Goes for auto emission cuts from far behind in the race
us president Barack Obama has set in motion a national policy that is expected to make cars and trucks in the country 30 per cent more fuel efficient by 2016. The policy is also expected to cut 900 million tonnes of greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions from vehicles between 2012 and 2016. This is equal to taking 177 million cars off America's roads. The move has come after two decades of allowing oil-guzzling in the auto sector.
The target is to reduce ghg emissions from the current fleet-wide average of 219 grammes/km for new vehicles to 155 g/km by 2016. The fuel economy level of passenger vehicles will be increased to 35.5 miles per gallon (15.09 km/litre) between 2012 and 2016. This will compel auto makers to improve fuel efficiency by 5 per cent every year.The previous administration had put off the implementation of these targets to 2020.
It is the first time the federal Environmental Protection Agency (epa) will control ghg emissions under the Clean Air Act. Until now the Act was controlling only health-threatening air pollution. Now it will control not just the CO2 exhaust directly linked to fuel burnt, but also other warming gases. These include methane, nitrous oxide emissions from catalytic converters, CO2 emissions from car air-conditioning and hfc or refrigerant emissions due to leakage from car air-conditioners. Emissions associated with the production of fuel used by vehicles will also be regulated.
The administration expects to save 1.8 billion barrels (208 billion litres) of oil over the life of the programme. The saving represents seven-eight per cent of the fuel consumed by vehicles in 2016. As old vehicles are replaced with new ones, fuel savings will increase further.
Even after meeting these targets the US in 2016 will not catch up with the levels Europe and Japan have already achieved. It will only match the current fuel economy level of China. This is evident from the comparison of ghg emissions from new vehicles across regions done by the US-based International Council on Clean Transportation (icct) that has been pushing for these regulations (see graph on the next page).
"The US is starting the push from far behind in the race. New cars in the country are still, on average, 50 per cent heavier than Europe's cars, and have 75 per cent more power than Europe's," Lee Schipper, transportation expert at the University of California, Berkeley, said. Cheap fuel, obsession with big, powerful cars and weak climate mitigation had blocked the country's progress towards fuel efficiency. Despite taking the lead in setting fuel economy standards in the wake of the 1973-74 oil crisis, the US lost ground after the 1980s. It failed to update and tighten the standards with new technologies.
Transportation experts point out the key element of the new rules is that they require sharp improvement in a short period. Said John German of icct "The Federal government may not have done anything in quite a while. But it is now on track. From 1995 to 2015, while Europe will increase the fuel economy of its fleet by 42 per cent, the new US rule will bring a 30 per cent improvement in five years." If the air-conditioning improvement is not taken into account the US annual improvement during 2011 - 2016 will be 5 per cent, against 1.8 per cent for Europe between 1995 and 2015. "That's close to three times the rate of Europe," said German.