March 11, 1975
Page 6063
CLEAN AIR ACT
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, there has been considerable speculation in the press and elsewhere regarding the future regulation of air pollution from automobiles.
The Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution will examine the question in some detail this year as a part of an overall review of the Clean Air Act.
In order to place this issue in perspective, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the RECORD an article on auto emissions from the March 7 issue of Science magazine.
The article notes that–
The Clean Air Act was fashioned with public health and environmental protection as the prime considerations and notes that fuel economy has taken on almost equal importance.
These issues will be evaluated by the Subcommittee on Environmental Pollution in hearings which begin on March 19 of this year.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[From Science magazine, Mar. 7, 1975]
AUTO EMISSIONS: EPA DECISION DUE ON ANOTHER CLEANUP DELAY
(By Constance Holden)
On 3 March Russell Train, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), will announce his decision on whether to grant auto makers an additional 1-year suspension, under the Clean Air Act of 1970, of emissions standards scheduled to go into effect for the 1977 model year. He will also be making long-term recommendations to Congress that could affect the rate at which cleanup efforts proceed, as well as the nature of the technology that is brought to bear on the problem.
EPA officials say this may be the toughest set of decisions the agency has yet confronted. In the past, says one, the attitude has been, "If the technology is there you go ahead" with enforcing the law. But now, with the economy in shambles and fuel prices going out of sight, the name of the game more than ever is trade offs. Public health and environmental needs must be weighed against fuel economy (mileage per gallon) goals, rising car prices, and the need to keep the auto industry – which contributes 16 percent of the gross national product – financially viable.
The Clear Air Act originally mandated that regulated emissions from automobiles be reduced by 90 percent from 1970 levels by 1975. This amounts to a goal of 0.41 gram of hydrocarbons (HC) per mile, 3.4 grams of carbon monoxide (CO), and 0.4 gram of oxides of nitrogen (NOx). Since then, manufacturers have twice been granted reprieves. Currently, the law says the CO and HC standards must be met by 1977 and the NOx standard by 1978 (Table 1). Train must decide, taking available technology and the public welfare into account, whether to give auto makers until 1978 to get their CO and HC emissions into line.
[Table omitted]
EPA research, backed by studies by the National Academy of Sciences, leave little doubt that achievement of statutory emission standards is technically feasible. The public welfare question is trickier – auto makers claim that the costs to both the industry and the car-buying public would outweigh the benefits of marginally cleaner air in 1977. (The introduction of catalytic converters in 1975 models to bring emissions down to the interim 1975 and 1976 standards has achieved 83 percent of the final goal.) Manufacturers claim that more advanced and costly emission control devices needed for the 1977 and 1978 standards are the last thing the country needs to get Detroit moving again; that they will have to stop production of some model lines, which will add to unemployment; and that they need more time to perfect various techniques for improving mileage and cleanliness and for developing workable alternatives to and refinements of the internal combustion engine.
These arguments were advanced by industry during several weeks of hearings EPA held to consider the suspension request. Auto manufacturers also used the hearings as a forum to push for what they really want, which is a 5-year freeze, starting in 1977, on emission standards as they now apply. Since the ultimate cleanup standards have already been pushed back from 1975 to 1978, amendment of the law to conform with industry's desires would amount to a 7-year rollback of the original deadlines.
President Ford, with the apparent prematurity that has marked some of his other actions, in January offered auto makers a compromise deal. In return for a pledge to improve fuel economy by 40 percent between 1974 and 1980, he suggested a 5-year freeze (1977 to 1981) at the emission levels for HC and CO now mandated in California. These are tighter than those prescribed for the rest of the nation but not as tight as the statutory levels. He recommended that the NOx standard be allowed to stay at the current level of 3.1 grams per mile (the California standard is 2). Train, also somewhat prematurely, expressed sympathy with the Ford idea, as did auto makers.
All of this would seem to make the subsequent suspension hearings somewhat redundant. Most observers assume the suspension request will be granted, but the hearings may influence the longer-term recommendations Train makes to Congress. A 1-year suspension is no big deal in itself because it would not affect standards presently applicable for 1978; however, it could cause legislators to be more sympathetic to pressures to loosen up the Clean Air Act, particularly if Train decides to push the presidential recommendations.
Senator Edmund Muskie (D-Maine), chairman of the air and water pollution subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Public Works, is said to be unlikely to favor giving Detroit any more leeway. But if EPA fails to urge holding the line on the statutory standards, Congress might well succumb to the arguments coming out of Detroit.
What Detroit says sometimes needs to be taken with a grain of salt. In 1973, for example, General Motors said that installation of oxidation catalysts in their 1975 models was really out of the question. Now GM has these catalysts in 85 percent of its cars and it loves them. Catalysts have turned out to be a boon – they handily achieve emission reductions required by 1975 interim standards, and the added cost is more than compensated for in enhanced fuel economy (engines had to be detuned to achieve emission reduction but now they can be tuned to maximum efficiency because the catalyst takes care of the added residuum).
Now, however, auto makers are trying to make the case that further tightening of standards will require much more expensive catalysts and will impede further efforts to improve fuel economy. This may be something of a red herring – EPA itself has said that there is "no inherent relationship between exhaust-emissions standards and fuel economy," and it is common knowledge that vehicle weight is the greatest single factor affecting gas mileage.
Presumably, it is the public health and environmental considerations that should settle the matter, but there is still very little known about the relationship between various levels of ambient air quality and public health. No one knows whether the ultimate standards set for mobile source emissions are really the right ones.
A study by three universities – Columbia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard – paid for by the National Science Foundation, recommended last fall that enforcement of the ultimate standards be delayed. The reasoning was that, otherwise, auto companies would be locked into the catalyst as the way to go and would not have the resources to devote to alternative engines. On the other hand, experience has shown that the only way to get auto makers busy on new technology is to make standards mandatory. Former EPA official Stephen Miller, now a freelance consultant, says, "What Detroit is saying is, 'Give us time and we'll come up with a better engine,' but," he adds, "they've been saying that since the 1950's."
For the next 5 years at least, there will be no new fuel-efficient clean-burning engine available for mass production. So it looks as though catalysts will be around for a while.
There are basically three kinds of catalysts. The simplest, and the only one now in mass production, is the oxidation catalyst. This works only to reduce emissions of HC and CO by injection of air which breaks them down to water and carbon dioxide. NOx, an entirely separate problem, is kept down by means of exhaust gas recirculation.
A more advanced model is the dual, or reduction, catalyst. This is actually two catalysts, an oxidation one preceded by a catalyst to chemically reduce the NOx. This is said to involve some fuel penalty because there must be a rich air-fuel mix to make the reduction component work properly.
The most sophisticated kind is the threeway catalyst. This is a single unit that reduces all three kinds of emissions when the engine is operating at the stoichiometric ratio (optimal burning mixture) of 14.7 parts air to 1 part fuel. This catalyst requires an oxygen sensor to ensure that there is just enough air to allow oxidation of HC and CO but not enough to encourage formation of NOx.
Currently occupying center stage in the standards disputes are sulfates and NOx. Sulfates became a matter of great concern in 1973 (Science, 26 October 1973) when it was discovered that sulfur from gasoline was oxidized by catalysts into sulfuric acid. Sulfur dioxide from tail pipes eventually turns into sulfuric acid anyway, but usually in the upper atmosphere. With catalysts, it comes straight out of the tailpipe in amounts up to ten times as great as in cars not equipped with catalysts. Sulfuric acid is bad for people with respiratory and lung problems.
For a while some people thought the oxidation catalyst might turn out to create more evil than it eliminated, but now, according to an EPA researcher at Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, it's beginning to look as though the risks have been overblown. The data on sulfates are pretty ambiguous and, he says, "we have only scratched the surface" on sulfate research.
Recent results of research on NOx, however, are beginning to persuade some people that the dangers of these emissions are greater than was previously thought. Nitric acid is believed to be even worse for the health than sulfuric acid, and recent studies have implicated NOx not only in respiratory problems but in such other far-flung disorders as nephritis and increase in blood lipids.
What EPA and Congress finally decide about sulfates and NOx will affect the direction of emission control technology. If an emission standard is created for sulfates, a move that is under consideration at EPA, this would limit the use of oxidation catalysts and force industry to move to the three-way catalyst, the only one that inhibits sulfuric acid production. If the tight NOx standard of 0.41 is enforced, they will have to jump to the dual catalyst, the only one that now promises to reduce NOx that far.
There is, of course, another way out: drastic reduction in automobile weight and engine size. This would automatically reduce emissions and improve mileage. It would also permit introduction of. the stratified charge engine, which is now generally regarded as suitable only for small cars. The stratified charge engine was invented in the United States and developed by Honda of Japan. This is a lean-burning engine (that is, one using a high air to fuel ratio that permits oxidation of HC and CO), and Honda says it can meet all the U.S. statutory standards right now. A NOx catalyst might be needed, which would involve some fuel penalty. But there are countless measures to offset that – improved design to reduce aerodynamic drag, radial tires, better carburetion, electronic ignition, fuel injection, and so forth.
Auto makers are busy developing these measures, but they have been having a very hard time thinking themselves into smaller cars. They have long argued that they make big cars because people want them. This is true, but it may not be as inalienable a right as the people in Detroit make it out to be. Besides, they complain about the costs and inefficiency of catalysts while continuing to build costly and frivolous "options" such as push-button windows, vinyl roofs, and air conditioning into many of their models.
ECONOMY VS. ENVIRONMENT
The Clean Air Act was fashioned with public health and environmental protection as the prime considerations. Now that fuel economy has taken on almost equal importance, auto makers are saying that one objective can only be achieved at the expense of the other. As has been indicated, many observers think this is a phony argument. Chief among them are officials involved with environmental protection in metropolitan areas. The feeling expressed at the hearings by these individuals was that auto makers were getting the breaks, and that cities would have to pay the price to get ambient air standards within levels prescribed by law. Robert Low, head of New York City's Environmental Protection Administration, said it looked to him like a "double standard" – cities had to keep up with timetables but auto makers were being permitted repeated delays.
(It might be remarked here that a precipitous drop in auto sales resulting from rampant price increases certainly wouldn't do air quality any good. The turnover of vehicles now on the road is estimated at 10 percent annually, so theoretically it will be a decade before virtually all auto emissions are controlled. A reduction of that percentage means that inefficient fume-belching models will continue to be operated long after owners would normally have turned them in.)
While EPA is agonizing over the recommendations it will make to Congress, a staff member of the Muskie subcommittee observes that Congress is pretty used to making up its own mind when it comes to decisions affecting the Clean Air Act. Congressional response to the presidential proposal, even if it is endorsed by Train, is likely to be cool. The staffer says that even the "Neanderthals" on Capitol Hill recognize that a lengthy freeze on emission standards in exchange for a "pledge" of increased fuel economy is a pretty bad bargain. For one thing, Detroit doesn't have a history of doing such things voluntarily; for another, most of the 40 percent improvement has already been effected in the 1975 models and evidence is that the goal – which would only attain an across the board average of 18.7 miles to the gallon – could be achieved without stalling any more on standards enforcement.
The Clean Air Act is scheduled for thorough retuning and overhaul this year. At present a drastic relaxation in the auto emission standards seems unlikely. The basic purpose of the act was and is to protect public health. There will be particular pressure to raise the 0.41 NOx standard but, according to the committee staff member, there is not as yet any evidence to justify that action. As for technological considerations, the staffer observes that "the technology-forcing aspect of the Clean Air Act was a key part of it," so if auto makers don't think they can achieve the standards they will have to make a very strong case indeed.
Perhaps the worst effect of a 1-year suspension would be a psychological one. Repeated delays may just delay awareness on the part of manufacturers that the private automobile may not always remain a symbol of the American way of life and that, with the development of mass transit, autos may indeed play a smaller part in America's future than they do in its present.
Certainly Chrysler Corporation has not picked up on the nation. In its report announcing a stunning $73.5 million loss in the last quarter of 1974 it managed to make a chipper conclusion, to wit:
"The increase in the number of new drivers each year and the development of suburban areas that rely heavily on motor vehicle transportation will continue to support the long-term growth of the automobile market."