New CARB regulations to hit port truckers, ship owners
California air regulators on Wednesday targeted major shipping lines and drayage truckers with two proposed regulations that could reshape the goods movement industry throughout the state.
The new regulations, expected to be approved this week by the California Air Resources Board, will set new state limits on emissions for drayage trucks, and force all ocean-going cargo vessels to plug into land-side electrical power while berthed at California's largest ports.
If approved, the regulations will be the first of their kind in the nation, and will set a precedent likely to be looked at by other state's considering stringent emission control measures for the goods movement industry.
CARB has scheduled two days of public hearings on the proposed regulations in El Monte starting today, with votes on the measures expected on Friday.
Presented by CARB chair Mary Nichols at an impromptu press conference at the Port of Long Beach, she described the new regulations as long overdue.
Both proposed regulations are expected to be costly, with the truck regulation expected to cost from $3 billion to $4 billion and the price tag for the shore-side power regulation expected to cost billions more.
Under the first proposed CARB regulation, the operators of about 20,000 diesel trucks servicing 14 ports within the state would be faced with installing new engines in pre-1994 trucks by the end of 2009. Operators of 1994 or newer model year trucks would be forced to cut emissions of diesel particulate matter, seen mainly as soot in diesel exhaust, by 95 percent within the same deadline. By 2013, all of the covered trucks, regardless of model year, would be required to meet emission standards now set for 2007 model year engines.
The affected ports are Benicia, Crockett, Hueneme, Humboldt Bay (Eureka), Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Redwood City, Richmond, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco and Stockton.
Next year, CARB expects to introduce a regulation focused on reducing emissions from in-use private heavy-duty diesel truck fleets.
While the truck rules provide a baseline for the entire state, Nichols added that CARB is not opposed to local agencies setting regulations that are more stringent. In March, the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles proposed a plan that would replace the nearly 17,000 drayage trucks servicing the two adjacent ports by 2012. A component of the plan, implementation of a progressive phased-in ban of certain model year trucks over the next five years, was approved by both ports last month. The first ban, on pre-1989 trucks, is set to go into effect Oct. 1, 2008.
“We set the minimums, and local communities can go further, faster, and that’s exactly what’s happening here,” Nichols said of Southern California ports' plan. “There’s (legal) provisions that allow local communities to go faster.'
The Port of Oakland, serviced by the second-largest fleet of drayage trucks in the state, is considering a plan similar to that developed by Long Beach and Los Angeles.
In addition to port drayage trucks, the regulations will also apply to trucks servicing 11 intermodal rail yards through the state including: Oakland Union Pacific and Oakland Burlington; Hobart BNSF; LATC UP; Commerce UP; Commerce Eastern BNSF; Richmond BNSF; ICTF UP; San Bernardino; Stockton Intermodal BNSF; and Lathrop Intermodal UP.
The second regulation announced by Nichols on Wednesday would require about 95 percent of container, passenger and refrigerated cargo ships calling at six California ports to turn off their auxiliary engines — used to provide maintenance power for onboard equipment such as lighting and ventilation — while a ship is docked. Under the rule, docked ships must plug into shore-based power sources to receive their electricity or meet equivalent emission reductions through other means.
Ports covered under the shore-side power regulation include: Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco and Hueneme in Ventura County.
Bulk ships, tankers and vehicle carriers are expected to be addressed in CARB regulations set to be introduced next year.
Several ports, including Long Beach, Los Angeles and Oakland, have experimented with so-called 'cold ironing,' or providing shore-side power to vessels at berth. Long Beach and Los Angeles have committed to spending nearly $175 million to electrify 24 berths between them over the next five years. However, this cost is likely to rise. The project to electrify the first berth at Long Beach has risen significantly since it was first proposed, and now sits at nearly $20 million. Oakland, which is testing on-dock generators instead of providing utility generated power at dockside, has already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the program.
In addition to berths and docks being set up to provide the electricity, the vessels must also be retrofit to accept the power from landside sources. This is estimated by the industry to cost from $500,000 to $1 million per vessel. With the cold-ironing regulation set to affect hundreds of vessels this could several hundred million dollars to the total cost of implementation.
Critics of the cold ironing point out that the plan is not cost-effective for the emissions addressed.
Estimates made last year found that port-calling vessels create an equal amount of pollution while they are entering the harbor and being positioned to dock as they do while idling at berth.
The reason for this is that before docking, the vessels run their main engines, which are much larger and more polluting than the smaller auxiliary engines. Even though this transit time in and out of harbor may only be a couple of hours running time, it creates almost the exact same amount of pollution as the several days of running the smaller auxiliary engines.
As of Jan. 1, 2007, CARB regulations require vessels to run auxiliary engines on a cleaner type of distillate fuel. While this rule was subsequently challenged and blocked by a judge, it has now been reinstituted while CARB appeals the ruling. Even while the rule was blocked by a court injunction, most shipping lines continued to follow it voluntarily.
Under the CARB fuel rule, diesel particulate matter from vessel auxiliary engines are cut by 75 percent, NOx emissions are slightly reduced, and SOx emissions are virtually eliminated. With the new fuel regulations in place, at-dock emissions fall from 50 percent to about 11 percent of the total created by vessels.
With at-dock vessel emissions now reduced from these vessels to 11 percent, or about 2,500 tons a year, the $350 million to $450 million price tag for cold-ironing equates out to more than $140,000 per ton of pollutant. For comparison, the state’s regional rideshare program costs $7,400 per ton of pollution removed. The state’s van pool programs cost $10,500 per ton. Even the state’s entire freeway management system costs only $102,000 per ton per year.
The CARB regulations also do not specify who will be responsible for providing the landside power at the docks. As written, port authorities, which until now have been paying for the improvements, could force terminal operators — even those with short-term leases — to provide the costly infrastructure upgrades.
Critics, who have called for a voluntary approach to shore-side power, have noted that the shipping lines have moved much further on this issue than CARB and the various local agencies.
Currently, more California-calling vessels are set-up to accept shoreside power than facilities to provide the power. ' Keith Higginbotham