Diesel retrofits: not just for school buses anymore: goal is to reduce emissions of in-use diesels in virtually all applications—great, how do we pay for it?

Diesel Progress North American Edition, Feb, 2005 by Mike Osenga

Publisher's Note: This issue marks the start of a multi-year Diesel Progress editorial series called The Technology of Clean Air. In these times and markets, diesel engines emissions and the products, technologies and strategies to meet those regulations are things we will obviously continue to cover every month.

However, in concert with those developments, The Technology of Clean Air will also focus on the efforts being made with existing diesel-powered equipment through the many retrofit and test programs in North America, and via Diesel Progress International, throughout the world.

This is an overview of that subject, with a special look at how these programs can be paid for.

With the regulatory path for most new diesel-powered equipment clearly laid out through around 2014, attention now turns to cleaning up equipment already in operation.

The U.S. EPA has laid down stringent clean air requirements for ozone and particulate matter in the designated non-attainment zones. That generally means retrofitting on the state and local, and up until now has largely meant mostly school buses.

But as the efforts to clean up the air increase, especially in non-attainment areas, retrofitting is spreading to other types of equipment. As the headline says, retrofitting is becoming about much more than school buses today.

As the possibilities for retrofit have expanded, so has the definition. It now also includes: repowering existing equipment with new, cleaner engines; repairing--more stringent maintenance of in-use engines; and refueling existing equipment, which will get even more attention as we move closer to lower sulfur fuels, as well as the increased interest in gaseous fuels, along with alternatives to diesel fuel.

Last summer, Margo Oge, director of EPA's Office of Transportation and Air Quality challenged the industry to "clean up" 11 million in-use diesel engines over the next 10 years. The industry's response was, "fine, how do we pay for all that?" And off we go.

Retrofitting, of course, is nothing new. Many types of diesel-powered equipment, especially school buses, have been retrofitted through the industry's history. Repowering mine haul trucks, for example, is almost a daily fact of competitive life in that market.

The subject, however, began to gather momentum and broader scope as state and especially groups in urban areas were faced with meeting U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) clean air requirements.

Any area designated an air quality non-attainment or maintenance area has been required to develop plans called SIPs (State Implementation Plans) that prove to EPA that it can meet the Federal National Ambient Air Quality Standards required of it.

SIPs are required to show the amount of emission reductions stationary, area, off-road mobile and on-road mobile sources will each be reduced. EPA in turn then requires that each state achieve the reductions called for in the SIP

Taking it one step further, EPA is currently in the process of developing policy options for using emissions credits, generated by retrofitting diesel engines, as credits that be traded, or as stationary source offsets, all of which will have widespread implications in the overall air quality arena.

Into this environment, diesel retrofit programs have proved to be cost-effective and increasingly popular. There are, for example, clean school bus programs all over the place, many under the aegis of EPA's Clean School Bus USA program.

School, transit buses and trucks, because of their volumes, remain the focus of many retrofit programs and now the effort is expanding into construction equipment, port equipment and marine operations, rail, and even some agricultural applications.

While not falling directly into this specific area, efforts are also being made on the stationary side as well, primarily power generation sets and pump/irrigation systems.

In scope, these myriad programs are targeting nearly all of the diesel engine markets. The entire subject, however, branches out in any number of different directions.

The entire truck anti-idling movement, for example, is yet another local mobile source emissions reduction initiative. The underground mining world has had long-established programs to reduce exposure to diesel particulate matter, an effort currently administered by the U.S. Dept. of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration.

All in all, it's a broad range of somewhat inter-related programs--local and market-based--all with the goal of improving air quality.

The starting point is, as always, financial. How do government bodies, manufacturers, distributors or users, pay for these programs?

There are, maybe surprisingly, several sources available to fund retrofit projects, with the U.S. Dept. of Transportation's (DOT) Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program (CMAQ) one of the more flexible and readily available sources.

The CMAQ program is intended to finance transportation-related air quality improvement and congestion management projects. Funds for the CMAQ program go from the U.S. DOT to individual states. Diesel engine retrofit eligibility is dependent upon various guidelines.