US EPA to 'seed' truck, rail idling cuts, but emissions trading could do far more

Diesel Fuel News, August 5, 2002 by Jack Peckham

U.S. EPA aims to give $200,000 grants to one or two national non-profit groups to help get idling-reduction devices installed on a few trucks or locomotives. But the agency could do far more by permitting new emissions trading schemes, proponents contend.

EPA's "Green Transport Initiative" (see: http://www.epa.gov/otaq/rfp/rfa_ir.htm) aims to reduce pollutant emissions and incidentally boost energy efficiency in the U.S.

The grants would help participating trucking companies or railroads pay for the installation of at least a few such devices, with resulting fuel savings required to be reinvested for a second batch of idling-reduction devices.

The demo programs wouldn't make a huge dent in U.S. idling emissions, but would help get momentum going, an EPA source familiar with the program told us.

The initiative comes just as a U.S. House-Senate conference committee on an energy bill mulls possible mandatory idling-reduction investments in order to cut oil dependence.

Most truckers and railroads today won't install such devices because of fairly high capital cost, stiff federal excise taxes (FET) and federal road weight limits (80,000 pounds on big U.S. trucks) that cut revenue-generating freight with "dead weight" of up to 400 pounds for an auxiliary power unit (APU).

An EPA source says the agency is working to help get Internal Revenue Service to exempt anti-idling devices from FET, and is providing technical/moral support for trucking groups that aim to convince Congress to ease federal weight limits for such devices.

However, if EPA can some day be convinced to allow emissions trading between "mobile sources" including local locomotives or local trucks and "stationary sources" such as power plants or refineries, then that could pay for a huge number of APUs, with very large emissions cuts resulting, several experts say.

Reason: Fuel savings, FET or weight breaks alone can't justify the rather high capex for many units, but lucrative emissions credits can.

Example: A new study by Argonne National Laboratory, CSX and Austin Technology Ventures presented to Air & Waste Management Conference (AWMC) earlier this summer points out that a locomotive APU such as EcoTrans (see Diesel Fuel News 5/27/02, p10) could produce huge reductions in nitrogen oxides (NOx), particulate matter (PM) and noise, with substantial fuel savings to boot.

On-board global-positioning satellite (GPS) transponders installed with data-loggers would capture engine-speed "notch," location and time. Wireless data transmission to a central station would show emissions reductions creditable for an EPA-designated "non-attainment area.

Local switcher locomotives would be likeliest APU retrofit candidates, but even line-haul units might generate credits when using APUs while idling in big-city yards, as verified by GPS transmissions. NOx emissions trading prices are so lucrative that even the extra cost of GPS, data loggers and APUs could easily be recouped.

So, city of Houston and Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC) this summer aim to convince EPA to allow locomotives operating in metro Houston to sell NOx credits to stationary sources, in order to pay for the APUs. This so-called "mobile discrete emission reduction credits" (MDERCs) plan will go to public comment soon, explains Guy Diedrich of Austin Technology Ventures, one of the AWMC paper's authors.

"Our assumption is that since these are real emissions reductions, then EPA would want to see this pushed forward," Diedrich told us.

To ensure this, EPA should allow railroads to "over-comply" on such emissions reductions rather than mandate APU retrofits, which would destroy the economic incentive, he added.

While EPA potentially could go along with Houston's emissions-trading scheme (as it earlier did for a similar metro Los Angeles power plant trading NOx credits with a local "green" garbage truck fleet retrofit), creating a national mobile-to-stationary emissions-trading rule likely wouldn't be easy.

Aside from the complexities of creating a realistic model to calculate proper emissions credits, another big problem is the anti-trading attitude of many "green" groups, who typically push government mandates rather than economic incentives.

* Needs Safeguards

According to EPA sources, any future mobile-to-stationary trading scheme must overcome problems with calculating current idling emissions, ensuring anti-idling devices are actually used in the non-attainment area (and not removed or operated elsewhere) and then creating a model that results in a fair state implementation plan (SIP) credit. "A lot of safeguards would need to be built-in" before any such national scheme could be created, one EPA source told us.

Officially, EPA has never explicitly stated whether idling emissions are included in its "Mobile 6" emissions model, even though the agency's internal evaluations show that idling must be assumed to be part of the emissions total. The challenge is to quantify idling emissions, as well as figure out how to create a proper SIP credit scheme with appropriate monitoring and appropriate deductions for possible tampering or removal of a retrofitted vehicle from the non-attainment area.