Europe, U.S. still out-of-synch on non-road diesel regulations

Diesel Fuel News, July 21, 2003

While Europe's Council of Environmental Ministers last month came up with draft recommendations to amend non-road mobile machinery legislation (see Diesel Fuel News 1/20/03, p1), in part to align with upcoming U.S. EPA standards, they're still not altogether in synch. As noted by Association for Emissions Control by Catalyst (AECC), the draft report to Parliament's environment committee calls for Europe to adopt 'Euro-IV' (replacing 'Stage IIIb') non-road emissions around 2010 with tougher, 1 grams/kilowatt-hour HC NOx limits on engines over 75-kW, and 3.5 g/kW-hr NOx HC for engines less than 75-kW.

Particulates (PM) limit would be 0.025 g/kWh, and "not-to-exceed" values of all engine operating modes would be set at 100% higher than limits on standard certification tests, AECC noted. The new draft not only would cover non-road equipment such as farm/construction machines, but also diesel inland watercraft, locomotives and self-propelled railcars (including engines over 560-kW), unlike the proposed EPA "Tier 4" non-road rule, which leaves out locomotive/marine (see Diesel Fuel News 6/23/03, p13; 4/23/03, p1). The European proposal specifically mentions selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology for emissions control on rail/watercraft, AECC notes. EPA, despite claiming "neutrality" on emissions controls, still is suspicious about urea refueling/infrastructure, so NOx traps seem to have the edge over SCR for both highway and non-road diesel applications, at least for now.