songhua River near smokestacks at Jiamusi in China's Heilongjiang province in 2005. Credit: Greg Baker / Associated Press

Get your EVs running: First National Plug In Day is Oct. 16

Electric-vehicle enthusiasts from New York to California will wheel into the streets en masse Sunday as part of National Plug In Day. Twenty-one cities, including Santa Monica, San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Orange in California, will  hold electric car parades and tailpipe-free tailgate parties to celebrate -- and test drive --currently available plug-ins from Nissan, General Motors, Tesla and SMART, and soon-to-be available models from Mitsubishi, Toyota, Ford and Coda.

"We wanted to get the word out to the American public that electric cars are here now and viable," said Paul Scott, co-founder of Plug In America, which teamed with the Sierra Club and the Electric Auto Assn. to organize the nationwide event. "In the past, a lot of our activities had been centered around California because that was virtually the only state you could get an electric car.  Now the Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf and Tesla Roadster are in most states and have new drivers who are excited about their cars."

About 400 electric cars, trucks and motorcycles are expected at the Santa Monica parade Sunday. The EVs will start their trek at Santa Monica City Hall and drive down Main Street starting at 10 a.m. Ed Begley Jr. and "Revenge of the Electric Car" director Chris Paine are expected to attend.

-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: Nissan Leaf. Credit: Nissan USA

Supreme Court rejects builders' challenge to pollution rule

This post has been updated. See below for details.

The U.S. Supreme Court today refused to review a case in which builders in the San Joaquin Valley sought to overthrow restrictions on air pollution associated with sprawl.

The National Assn. of Home Builders had sought to overturn a rule that requires developers to mitigate additional air pollution associated with large developments -- such as increased automobile traffic with longer commuting distances.

The so-called indirect source rule, adopted in 2005 by the San Joaquin Unified Air Pollution Control District, was aimed at steering development to areas close to public transportation, providing pedestrian-friendly shopping areas, and encouraging alternative means of travel, such as bicycle lanes. Developers who could not comply were required to pay a fee that would be used to fund pollution offsets elsewhere.

Earthjustice, an environmental group that participated in the case, praised the rejection by the nation's highest court. "We were glad to stand with the San Joaquin air district to defend this rule,” said Paul Cort, an attorney for Earthjustice. “No special interest should have a free ride in a region where schools and parents are frequently warned to keep children indoors on bad air days.”

The regulation had withstood opposition in 2008 in a lower federal court in Fresno, and had been appealed to the nation's highest court.

[Updated, 1:50 p.m.: "We are disappointed that the Supreme Court did not elect to hear our case," Amy Chai, a senior counsel for the Nationial Assn. of Home Builders, said in an email. "However, the Supreme Court receives thousands of petitions every year and hears only a fraction of those cases, so it is rare to have a case taken by the Court."]

The heavily agricultural San Joaquin Valley, along with the Los Angeles area, suffers from some of the dirtiest air in the nation and a high rate of asthma and other respiratory diseases.

[Correction: A previous version of this story said the pollution rule was aimed at greenhouse gases. It was intended to curtail emission of nitrogen oxides and particulates, an effort that also would have a beneficial effect on emission of greenhouse gases.]

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'MythBusters' asks: Are motorcycles greener than cars?

-- Geoff Mohan

Photo: A housing development along the San Joaquin River in California's Central Valley. Credit: Marcio Jose Sanchez / For The Times

'MythBusters' asks: Are motorcycles greener than cars?

A trend is afoot, according to "MythBusters" television host Adam Savage: "People are trading in their cars and driving motorcycles instead because they believe that's the more environmentally friendly choice," Savage said in Wednesday's season opener of the popular Discovery Channel show. "The logic is because motorcycles are generally more fuel-efficient than cars, they burn less gas and thus they must be better for the environment."

The question is: Are they really? As the MythBusters have done with each of the show's previous seven seasons, Savage and his co-host Jamie Hyneman set out to test the theory.

Selecting three motorcycles and three cars that represented popular models from the '80s, '90s and '00s, they put the six vehicles through a 30-minute, 20-mile course. Seventy-five percent was freeway driving; the other 25 percent was in the city. Savage drove the three cars. Hyneman trailed him at speed on each of the three bikes. None of the vehicles' makes and models were disclosed.

All of the vehicles were equipped with portable emissions-measuring systems that took exhaust gases from a probe in the tailpipe and engine information from the engine control unit.  The devices  determined the vehicles'  fuel economy and emissions profiles while the vehicles were running on the real-world course in California's Alameda County earlier this year.

The upshot? Motorcycles were indeed more fuel-efficient than cars and emitted less of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, but they emitted far more smog-forming hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen, as well as the toxic air pollutant carbon monoxide. For the most recent model year vehicles tested -- from the '00s -- the motorcycle used 28% less fuel than the comparable decade car and emitted 30% fewer carbon dioxide emissions, but it emitted 416% more hydrocarbons, 3,220% more oxides of nitrogen and 8,065% more carbon monoxide.

Auto shredder to pay $2.9 million to settle toxic waste case

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control and Los Angeles district attorney's office announced a $2.9-million settlement Thursday with an Anaheim scrap metal company over allegations that it improperly handled hazardous materials.

A judge has accepted the agreement, which resolves complaints that the owner and operator of SA Recycling and Simms Metal West violated hazardous waste and air pollution laws by continuing operations after an air pollution control system was damaged by a May 2007 explosion at its Port of Los Angeles site.

At the time of the violations, the company was operated by Sims Hugo Neu West, a subsidiary of Sims Group Limited, which acquired substantially all of the recycling operations of Hugo Neu Corp. in October 2005.  Sims Group merged the metal recycling operation with Adams Steel in 2007, creating SA Recycling, LLC.

The facility shreds automobiles, household appliances and other metal-based waste.

"We continue to deny that any of these allegations occurred," company spokesman Michael Bustamante said Thursday. "We're happy to put this behind us for the sake of the company and for the sake of the community."

The Department of Toxic Substances Control estimated that about 4.4 tons of unspecified "material" was released into the environment during that period.

State regulators have turned their attention to auto shredders and scrap processors, which crush and compress motor vehicles, consumer goods and other items for recycling, but leave behind residue dubbed "auto fluff," consisting of glass, rubber, fiber, engine fluids and plastics, among other substances.

Fountain Valley hydrogen station fills 'er up with sewer gas

As General Motors, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and other major automobile manufacturers prepare to bring hydrogen cars to market by 2015, the availability and sustainability of the hydrogen fuel to power them remains an issue.

Later this month, what is believed to be the world's first sewage-powered hydrogen fuel station will  open in Fountain Valley, offering a renewable-energy solution to one piece of the sustainability puzzle. 

"This is a paradigm shift," said Scott Samuelsen, director of the UC Irvine National Fuel Research Center that engineered the system. "This is the epitome of sustainability, where we're taking an endless stream of human waste and transforming it to transportation fuel."

The new station is powered with a 300-kilowatt fuel cell capable of producing 120 kilograms of hydrogen gas, and fueling as many as 30 cars, per day, Samuelsen said. Designed as a three-year demonstration project and funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, the station will be accessible to drivers of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles who have arranged for access through the vehicle manufacturer.

On the public side of the Orange County Sanitation District off the 405 Freeway at Euclid Avenue, the hydrogen gas is created from the methane generated by human excrement, garbage disposal waste and whatever else makes its way to the sewer in Orange County. The so-called digester gas from the district's wastewater treatment plant is conditioned to reduce contaminants and to create a quality of biogas that can be fed to the fuel cell. The biogas is then heated to the point of decomposition, at which point it is released as hydrogen gas that is transported to the pump for dispensing.

"What's special about this is it increases the efficiency for the fuel cell," Samuelsen said. "There's a synergy there that we're able to take advantage of to create hydrogen that's not only renewable but requires almost no expenditure of energy from the sewer gas to generate the hydrogen."

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-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: Fountain Valley hydrogen fuel station. Credit: Steve Zylius , UC Irvine Communications

Caterpillar Inc. to pay $2.55 million penality [Updated]

Manufacturing company Caterpillar Inc. will pay a $2.55-million penalty and recall 925 engines that failed to meet emission control standards under the Clean Air Act, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice, which settled with the company last week.

The EPA said the company did not report emission controls or correctly label the engines built between 2001-2005. Failing to comply with emission controls allows engines to release excess nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and other air pollutants that cause respiratory illness and aggravate asthma. 

"The enforcement of vehicle emissions standards, labeling and reporting requirements is critical to protecting the air we breathe and ensuring that companies play by the rules,” said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. The “settlement will protect public health and create a level playing field for companies that meet their environmental obligations.”

Of the $2.55-million fine, Caterpillar will pay $2.04 million to the U.S. government and $510,000 to California for the sale of improperly configured engines in the state, the EPA said.

Green energy: California poll finds overwhelming support

A new statewide survey of environment issues conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California found more residents favor climate change policy, want to cut greenhouse gas emissions and believe they are already experiencing the effects of global warming.

“This is a clear mandate that people want to move beyond dirty energy,” said David Graham-Caso, Los Angeles Sierra Club spokesman.

The survey, the 11th since 2000, sampled more than 2,500 people and found Californians are strongly supportive of policies that encourage fuel efficiency and renewable energy, according to Mark Baldassare, president and CEO of PPIC.

Most survey takers (67%) support the state’s law reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Across the board, state residents agree that automakers should be required to improve fuel efficiency standards (90% Democrats, 81% independents, and 76% Republicans).

They also overwhelmingly favor (79%) government regulation of the release of greenhouse gases from sources such as power plants, cars and factories to reduce global warming. While 79% favor greenhouse gas regulations, they are split between a cap and trade system (54% in favor) and a carbon tax (60% in favor).  

“People see it as a tax to discourage fossil fuel use and to improve state infrastructure,” said Jim Metropulos, senior advocate of the Sierra Club in Sacramento.  “The Sierra Club believes something like a carbon tax would make it easier to achieve outcomes that we want quickly.”

Meat Eater's Guide ranks foods by environmental, health effects

Lamb, beef and cheese generate the most greenhouse gases of 20 popular meat, fish, dairy and vegetable proteins, according to a new study from the Environmental Working Group. The Meat Eater's Guide, released by the Washington-based environmental research firm, used a cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment to determine each food's rank, including the amount of fertilizer used to grow animal feed, as well as data on each food's processing, transportation and disposal.

"There's been a lot of information out there about all the various impacts of meat production and consumption," said EWG senior analyst Kari Hamerschlag. "We wanted to consolidate and highlight the most important things consumers need to know to make better choices."

The guide considers the effects of meat, fish, dairy and vegetable consumption on the environment and the climate, as well as human health and animal welfare. Ruminant livestock, such as sheep and cows, "release substantial amounts of methane," a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, according to the guide. In the U.S., 149 million acres of cropland, 167 million pounds of pesticides and 17 billion pounds of nitrogen fertilizer are used just to grow livestock feed; U.S. livestock generate around 500 million tons of manure annually, which contributes to groundwater and air pollution, the guide said.

Citing data from a U.S. Department of Agriculture study, the guide said 20% of uneaten meat in the U.S. ends up in landfills, though percentages of thrown-away meat vary by type: 40% of fresh and frozen fish were tossed, 31% of turkey, 25% of pork, 16% of beef and 12% of chicken. 

"People don't really consider that there's a tremendous amount of resources that went into food that's wasted," Hamerschlag said.

The Meat Eater's Guide includes a chart that shows the carbon footprint of each food, equating the consumption of four ounces of each item with its equivalent in car miles driven. Eating a four-ounce serving of beef, for example, generates the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as driving a car six miles, according to the Guide. A four-ounce serving of organic, free-range eggs is equivalent to driving one mile. A four-ounce serving of lentils -- the food with the smallest carbon footprint in the guide -- is equivalent to driving one tenth of one mile.

While the report acknowledges that meat, when eaten in moderation, provides healthy and complete proteins and other nutrients, it cites a 2009 National Cancer Institute study that found people who ate the most red meat were 27% more likely to die of heart disease than those who ate the least.

"Americans consume more meat and dairy than any other country in the world, and have the high rates of colon cancer, heart disease and diabetes to prove it," said physician Andrew Weil, adding that the "Meat Eater's Guide is an easy-to-use tool for those consumers looking to improve their health through shopping better for themselves and their families."

The author and professor of public health at the University of Arizona is one of several celebrity advocates of the Meat Eater's Guide. Liberal foodie author and activist Michael Pollan and TV chef Mario Batali also endorsed the new guide.

"Most people in the U.S. eat way more meat than is good for them or the planet," said Batali, "but even knowing this, the chances are little that we are all going to become vegetarians, much less vegans. Asking everyone to go vegetarian or vegan is not a realistic or attainable goal, but we can focus on a more plant-based diet and support the farmers who raise their animals humanely and sustainably."

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-- Susan Carpenter

Photo credit: Ishara S. Kodikara / AFP / Getty Images

California's Clean Vehicle Rebate Project runs out of money

The California Air Resources Board ran out of money for its Clean Vehicle Rebate Project this week. The program had doled out $11.1 million over the past 27 months to buyers of zero- emissions vehicles in the state.

Almost 2,000 rebates have been issued or are in the process, according to an ARB spokesperson. Rebate amounts ranged from $1,500 to $5,000, depending on the vehicle purchased.  Zero-emissions passenger cars (such as the Nissan Leaf), neighborhood electric vehicles and electric motorcycles were eligible for the rebates.

The ARB proposes to triple the amount of funding to the program for the 2011-2012 fiscal year to $15 million. The rebate amount for zero-emissions vehicles, however, is likely to be reduced, from $5,000 to $2,500 in order to meet demand. An ARB spokesperson said the proposed funding would allow about 5,600 rebates after accounting for administrative costs -- three times the amount of rebates funded to date under the program. The ARB will will conduct a public hearing July 21 to consider new rebate amounts for 2011-2012.

“Even with proposed reductions in the rebate amount for next fiscal year, California consumers will still have access to $10,000 in clean vehicle incentives through the combined California rebate and federal tax credit," said ARB spokeswoman Karen Caesar, noting that the U.S. government offers a $7,500 tax credit on zero-emissions vehicles.

The Clean Vehicle Rebate was funded under the California Alternative and Renewable Fuel, Vehicle Technology, Clean Air, and Carbon Reduction Act of 2007. The law allowed the ARB to fund advanced transportation technologies to help meet air quality and climate change goals.

-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: Nissan Leaf. Credit: Nissan Motor Co.