Mark Blinch / Reuters

The new fuel economy standard gives automakers credits for using electric power and cleaner air conditioning systems.

Gasoline prices hit record highs in 2011 and for the first time last year, the cost of gas equaled or exceeded even the cost of owning a vehicle: on average, the roughly $2,800 dollars that a household spent at the pump was more than a year’s worth of car payments.

Crunching the numbers on a hypothetical new car purchase 13 years from now, the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) says what we’ll save in gas will more than cover the extra spent on new fuel-saving technologies — an $800 savings even at the end of a five-year loan.

What’s  different about this new fleet standard standard — 54.5 MPG by 2025, proposed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California’s Air Resources Board (ARB) — is what it means for the auto makers as well. Cooper says that by setting the standard far enough in the future, it gives car makers a reliable goal and enough time to work things out.

And it’s an “attribute-based” approach: it doesn’t tell carmakers to build smaller vehicles or different types of vehicles (like electric or alt-fuels), it just mandates the mileage standard itself and allows the manufacturers to come up with an individualized mix of vehicles and features to accomplish it. This is part of the reason you’re seeing more large hybrid SUV’s on the road, and why one of the most touted vehicles at the Detroit Auto Show this week was a V6 “eco-boost” Ford F-150 truck. The first five pages of this report from the Congressional Research Service has a good explanation and the back story.

The automakers get credits or allowances for attributes like electric power and cleaner air conditioning systems, so that 54.5 number works out to just under 40 MPG across a given manufacturer’s fleet. But CFA’s Cooper acknowledges that and still sees the new standard as “a landmark in U.S. Energy policy. They will be making fewer trips to the gas station when they get these vehicles,” he told reporters in a conference call today.

Now I’m just waiting to hear about the woman suing Honda in Small Claims Court down here in Torrance, California. She claims the automaker told her that the hybrid Civic she bought would get 50 miles per gallon. Not so, says the woman. An L.A. County Superior Court judge wants more info. Stay tuned.

Kimberly Ayers

And you thought plastic palm trees had no redeeming value...

A cheap plastic that removes carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere? “Yes,” says a team of chemists at the University of Southern California’s  (USC) Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, led by Nobel Prize winner George Olah. Science Now reports on their work with an inexpensive polymer called polyethylenimine or PEI.

But how to maximize its absorption capabilities? Olah’s team dissolved the polymer in a solvent and spread it out, peanut-butter-style, on fumed silica — you know, like the stuff in those desiccant packets in your electronics packaging (“Do not eat,” by the way).  It’s also used as a stabilizer for lipstick and other make-up.

Here are the geeky details from Science Now:

When the researchers tested the new material’s CO₂-grabbing abilities, they found that in humid air—the kind present in most ambient conditions—each gram of the material sopped up an average of 1.72 nanomoles of CO₂. That’s well above the 1.44 nanomoles per gram absorbed by a recent rival made from aminosilica and among the highest levels of CO₂ absorption from air ever tested, the team reported last month in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Once saturated with CO₂, the PEI-silica combo is easy to regenerate. The CO₂floats away after the polymer is heated to 85°C. Other commonly used solid CO₂ absorbers must be heated to over 800°C to drive off the CO₂.

Team member Surya Prakash says the polymer could also be used to make vast farms of artificial “trees” that could suck CO2 out of the atmosphere, much like real ones do. Prakash and Olah have been trying to stand the carbon paradigm on its ear for the past several years, exploring it as a positive rather than a negative for the planet. “People tend to think of CO2 as a problem rather than a resource,” he explained. “We want to take CO2, and instead of burying it underground, use it as a raw material, and convert it with alternative energy sources back to fuels and feedstocks.”

Lawyers at the gates. (Photo: Craig Miller)

Oil companies couldn’t bring it down with a well-funded statewide ballot initiative. But the state’s landmark 2006 law to combat climate change by regulating carbon emissions might be undone by another of California’s major environmental laws.

Cara Horowitz reports for Legal Planet that a San Francisco superior court could set aside implementation of AB 32, finding that the “scoping plan,” the implementation strategy developed by the state’s Air Resources Board, does not comply with the California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA.

According to the report, the ruling, in a suit filed by “environmental justice” groups could follow a 15-day period for objections, which expires next week. So far most coverage of the “proposed ruling” seems confined to the legal blogs.

UPDATE: The only response issued from the Air Board so far is: “We are reviewing this tentative decision and will respond within the allotted time.” That allotted time is up next Tuesday, after which the judge has several weeks to finalize the ruling.

UPDATE: Major daily newspapers picked up the story on Friday. Here’s Wyatt Buchanan’s take for the San Francisco Chronicle.

(Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)

By Andrew Freedman

Pollution reduction measures that were aimed primarily at reducing California’s notorious smog problem and improving public health, also helped cut emissions of black carbon — a key global warming agent — according to a new study published Tuesday.

Black carbon, more commonly referred to as soot, is an atmospheric particulate that scientists have shown to be a significant contributor to global warming. It is an attractive target for emissions reductions because relatively cost effective technologies to reduce it already exist, such as diesel particulate filters for trucks, and because unlike carbon dioxide (CO2), which stays in the air for decades to millennia, black carbon only remains airborne for days to weeks.

According to the study, published in the journal Atmospheric Environment, scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Argonne National Laboratories found that in California, statewide annual average black carbon concentrations declined by nearly 50 percent between 1989 and 2008. These reductions occurred in direct proportion to a decline in fossil fuel emissions, mainly from diesel engines, during that period. The researchers say the reductions were largely the result of laws enacted to reduce diesel pollution, instituted to benefit public health and alleviate California’s smog.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, coauthor V. Ramanathan, distinguished professor at Scripps and a prominent figure in black carbon research, said the California emissions reductions offer a demonstration of how reducing black carbon emissions can influence the climate on a regional level. “For a scientist it’s a spectacular experiment, because we can see the result of [mitigation] policies,” he said.

One of the complications facing scientists and policy makers seeking to address black carbon is that many of the processes that emit black carbon also emit other particulates, such as sulfate aerosols, that can help cool the climate. So ideally, policies aimed at reducing global warming would selectively cut the warming agents without taking away the cooling influences. Otherwise, they may cause a warming rebound.

However, hard data about what would happen if only the heat-trapping aerosols were slashed, without reducing the cooling agents, has until now been in short supply. This study, Ramanathan said, changes that. The study estimates that the decrease in black carbon led to a cooling of 1.4 watts per square meter, which it states is “sufficiently large to have had an impact on regional heat and water budget[s]” in California.

Ramanathan said this study demonstrates that black carbon emissions can be tackled state by state or country by country, rather than trying to get the entire world agree to an agreement which, as seen by the case of CO2, can be a nearly impossible task. “The whole world need not agree [to black carbon reductions],” Ramanathan said. “Local benefits nicely interface with global goods.”

The study was funded in part by the California Air Resources Board (ARB), which regulates California’s air quality in conjunction with the U.S. EPA. “This study demonstrates that ARB’s efforts to cut air pollution, whether by promoting cleaner cars or controlling agricultural burning, have significantly reduced threats to public health while also helping address climate change,” said ARB chairwoman Mary Nichols in a press release.

Ramanathan’s daughter Nithya, an assistant research professor of computer science at UCLA, has also been working to develop cellphone-based technology to monitor concentrations of black carbon. Such observations could be used to verify the effects of emissions reduction measures, among other uses, they said.

National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis at McDonald Creek, Glacier National Park (Photo: Craig Miller)

Jarvis made the comment yesterday while touring Glacier National Park in Montana, with members of the Society of Environmental Journalists. “Renewables do not get a free ride,” said Jarvis, when asked about how the parks would treat development of renewable energy sources on park property.

Using the backdrop of Glacier National Park, where the remaining 25 glaciers (out of an estimated 150) are expected to disappear by 2030, Jarvis called climate change the most serious threat ever posed to the integrity of the park system.

But Jarvis said the Service is “struggling” internally with issues like the visual impact of large solar arrays, which can also be large water consumers. “Frankly, it’s a conundrum for us,” he said, because often the alternative is large coal-fired power plants, emissions from which degrade air quality and visibility.”We don’t want to stand up and say we’re against all forms of renewable energy that you can see from a national park,” said Jarvis. “But we do believe that it can be mitigated in some ways.”

Jarvis cited original proposals that included running electrical transmission lines through Lassen Volcanic National Park in northern California. “We were very successful in pushing every one of those out,” said Jarvis, noting that pre-existing transmission lines still transit Lake Mead National Recreation Area, near Las Vegas. “There are challenges,” said Jarvis, “But I think the key is active early engagement.”

At the same time, Jarvis said the Park Service is on an aggressive path to reducing its own carbon footprint, conducting a series of reviews that he said should be completed in 2012. He said all new buildings will comply with at least the LEED “silver” rating for sustainable construction, established by the US Green Building Council, and noted that at Joshua Tree National Park in southern California the Service is producing 60% of its power from solar panels. But, said Jarvis, “You really don’t want to put a large solar array in Glacier National Park.”

Jarvis is a survivor, having come up through the ranks to head the Park Service and locked horns with California Senator Dianne Feinstein over oyster farming near the Point Reyes National Seashore.

Listen to Rachael Myrow’s radio feature on The California Report.

Valero's Benicia refinery in Solano County. (Photo: Craig Miller)

Last week, as the campaign rhetoric for and against Proposition 23 was heating up, The California Report host Rachael Myrow and I spent an afternoon with three of Valero’s environmental specialists at the company’s refinery in Benicia, up the Sacramento River from San Francisco Bay. They briefed us on the refining process in some detail and drove us around the 400-acre refinery site, near the Carquinez Strait in Solano County.

Valero has been in the spotlight as the largest single contributor to Prop 23, with more than $4 million in the game. The company maintains two medium-sized refineries in California. The Benicia plant produces gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, as well as most of the asphalt used to pave highways in northern California. Unless halted by Prop 23, the cap-and-trade system of carbon pricing under the state’s greenhouse gas law (AB 32) would likely cost refiners millions in emissions fees.

“Our refinery operates under some of the most strict emission limits that exist anywhere in the world,” said Chris Howe, who directs health, safety and environmental affairs at the plant. But Howe and his co-managers made it clear that they don’t consider carbon dioxide emissions to be “pollution.” It should be noted that regulators, including the federal Environmental Protection Agency, appear to differ with that. In a landmark  “endangerment finding,” the EPA concluded that greenhouse gases such as CO2 “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” The published finding also uses the term “greenhouse gas pollution.” Clearly CO2 presents a different kind of threat than “local” air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide (SO2) and oxides of nitrogen (NOX), the building blocks of smog. But Kristine Roselius of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District says that distinction may be overblown. “When you reduce GHGs (greenhouse gases), you reduce smog and soot pollution,” wrote Roselius in an email.

Howe says his facility has to comply with 50,000 individual requirements under various environmental laws. “It’s a continuous challenge to maintain compliance with all of those,” said Howe, who maintains a staff of ten people who monitor environmental compliance full-time.

Don Cuffel, Valero’s lead environmental engineer at Benicia, says that the company has spent $650 million over the past five years, adding systems to keep SO2 and NOX out of the air. Cuffel says that keeping a lid on those local pollutants while reducing greenhouse gases presents them with a dilemma, since all that added equipment requires energy to run, and a natural byproduct of combustion is…CO2. Standing in front of the refinery’s desulfurization unit, Cuffel describes one example in the video clip below.

Asked how he feels when he hears critics refer to Valero as one of the “toxic twins” (with neighboring Tesoro), Howe says: “It’s fairly easy and common for people to make statements like that but it typically comes from a real ignorance of our business. I’ve been in the environmental management business for the majority of my career,” said Howe. “We strive to get out and explain to people what we do. We’re proud of our performance and are seeking to be in compliance with all rules, all the time.”

Clearly they’re not entirely successful, as was highlighted last week, when Prop 23 opponents released a list of 120 environmental violations at the Benicia refinery, since 2007 (200 at Tesoro, across the river). Howe estimated that 10% of the Valero citations resulted in some detectable effect on the local community,  such as a “nuisance odor,” and that most were self-reported to regulators, by the company. “By no means would I consider these significant and putting folks in harm’s way,” said Howe.

In response to an email query on that topic, Roselius of the Air Quality District wrote that all of the Bay Area’s five major oil refineries tend to generate similar numbers of citations. Last week directors at the District added theirs to the list of organizations officially opposing Prop 23.

You can take a brief tour of Valero’s Benicia refinery in the slide show, below:

(Photo: Craig Miller)

While some oil & gas companies are behind it, none of California’s three major electric utilities appear to support Proposition 23, the ballot measure to upend the state’s comprehensive climate law, known as AB 32.

The growing list is a Who’s Who of the state’s electrical grid:

This week, Sempra Energy made it’s declaration against the measure, completing a sweep of the big-three utilities. Sempra is the parent company of San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Gas Co., Sempra Generation, Sempra Pipelines & Storage and Sempra LNG. A Sempra spokeswoman told Climate Watch that the energy giant is against 23 because it’s for AB 32.  “AB 32 plays a critical role in helping California develop a low-carbon economy,” she said, and added that Sempra is “heavily invested” in clean technologies, like “smart meters” and the infrastructure designed to support mass adoption of electric vehicles in the next few years.

In July, Pacific Gas and Electric Company came out against Prop 23. In a statement, the company said:

“Since actively supporting the passage of AB 32, PG&E has worked with the California Air Resources Board, California Public Utilities Commission, California Energy Commission and other stakeholders to make AB 32 a success and a model for other jurisdictions to follow…Contrary to this responsible approach, Proposition 23 would suspend the law indefinitely, despite the critical need to combat climate change at the state, national and global level.”

Edison International, parent company of Southern California Edison, is officially neutral, though the company’s statement seems to indicate no affection for AB 32:

“Edison International believes carbon emissions cannot be meaningfully dealt with on a regional or state-by-state basis…The company believes the best solution to the greenhouse gas emission problem is comprehensive national legislation that has the same rules for all carbon emitters, regardless of the state in which they are located. That is why Edison International is actively working with Congress to ensure that greenhouse gas regulation is accomplished in the most practical manner possible and protects consumers to the greatest degree. Edison International supports passage of federal legislation, H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act.”

That legislation stalled in the US Senate earlier this year.

The role of utilities in the political debate over California’s pushed to reduce its carbon emissions came up in my conversation this week with Anita Mangels, spokeswoman for the Yes on 23 campaign. You can hear an excerpt from that using the player, below:

In short, Mangels charges that the utilities’ equanimity regarding 23 is related to their push to pass on the costs of AB 32 to their customers, which they tried with something called Resolution G-3447:

“Resolution G-3447. Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) seeks to modify its gas and electric regulatory accounts to recover from its core and noncore gas and electric customers a portion of the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) Assembly Bill (AB) 32 Cost of Implementation Fee (AB 32 Fee) paid to CARB.”

“San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG&E) seeks to revise its regulatory accounts to record the costs associated with the CARB AB 32 Fee and to recover these costs in customer gas transportation and electric commodity rates.”

“Southern California Edison Company (SCE) seeks to modify its regulatory accounts to record and recover AB 32 Fees paid to CARB.”

“Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) seeks to modify its Core Fixed Cost Account (CFCA) and Noncore Fixed Cost Account (NFCA) to record and recover AB 32 Fees paid to CARB.”

Well, yes, they tried.  Staffers at the California Public Utilities Commission, however, recommended denial “without prejudice.” And at the CPUC’s meeting in June, that’s what happened.

A Shell oil refinery in the aptly named town of Oildale (near Bakersfield) back in 2004. (Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)

The Los Angeles Times today runs down the list of California’s major oil refiners, which are also California’s biggest individual carbon emitters, and finds Tesoro, Valero, and Koch Industries  have not brought along their industry brethren in the fight to stop AB 32 with Proposition 23.

Prop 23 would suspend the 2006 law until the state’s unemployment rate drops to 5.5% or below and stays there for a year, something that’s happened three times in the last four decades, depending on how you count.

But seven weeks before the election, Margot Roosevelt’s tally for the Times reveals that:

- Chevron is officially neutral

- ConocoPhillips has yet to contribute

- Shell Oil opposes Proposition 23

- BP has not taken a position on the initiative

- ExxonMobil has decided not to get involved

Chevron, headquartered in San Ramon, is one of only two California-based big oil companies. The other one, Occidental of Los Angeles, is on board with a $300,000 donation of record to the Prop 23 campaign. Spokesman Richard Kline wrote me in an e-mail:

“The implementation of AB 32 would hit California with over a million lost jobs and substantially higher energy prices. Implementing it in the teeth of the most significant recession in the last 60 years would be foolhardy and negatively impact every one of us who live and work in our state…”

Beyond that, he recommend I speak with Anita Mangels of the Yes-on-23 campaign.  I have, and part of that conversation will air in an upcoming feature on Proposition 23, to air on The California Report.

The Times, by the way, also got hold of an e-mail appeal from the president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Assn., literally begging for contributions to the “Yes” campaign. According to the Times, it read, in part: “I am pleading with each of you — for our nation’s best interest and for your company’s own self-interest.” The Refiners Association, which has ponied up $100,000 so far, claims that the initiative could “mean the difference between life and death for our industry in this century…. AB32 would have the effect of outlawing petroleum-based fuels in California in the second half of this century.”

Interesting, since a major talking point of the “Yes” campaign lately has been to dwell on the things Prop 23 would not outlaw. In his email to me, Occidental’s Kline took pains to add:

“Under the California Jobs Initiative [proponents' name for Prop 23], California’s environmental laws – which are among the toughest in the nation – will remain intact. Those laws already protect our air and water from smog-forming emissions and other pollutants related to human and environmental health and they will remain in full force and effect.”

Cows at Fiscalini Farms in Modesto, California. (Photo: Sheraz Sadiq)

Last year, as part of a radio series on methane, I drove down to visit John Fiscalini, who was building a huge methane “digester” to convert his cows’ “byproducts” into clean energy, and reduce the carbon footprint of his sizable dairy farm and cheese factory outside Modesto.  After millions of dollars in design and construction costs, Fiscalini was fed up with state air and water regulators, who he felt were pulling him in different directions. A year later, have things improved? Not so much, as Quest’s Lauren Sommer found out, when she returned to the San Joaquin Valley for an update. — Craig Miller

Three years ago, KQED’s QUEST visited a Central Valley dairy that was taking an innovative approach to its waste problem. Instead of collecting thousands of pounds of cow manure in open holding ponds, Joseph Gallo Farms uses it in a renewable energy technology known as a methane digester.

Methane gas is a natural byproduct of cow digestion. It’s produced as bacteria inside their stomaches break down food. That process continues on the back end (so to speak) as cow manure decomposes.

Methane is also a powerful contributor to climate change – about 21 times stronger than carbon dioxide. The UN has estimated that 18 percent of greenhouse gases worldwide come from livestock.  (Last year, Climate Watch reported on methane and it sources in this two-part radio series.)

By capturing methane, dairy digesters keep it out of the atmosphere. But they also create a source of renewable energy. Methane is a natural gas — it can be burned just like propane. So, Gallo Farms pipes the methane over to a generator, which produces enough electricity to run the farm and their cheese plant.

Since our visit, the story has taken an interesting turn. Both Gallo Farms and another dairy with a digester, Fiscalini Farms, are located in the San Joaquin Valley, an area with some of the worst air quality the country. The air district is consistently considered in “non-attainment,” which means they aren’t meeting the federal limits on air pollution.

While both dairies’ digesters are reducing one kind of pollution, greenhouse gases, they’re actually adding to another kind. Generators, like any other combustion engine, produce nitrous oxide pollution – or NOx – which is a component of smog. Given the smog problem in the valley, the local air district decided to put a pollution limit on the dairy digester generators.

Since then, both dairies have struggled to meet to the limits. Unlike pipeline-quality natural gas, the methane (or biogas) that comes from a digester varies in quality, which affects how much pollution is produced in the generator’s exhaust. John Fiscalini of Fiscalini Farms has spent $200,000 on a pollution control device that reduces NOx pollution. But he says it’s been a challenging process and he’s concerned that other dairies have been discouraged by his experience with regulators.

For more on Fiscalini’s story and more about the challenges facing dairy digesters, check out this week’s QUEST radio story.

Navajo Generation Station. The place of coal in California's energy diet is shrinking, but that's not necessarily true for the rest of the country. (Photo: Alex E. Proimos via Flickr)

Bit by bit, the US Environmental Protection Agency is moving to limit the gases that scientists say cause global warming. Over five years, the agency is limiting auto emissions and is also requiring new industrial plants to use improved pollution controls

Sooooo, US Justice Department lawyers argue, California, seven other states, New York City and three land trusts should not be suing major utilities, demanding that they reduce global warming emissions.

In papers filed with the US Supreme court this week, Justice Department lawyers argue the authority to curb emissions that cause climate change belongs to the Environmental Protection Agency and to Congress.

Congress isn’t doing anything at present about global warming, but the Obama administration argues the case should be dismissed. As do the power companies.

The suit, AEP v. Connecticut, was filed in 2004, against American Electric Power, Duke Energy, Southern Company and Xcel Energy, (none based in California, though Xcel has customers in Colorado and New Mexico), claiming that climate change has damaged state resources.  The plaintiffs want court orders requiring power companies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by three percent a year for 10 years. A federal judge in New York dismissed the suit but the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last September that the states could try to prove their case.

At the time, federal lawyers say, the judges felt the “EPA does not currently regulate carbon dioxide.” Since then, the lawyers argue, the Obama administration has finalized several regulations in response to the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which told the agency to decide whether greenhouse gases were pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

In the brief, Acting Solicitor General Neil Katyal writes: “That regulatory approach is preferable to what would result if multiple district courts — acting without the benefit of even the most basic statutory guidance — could use common-law nuisance claims to sit as arbiters of scientific and technology-related disputes and de facto regulators of power plants and other sources of pollution both within their districts and nationwide.”

“It’s hard for me to tell whether this is craven or stupid,” wrote UCLA Law Professor Jonathan Zasloff on the enviro law and policy blog LegalPlanet.  “This represents the administration going above and beyond the call of duty to undermine the chances of a sensible energy policy.  Yes, a comprehensive statute would be better,” wrote Zasloff.  “And you know what?  It ain’t going to happen.”

California’s biggest tie to coal-fired power may be cut without the courts. The (relatively) new head of the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power says he wants to divest its stake in the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona, ahead of schedule – which is to say, sometime before 2019.