Congressmen, Greens Push Cng School Bus Bill; Attack Diesel

Diesel Fuel News, April 30, 2001 by Jack Peckham

Washington, DC -- U.S. Reps. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) at a press conference on Capitol Hill here announced they'll soon introduce a bill to help fund the replacement of old, dirty-diesel school buses with compressed natural gas (CNG) or electric buses.

The bill hasn't been written yet and neither congressman attached any dollar figure to their plan.

Lending support at the press conference were Hollywood TV star Bradley Whitford (presidential advisor "Josh Lyman" in "West Wing," a series about a liberal president in the White House); the "green" group, Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS); and Michael Andre, a school fleet administrator from a wealthy Philadelphia suburb who oversaw the conversion of a diesel bus fleet to costly CNG six years ago.

UCS chief operating officer Kevin Knobloch announced that more groups are joining the alt-fuels school bus push, including American Lung Association, Electric Vehicle Association, Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition (NGVC) and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Standing in front of a computer-created image of a smoke-belching diesel bus opposite from a Mobil station, the speakers blasted diesel exhaust as a threat to public health.

"Replacing these old school buses will help reduce emissions of the pollutants that cause soot, smog and acid rain," Rep. Boehlert said.

Press materials distributed by UCS and NGVC cited previous studies claiming that CNG is cleaner or less toxic than diesel. But none of the materials mentioned that both U.S. EPA and California Air Resources Board (CARB) have now certified International Truck & Engine's "green diesel" school bus as at least as "clean" as any CNG bus on particulate matter, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon, although the "green diesel" bus NOx certification levels are half-a-gram more than the certification values on CNG buses. However, in-use testing of CNG buses shows huge variation in actual NOx emissions (see Diesel Fuel News 3/6/2000, p6), with some CNG buses emitting less NOx, while others emit far more NOx than identical clean-diesel buses fitted with PM traps. This is caused by an inherent variability problem with oxygen-sensor technology for the new stoichiometric CNG engines.

What's more, following lengthy public hearings, CARB decided that green-diesel buses shouldn't be banned from the clean-school-bus replacement equation. Instead, the air regulator is giving half of a $50 million state fund for clean-diesel and half for CNG or propane school buses (see Diesel Fuel News 12/11/2000, p8).

As CARB found in its evaluation, school districts could buy at least three new green-diesel buses for the cost of two CNG buses, not only because of the higher cost of CNG buses but also because of the high cost of CNG refueling infrastructure.

Given the CARB findings, Diesel Fuel News asked the congressmen why their bill wouldn't include any money for clean-diesel buses even though EPA and CARB certification data show nearly equivalent emissions -- and taxpayers could get at least 33% more bang for the clean-bus buck.

In response, Rep. Boehlert said that emissions weren't the only issue. "Replacing these old buses will also increase the diversity of the fuel sources that power our bus fleets," he said. "Local school districts are more vulnerable to the whims of foreign oil-producing countries who recently seem intent on cutting production and causing price-spikes for oil and gasoline. Today the price of diesel fuel is 40% higher than two years ago."

* ULSD Availability Questioned

Similarly, UCS official Michelle Robinson said that lack of widespread availability of ultra-low-sulfur diesel (ULSD) favors CNG. However, this picture is changing in a growing number of major U.S. cities, well in advance of EPA 2006 deadlines (see Diesel Fuel News 2/19/2001, p1).

Likewise defending the "off-oil" point of view was Lower Merion (PA) School district transportation supervisor Mike Andre.

"I'll grant that diesel has cleaned up its act," Andre said. "NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council] did kind of overstate their case on the diesel bus [see Diesel Fuel News 4/16/2001, p12; 2/19/2001, p7]. But natural gas is a domestic fuel. I don't want to send my sons and daughters to defend Kuwait."

However, North America is slowly beginning to realize that natural gas increasingly isn't a "domestic" nor "cheap" fuel, as a growing energy crisis spreads eastward from California. Not only is Canada boosting its share as a major foreign supplier of U.S. gas, but new liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects are coming on-line for California and the U.S. East Coast, bringing gas from some of the same OPEC countries that also supply crude oil to the U.S.

That's why President George Bush and supporters in Congress aren't pushing over-dependence on gas, but rather a broad energy policy bill including clean-coal, nuclear, gas, oil, renewables and conservation.

Also often overlooked in the energy-security equation is the fact that diesel is by far the most fuel-efficient combustion engine technology.