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The air quality debate in California should gasoline be banned?
The air quality debate in California Should gasoline be banned? Gregory P. Nowell
California has made great strides in the regulation of photochemical smog. Pofitical constituencies favouring change in the gasoline market include regulatory agencies and regional interest groups; some have attempted to mandate methanol use in the USA's second largest city. Anxious to forestall mandatory methanol use, oil companies have introduced 'reformulated gasolines' in major urban areas of the USA. Photochemical smog regulation has forced changes in the automobile fuel market. Recent proposals by regional regulators and a statewide referendum seeking to add greenhouse gases (especially carbon dioxide) to the regulatory agenda may bring about more aggressive emission control efforts. Keywords:Smog;Alternativefuels; Greenhousegases Built around a massive freeway system and totally dependent on gasoline-powered automobiles, Los Angeles is the archetype of 20th century urban sprawl. The city's sustained boom since the second world war has driven it to the limits of its own growth potential; a rapidly increasing population and millions of automobiles are testing the outer limits of regional congestion and pollution control. If the Los Angeles urban area is to continue developing in the 1990s it must change radically. This article examines a crucial element: the debate over banishing gasoline-powered automobiles in the Los Angeles region in the next decade. This proposal is the most controversial element in a comprehensive programme for regional air pollution control. The chief characteristic of Los Angeles is to be 'first with the worst' in terms of pollution and industrial growth GregoryP. Nowellteaches PoliticalScienceat the State University of New York at Albany. His work on alternative fuels is sponsored by the Center for Technology,Policy, and Industrial Development at the MassachusettsInstituteof Technology.
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problems. The solutions being debated will be of great interest to national and international constituencies as they envisage unprecedented constraints on gasoline consumption.
Rising external costs of urban development The Los Angeles area has been concerned with controlling automotive emissions for more than 30 years; air pollution control is not only a 'green' but a pocket book issue. Los Angeles is the largest manufacturing area in the USA and the economic engine of the fastest growing state in the country. The region is home to more than 5% of the nation's automobiles. California boasts a population of 29 million and the eighth largest GNP in the world. Opponents argue that air quality controls will impose 'unreasonable' costs on development. They neglect externalities which are readily becoming apparent; chief among these are the automobile-related problems of a saturated metropolis. The two principal problems stemming from automobile use are congestion costs and 'quality-of-life' issues. Congestion imposes economic costs because it slows the delivery of goods and services, and seriously impedes access to the downtown business sector. It delays millions of commuters on jammed freeways for hours each day. Even if there were no pollution from automobiles, congestion would constitute a substantial block to growth. Congestion is linked to the air pollution issue because slow moving cars produce greater quantities of pollution. Nestled in a ring of mountains which restrict air dispersion, and subjected year-round to temperature inversions, the Los Angeles area suffers from the economic costs of congestion, the inconvenience of slow transport, and the medical costs of air pollution. 1 Industry analysts have estimated that traffic congestion costs the state of California as much as $17 0301-4215/90/070652-09 © 1990 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd
The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned? Table 1. Forecasting parameters for Los Angeles population growth and automotive use. Projections for 2010 relative to 1985 baseline
Population Housing units Total employment Vehicle miles travelled Vehicles in use Vehicle trips
37% 46% 47% 68% 35% 40%
increase increase increase increase increase increase
Source: Alan C. Lloyd, J.M. Lents, C. Green and P. Nemeth, 'Air quality management in Los Angeles: perspectives on past and future emission control strategies', Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association (JAPCA), Vol 39, No 5, 1989, p 700.
billion a year. 2 The massive freeway system in Los Angeles can accommodate travel speeds well in excess of the official 55 mile per hour limit during off-peak hours. But traffic backs up during daytime travel hours, which are increasingly one long 'rush hour', rather than a bimodal morning and evening rush. Freeway speeds are expected to decline from 34 miles per hour today to 17 miles per hour as vehicle ownership and miles travelled per vehicle continue to rise. 3 Members of the business community have called for restricting the access of large trucks to city streets to off-peak hours in the morning and evening. 4 Housing and local business interests have benefited from the region's intensive use of automobile travel, but with over 60% of urban space dedicated to roads and parking it is obvious that continued growth of population and industry will require radical changes in transportation and traffic infrastructure. Slow travelling vehicles increase automotive emissions, and greater numbers of automobiles are correlated with demographic growth and economic development. Projections of the increases facing the area can be seen in Table 1. Clearly, holding on to workers and attracting new businesses to the area will be difficult. A recent poll commissioned by the California and Los Angeles
Chambers of Commerce showed that 58% of respondents had considered moving out of the Los Angeles area in the last year because of smog. 5 While the area still acts as a great magnet to in-migrating populations from foreign countries (especially Latin America), more affluent residents have moved out. But if the area is growing so rapidly, why should a population loss pose such a problem? The rapidity of change is likely to affect the social composition of the city and the educational level of the work force. Were it not for legal and illegal immigration from south of the border, there would be a net decline in the growth of America's second city. The Los Angeles area attracts migrants from countries where air quality and traffic jams are secondary problems. To those with higher expectations and the means to change cities, the area is becoming unattractive. 6 The balance between immigrating and out-migrating7 populations can be seen in Table 2 and Table 3. Demographic shifts of this magnitude portend the growth of sweatshops, slum areas, heightened racial tensions, gang violence and drug use. These social changes, coupled with environmental degradation, congestion, and lower 'quality of life' standards, provoke great concern. Regional political elites have called for local and state regulatory efforts to be more aggressive. As a result, regulation will increasingly affect business and manufacturing enterprises. Possible transportation solutions at the regional level will set the pace for new energy controls beyond the 1990s; they could even lead to the limiting or the outright banning of gasoline.
Smog formation and its control Debate began in the 1950s over smog's causes but it took a decade to establish that automobiles were the major contributors to smog. 8 Today the responsibility of the automobile as the principal cause of smog
Table 2. Income distribution of households in Southern California area government region (1980 data (%)). Group
Household income < $10 000 $10--15 000
$15-25 000
$25-35 000
> $35 000
Immigrants In-migrants Residents Outmigrants
32.7 20.4 18.4 23.5
17.7 14.7 12.7 15.7
25.9 26.1 25.4 28.2
12.5 18.0 20.0 16.8
11.2 20.2 23.5 15.8
Total
19.3%
13.1%
25.5%
19.5%
22.6%
Source: Southern California Association of Governments, Outmigration from Southern California, 1975-1980, Los Angeles, 1988, p 43. Total figures exclude outmigrants. Note that 32.6% of the outmigrants (people leaving the area) are in the top two income categories, as opposed to 23.7% of the immigrants (people coming in from other countries), which comprise the largest single category of replacement population.
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The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned? Table 3. Highest educational attainment level, Southern California area government region. Group
None
Elem
F elem
HS
FHS
Col
F col
Immigrants In-migrants Residents Out-migrants
4.3 0.8 1.0 0.8
40.3 19.0 21.7 19.0
2.8 1.7 2.7 1.9
15.9 13.1 18.6 15.7
12.0 20.2 23.0 23.0
13.6 24.6 21.4 24.6
11.1 20.6 11.6 15.0
Source: Southern California Association of Governments, Outmigration from Southern California, 1975-1980, Los Angeles, CA, 1988, p 40. Elem = some elementary; F elem = finished elementary; HS = some high school; FHS = finished high school; Col = some college; F col = finished college. Note that 39.6% of the out-migrating population falls into the top two educational categories, versus 24.7% of the immigrating population.
is a cliche. Although the automobile, along with other gasoline and diesel powered vehicles, accounts for the largest single source of air pollution, controlling their emissions will not guarantee the elimination of smog. Ozone is the most difficult element of photochemical smog to control. Yet if all automobiles were to be entirely removed from the Los Angeles area, the total formation of ozone would decline by only 23% .9 Seventy percent of the elements contributing to ozone formation come from stationary pollution sources, ranging from electric utilities to bakeries, though automobiles remain the single largest regulatable source of emissions. Figure 1 provides a projection of Los Angeles basin pollutants and their sources to the year 2000. Ozone is formed by the intermixing of reactive organic gases (ROGs) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the atmosphere. 'Cooked' in the heat of sunlight, chemical reactions occur which produce ozone. NOx is produced from the nitrogen which comprises nearly three-quarters of the atmosphere. Whenever a fuel is burned at high temperatures, nitrogen is oxidized. This 'burned' nitrogen is produced by gas
a Oil refining Diesel sources 4%
stoves, automobiles, power utilities, or anything using ordinary air for combustion. Even for 'clean' fuels, NOx formation is difficult to control. Reactive organic gases, sometimes called volatile organic compounds, literally evaporate into the air. This property is exploited in paints and solvents which are used as cleaning agents, where the escaping organics allow a quick drying effect. Gasoline smells at the gasoline station are caused by the evaporation of ROGs from fuel tanks, leaking hoses and spillage by customers. The smell is caused by lighter aromatics, such as benzene and toluene, which are among the dozens of chemicals that comprise gasoline. Even the natural respiratory cycle of trees emits limited quantities of ROGs. Reactive gases from any of these sources, combined with nitrogen oxides, will react with sunlight to form ozone. Controlling ground level ozone is not to be confused with preventing the growth of the ozone 'hole' over the South Pole. At high altitudes, ozone screens ultraviolet radiation; at ground levels it is a respiratory toxin. Unfortunately, ozone emitted at ground levels is too unstable to waft upward to replace the stratos-
b Oil refining 6%
16% Sources not affected by
Non-diesel automobiles 16%
methanol conversion, ie industrial processes, solvent usage, etc 46%
qon-diesel trucks 12%
Sources not affected by methanol utilization, ie industrial processes, solvent usage,etc 67%
~
Mobile sources
~ ~
23%
Off-road mobile sources, ie farm equipment 3%
Off-road mobile sources,
ie farm equipment 6%
Figure 1. Carnegie-Mellon University forecast of nitrogen oxide and reactive organic gases inventories for the year 2000. Source: A. Russell, J. Harris, J. Milford, D. St. Pierre, Quantitative Estimate of the Air Quality Effects of Methanol Fuel Use, prepared for the California Air ResourcesBoard and the South Coast Air Quality Management District, ARB No A6-048-32,Carnegie-Mellon University, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pittsburgh, PA, 1989, p 8.
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The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned?
pheric ozone destroyed by man-made pollutants. NOx and ROGs combine to pollute the atmosphere of many of the world's major cities. The pollution control problem in Los Angeles tends to make it 'first with the worst' in pollution due to a combination of circumstances: the air trapping effect of the area's surrounding mountains, the warm climate which raises the temperature and drives the photochemical reactions, and the automobileintensive form of urban sprawl. Successful control programmes will require adherence to very narrow criteria. The dynamics of air flows over the Los Angeles basin have been thoroughly analysed and a good estimate of total permissible amounts of pollution has been established. Staying at or beneath the maximum permissible amounts of pollution will require adherence to absolute, not relative, limits on total emissions in the region. Once threshold levels of pollutants are exceeded, the atmosphere in the regional basin will become polluted well beyond Federal control standards. The total emissions in the greater Los Angeles area cannot exceed, on any given day, 200 tons of reactive organic gases, 364 tons of nitrogen oxides, 47 tons of sulphur, and 1 370 tons of particulate matter. 1° These totals apply regardless of whether one person lives in the Los Angeles basin or three million. Relative control measures include the 96% efficient control on automotive emissions currently achieved by catalytic converters. This looks impressive taken by itself, but the achievement is undermined if the escaping remainder of 4% is multiplied by millions of vehicles. Total pollution tonnage already exceeds the specified 'critical mass' at which ozone formation occurs at unacceptable levels. The air pollution problem in Los Angeles is a typical, but more accentuated version, of pollution control problems found in major cities. Large-scale environmental damage is not the result of an individual's actions but rather the consequence of multiplying damage at the margin by millions of individual producer and consumer choices. Air quality regulators in Los Angeles have to adjust to intensive demographic growth in a society whose principal consumer products contribute to the pollution, yet at the same time to keep the atmosphere within tightly defined boundary limits for acceptable emissions. The region and the state employ more professional surveillance and regulatory staffs to police air quality than anywhere else in the world. The California Air Resources Board is a state agency responsible for setting standards for tailpipe emissions. Stationary pollution sources are regulated by autonomous single-county and multiple-county districts.
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The boundaries between these regulatory authorities have blurred as circumstances have forced the local districts, first in Los Angeles and then in other areas of the state, to participate in the control of mobile sources. The area office in Los Angeles even operates a no-charge phone number (1-800-CUTSMOG) so that concerned citizens can report excessively polluting automobiles on a 24-hour basis. The owners of these vehicles later receive letters inquiring if their automobiles are operating within state emission standards. The greatest political controversy has centred on the three-tier South Coast Plan articulated by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (the Los Angeles area). Its aim is: 1. to apply available technologies to reduce emissions from all sources; 2. to accelerate new technologies deemed highly probable in the near future; 3. to promote research in future technologies whose likelihood of use seems remote at this time. The corresponding policy measures adopted in transportation are: 1. encouraging ride-sharing and discouraging lowcapacity automobile use; 2. mandating a transition to methanol or some other kind of cleaner fuel during the 1990s; 3. promoting the development of electric or hydrogen powered vehicles for the year 2010 and beyond. The objective is to limit reliance on gasolinepowered, smog producing cars and to move eventually to the elimination of gasoline as the basic fuel of transportation.
The quest for alternative fuels The most controversial element of the South Coast Plan for clean air in Los Angeles is the second objective, to mandate the sale of methanol powered vehicles in the area. The controversy involves two considerations, one political, the other technical. The political element raises the question of how a regional public authority can muster political support to challenge the strength of the major oil and automobile industries. Most of the representatives of districts around Los Angeles in the California Assembly have called for greater regulatory authority to cope with the region's smog and to limit its drift into other areas. The effects of this drift can be seen from the four-county area depicted in Figure 2. The eastward accumulation of Los Angeles smog
655
The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned?
Basin Peak 12.6 pphm
Los Angeles
San
Riverside Orange
II
0-4 pphm
4-8 ~ 8 - 1 2 ~ pphm pphrn
>12 pphm
Figure 2. Los Angeles basin smog drift. Source: Adapted from Southern California Edison, Presentation for ROG-Focused AQMP Alternative, SCAQMD Alternatives Workshop, Southern California Edison, Rosemead, CA, 1989. This is a forecast of what Los Angeles basin ozone formation would look like after the successful implementation of a stringent control programme. The figure shows the most intractable regions of the four-county (Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside) South Coast air quality district. The 'basin peak' ozone area is the worst area in the entire control region, since the confluence of air flows and pollutants creates the highest measured readings of ozone. The eastward drift of the worst smog concentrations is evident.
prompts fierce political arguments in the immediate region, and well beyond. Up to 15% of air pollution formation in San Diego, 120 miles to the south, is due to Los Angeles smog. Colorado and Arizona have measured Los Angeles smog drift hundreds of miles to the west. u It is not just the people and the politicians of Los Angeles, but also their neighbours for hundreds of miles around, who are determined to control smog and support new technologies such as methanol fuels. This political alignment counters the conservative influence of the car manufacturers and the oil industry, and it might succeed in banning gasoline in the 1990s. Methanol's technical feasibility has been demonstrated by a decade of research sponsored by the California Energy Commission. The chief advantage of methanol is that tailpipe emissions have a lower reactivity than those from gasoline; on a grams per mile basis, emissions from a methanol fueled vehicle (if equal by weight to a gasoline powered car) will halve the ozone forming propensity. 12 Oil companies and other opponents of methanol fuel object that the lower energy density of methanol will limit vehicle range. They also cite a number of additional problems. A probable carcinogen, formaldehyde is found in the exhaust of methanol and gasoline vehicles, but at much higher levels in methanol fueled vehicles. 13 The corrosivity of alcohol-based fuels poses design
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problems for the entire fuel system and the combustion chambers. The ability of catalytic control devices to perform adequately with methanol fuel has also been questioned. The results of complex atmospheric models of the Los Angeles basin have been subject to dispute. 14 Nonetheless, of all the alternative fuels, methanol best compares with gasoline in terms of price and distance between refueling. The oil industry estimates that a blend (15% gasoline, 85% methanol) of gasoline and methanol would cost 25% to 75% more than gasoline in projected 1997 prices. Methanol advocates see future costs for the fuel as about equivalent to projected premium gasoline prices. 15 Ford and General Motors have developed 'flexible fueled vehicles' which can run on various ratios of gasoline and methanol. A sensor in the automobile's fuel line is linked to a monitoring computer chip capable of making rapid adjustments in the engine timing and carburetor. The standard fuel for these vehicles would be M85, a fuel composed of 85% methanol and 15% gasoline. Motorists would use M85 in the immediate urban area but they could switch to conventional gasoline when travelling outside cities or beyond the limits of the methanol distribution network. Although automobile companies currently oppose the mandated manufacture of the flexible fueled vehicles now under develop-
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The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned?
ment, the automobile companies won from the US Congress a substantial incentive to market these vehicles. A revision was incorporated in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Act (CAFE) in 1988 so that low-mileage alternative fueled vehicles will be counted as high-mileage cars. This could bring CAFE credits worth as much as $700 to $1 000 for each methanol vehicle sold. 16
Political lobbying for alternative fuels If the infrastructure for the sale of M85 should be commercially put in place, a pure methanol fuel could later eliminate gasoline altogether. This 100% methanol fuel (M100) is twice as effective as M85 in reducing pollution. But advocates want to go further than methanol fuels and develop an altogether new generation of automobile. The oil companies naturally show no enthusiasm for this plan; it calls first for large investments to facilitate the production and distribution of M85 and M100, and then for phasing out both. The oil industry's existence would not directly be threatened; the South Coast Plan foresees the continued use of gasoline fueled automobiles in non-critical pollution areas. But oil company fears would be justified if the radical changes contemplated in Los Angeles led to revolutionary changes in the entire national market for cars and gasoline. The oil industry has taken seriously the threat of mandated methanol use. In 1987, the lower house of the California legislature passed a bill approving the transition to a methanol market in southern California. That such a measure could go even that far came as a shock to the oil industry. It finally succeeded in stopping the measure but it had to agree to a commission to study all available alternative fuels involved in the air pollution problem. 17 The commission involved other potential suppliers of alternative fuels, such as the power utilities (who look to the development of electric vehicles) and the producers of compressed natural gas (who look to the development of natural gas powered vehicles). 18 These are powerful and well-financed lobbies. The natural gas producers and power utilities collaborated with the oil industry, fearing that a rush to methanol might exclude them from future transportation markets. The oil industry's need for their help in stopping the methanol bill was a sign of its relative weakness in environmental politics. Lobbying for alternative fuels has been intense, and it is uncertain which producer groups will triumph. Gasoline might one day be replaced not by one fuel, but by several. Methanol is the most likely
ENERGY POLICY September 1990
substitute; it is most similar to gasoline and could be marketed with few alterations to the existing infrastructure. It remains a favourite choice of regulators at the state and local level. Their preference is backed by chemical companies, such as HoechstCelanese and Imperial Chemical Industries, who would stand to profit from the development of a large methanol market. In addition the Virginia and Pennsylvania coal industries could become suppliers of methanol feedstock. They have lobbied on behalf of methanol fuel in the US Senate. Research and development of battery powered vehicles remains the favourite project of the power utilities, such as Southern California Edison, which wield great influence in the state. The position of the natural gas lobby is difficult because its interests are split between compressed natural gas (CNG) and methanol. Natural gas can fuel automobiles directly as CNG or as a feedstock for the production of methanol. The preference of individual gas producers between methanol and CNG depends on their market access. Texas natural gas interests favour CNG because it can be shipped through existing pipeline networks and priced at the same costs charged to the power utilities. But to compete in a methanol market Texas natural gas suppliers would have to lower bulk delivery prices to methanol producers while charging higher bulk delivery prices to utilities. This would be impossible in a heavily regulated market since utilities are fully able to defend themselves. Most of the world's natural gas, including some marginal fields in North America, is too remote to be linked to the Canadian and Texas network which supplies California. To be used as a transportation fuel this gas would have to be converted to methanol and then shipped to market. Supply forecasts assume that the switch to a methanol fuel in California would bring a windfall to overseas suppliers who currently cannot market their natural gas reserves at home.
Reformulated gasoline Oil companies such as ARCO and Shell have recently marketed in some cities a 'reformulated gasoline' in an attempt to fend off the mandates threatened by environmental regulators in California. Reformulated gasoline is cleaner than conventional gasoline and requires far fewer technical changes than alternative fuels such as methanol. Nationally, the Environmental Protection Agency has sought to follow the lead taken by the California regulators in favouring alternative fuels. Regulators at the state and federal level favour the reformulated gasolines
657
The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned?
as one step in a process which will also lead to the production of alternative fuels. But the desires of agency regulators form only part of the policy process. There is no doubt that the recent introduction of reformulated gasolines by the oil companies is intended to reduce the threat of mandatory production of alternative fuels; the threat is still pending revision in the Clean Air Act before the Congress. The more volatile aromatic components of ordinary gasoline, such as benzene and toluene, are removed in reformulated gasoline. In their place is added either MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) or ETBE (ethyl tertiary butyl ether) to raise the octane rating. MTBE is manufactured from a natural gas feedstock, while ETBE is made from organic sources such as grain. ETBE is competitive in price so long as it is subsidized. The international grain and food processing company, Archer-DanielMidlands, has lobbied for substantial tax credits to enable it to market ETBE. 19 The ether chemicals made from a methanol (MTBE) or ethanol (ETBE) feedstock should not be confused with the pure methanol used in such fuels as M85 (85% methanol) and M100 (100% methanol). 2° Removing the aromatics from ordinary gasoline and substituting one of the ether derivatives is preferred by the oil companies for two reasons. First, unlike methanol fuels, ether additives will require no new investment in distribution facilities. Second, the reformulated gasolines will require far fewer changes in refining practices than the development of a methanol market. M85 is cleaner than current conventional gasolines and oil companies hope to match the emissions characteristics to M85 with reformulated gasolines. In this manner they hope to forestall the push to M85. But regulators envisioned M85 as only a transition to M100. Reformulated gasolines with ETBE and MTBE do not, at this time, appear able to achieve the benefits foreseen with M100. At present alternative fuels do not appear to be making great progress in Washington, though they enjoy great political support within California. The policy outcome is therefore uncertain. California passed its own Clean Air Act in 1988, and it is more rigorous than any anticipated Federal version. It endorses the South Coast Plan for the Los Angeles area. zl Reformulated gasolines will not provide an adequate reduction of emissions and at best will buy time for the oil companies. Since reformulated gasolines will cost more at the pump, their adoption will help other alternative fuels to become more competitive in price. In addition, prospects for alternative fuels would also improve if research and de-
658
velopment lowered the expected retail costs and increased the mileage between refueling for alternative fueled vehicles. This would probably speed the elimination of gasoline in southern California in the 1990s.
Will Los Angeles lead the pace of change? The future of alternative fuels remains uncertain. First, it will be expensive to build facilities for the mass production and distribution of an alternative fuel, and to produce automobiles to use it. 22 Second, political considerations will determine how much money is to be spent on research and development for new fuels, and the degree of coercion which government agencies will use to speed the market entry of new fuels. Air quality regulators may feel that their exertions have achieved little relative to their ambitious objectives. The ability of the oil and automobile industries to resist regulatory initiatives remains great. But as a response to the threat of mandatory methanol production the development of a national market for reformulated gasoline is a triumph of regulatory authorities. This triumph is largely due to the efforts of regional and state agencies in California. There is nothing to indicate that they will lose any regulatory commitment as they prepare long-term changes in the Californian and the entire US markets. Even the implementation of a vigorous air quality control strategy in Los Angeles will not satisfy all the objectors who call for restraining growth. Social factors such as crime, congestion, the expanding demand for industrial and residential electric power and (most difficult of all) water, will challenge California politics. This article cannot address these issues, except to note that congestion has two principal external costs. The first is smog, which contributes to the demand for alternative fuels and clean air standards. The second is the slowdown of the transportation system and the costs this implies for business and consumers. Indeed, congestion was the primary factor which in the early 1980s motivated the promotion and subsequent voter approval of a multi-billion dollar rail system. This system is now being constructed in the Los Angeles area. 23 Air quality regulators do not anticipate that the system under construction will greatly contribute to their problem of reducing total vehicle tonnages of emissions. The primary purpose of the rail system is to facilitate a higher volume access to downtown business areas. Nonetheless, the cost of the project alone is indicative of the high level of local commitment to alternatives to automotive transportation in its cur-
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The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned?
rent form. A region which has committed itself to such massive construction is unlikely to shrink from alternative fuels or from controlling the major external costs incurred by automobiles. The 1990s will see continuing pressure for largescale government intervention in the fuel market. This article has focused on measures to control photochemical smog. Growing concern about global warming as a result of the greenhouse effect has added a new potential for automotive emissions controls. Control of photochemical smog emissions from an automobile is difficult; control of CO2 next to impossible. The problem lies in the quantity of CO2 emissions; they preclude using a trap or catalytic converter analogous to the devices now used to control NOx and ROGs. An economy model such as the 1988 Toyota Tercel emits NOx at the rate of 0.18 grams per mile; its CO2 rating is 255 grams per mile, or roughly two thousand times as much material. Corresponding numbers for a luxury car like the 1988 Ford Crown Victoria are 0.61 grams per mile on NOx, and 642 grams per mile on CO2 (roughly one thousand times as much CO2 a s NOx). 24 A CO2 control device on the gasoline-powered Crown Victoria would have to store 642 kilograms (1 412 pounds) of material every one thousand miles. The collected CO2 would also have to be disposed of in a way that prevented its escape into the atmosphere. The use of a fuel which did not produce CO2 would be far simpler. Greenhouse gases will open a whole new chapter in the history of pollution control. Methanol has a CO2 emissions profile similar to gasoline and it is unlikely to be acceptable if the new greenhouse dimension is added to traditional photochemical smog control criteria. Methanol manufactured from natural gas emits about 8% less CO2 than conventional gasolineY This is a marginal improvement, especially since the direct use of natural gas reduces CO2 emissions by 43%, and hydrogen by 1 0 0 % . 26 Regulators in California remain committed to methanol because it provides prospects for mediumterm improvement in Los Angeles' pollution. Holding up the transition to methanol in order to develop an alternative fuel that addresses greenhouse gases is one more excuse for avoiding a serious problem. In this view, steps must be taken today to control photochemical smog regardless of what is eventually done about the greenhouse effect. No one knows at this time how the regulation of greenhouse gases will affect the regulation of photochemical smog. Whatever the uncertainties, two recent events have drawn attention to the regulation of greenhouse gases in California. First, the South Coast Air
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Quality Management District (SCAQMD), has recently enacted regulations which will eventually elim i n a t e c h l o r o f l u o r o c a r b o n s ( C F C s ) in its jurisdiction. 27 This action extends regulatory authority beyond the traditional domain of photochemical smog. The agency's rationale is that global warming will increase the reaetivity of photochemical smog ingredients, and negate the gains anticipated by implementing the South Coast Plan. The legal authority of the SCAQMD to regulate greenhouse gases may be challenged. If SCQAMD is upheld, the regulation of CFCs will serve as a precedent for controlling CO2. Second, California will soon vote on a referendum to strengthen several environmental controls, including air quality and global warming. If voters agree, the referendum will mandate a reduction of state-wide CO2 emissions by 20% in the next 10 years. 2s SCAQMD does not strictly need passage in order to proceed with its own agenda for the control of greenhouse gases; but there is little doubt that successful passage of the referendum will reinforce the political power of air regulatory officials locally and state-wide. Even if the referendum should fail, it may yet help the air regulators by promoting debate and increasing the level of public awareness about the consequences of gasoline use.
The gasoline-automobile market has dominated ground transportation in this century. Now change is in the air. The increase in 'green' politics and in anxieties over global warming will add to popular concern with photochemical smog controls and it may force the adoption of alternative fuels. The ecological rationale for a fuel transition could also be reinforced by stategic consideration. New fuels will reduce the demand for gasoline or, at a minimum, reduce the rate of increase of gasoline demand. This would affect the demand pattern of California and the USA, especially if an alternative fuel developed in California began to be marketed elsewhere. The development of alternative fuels will necessarily bring about changes in automotive technology and the introduction of new fuels and technology could basically change international markets. Given popular concern for greenhouse gases, the future prospect for world energy markets could be nothing short of revolutionary. Movement has already begun and air quality efforts have already brought about a nation-wide introduction of reformulated gasolines. At a minimum, reformulated gasolines will spur major growth in market demand for MTBE and ETBE in the years ahead, and alter established refining practices. The reality of California's urban sprawl in the 20th century may prompt technological
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The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned?
innovations that will bring far-reaching consequences to the world economy. Most revolutionary would be the substitution of alternative fuels for smog-generating gasoline in the 1990s. In the next century Los Angeles will probably lead the way to methanol, CNG, electric or hydrogen-powered cars. The gasoline age, like the coal age before it, will fade into obsolescence. The author wishes to thank Walter Goldstein, Volker Mohnen, and Michael RineUa, State University of New York at Albany; Daniel Sperling, University of California at Davis; Carl Moyer, Acurex Corporation, Mountain View, CA; Mark Abramowitz at the Coalition for Clean Air in Los Angeles; and Daniel Roos, John Ehrenfeld, and James Womack at MIT. The report from which this article is abstracted is available from CTPID Building E40-213, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139. Opinions, errors, and omissions in this article are those of the author. ~Medical costs are reviewed in Morton Lippman, 'Health effects of ozone: a critical review', Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association (JAPCA), Vol 39, No 5, May 1989, pp 672-695. 2Ronald Taylor, 'Traffic endangers State's future, two groups warn', Los Angeles Times, 2 February 1990, p A2. 3Various estimates are to be found in Southern California Association of Governments, Regional Mobility Plan, Los Angeles, CA, 1989, Section I, p 2; and Judy Wright, 'We're driving ourselves to a lousy quality of life in our smogmaker cars', Los Angeles Times, 4 December 1989, p B5. 4Jane Fritsch, 'Council OKs rush-hour ban on most large trucks', Los Angeles Times, 15 November 1989, p A1; Federick Muir, 'Mayor Bradley wins truck bill compromise', Los Angeles Times, 24 August 1989, Part II, p 1. Independent truckers and members of the construction industry oppose these restrictions because they find a fixed schedule onerous for their irregularly scheduled deliveries. The construction industry prefers to deliver materials when workers will be on hand to receive them. Operators of large delivery fleets such as oil companies and grocery chains do not oppose the measure. 5Larry Stammer, '43% feel business should foot bill for clean air, ~sOil finds', Los Angeles Times, 7 November 1989, p B3. outhern California Association of Governments, Outmigration from Southern California, 1975-1980, Los Angeles, CA, 1988, pp 1; 31-34. The study notes (p 1) that the Los Angeles region was now 'relatively unattractive in domestic terms, but increasingly attractive in international terms'. 7Out-migration means those leaving Los Angeles but staying in the US, as opposed to emigration. In-migration refers to people moving to Los Angeles from other areas of the US, as opposed to immigration from foreign countries. SA good history is James E. Krier and Edmund Ursin, Pollution and Policy: A Case Essay on California and Federal Experience with Motor Vehicle Air Pollution, 1940-1975, University of California Press, 1977. See also Lawrence J. White, Regulation of Air Pollutant Emissions from Motor Vehicles, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC, 1980. 9A. Russell, J. Harris, J. Milford, D. St. Pierre, 'Quantitative estimate of the air quality effects of methanol fuel use', prepared for the California Air Resources Board and the South Coast Air Quality Management District, ARB No A6-048-32, Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pittsburgh, PA, 1989, p 143. 1°South Coast Air Quality Management District, Paths to Clean Air: Attainment Strategies, El Monte, CA, 1989, pp 10-11. HLarry Stammer, 'Who should bear burden when LA exports smog?', Los Angeles Times, 17 February 1990, p A1. 12See for example Carl Moyer and Michael Jackson et al, Methanol as a Motor Fuel: Review of the Issues Related to Air Quality, Demand, Supply, Cost, Consumer Acceptance and Health and
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Safety, California Energy Commission, Sacramento, CA, 1989. 13The formaldehyde element of the methanol controversy is quite complicated. Methanol proponents contend that formaldehyde exhaust is controllable and that secondary atmospheric formation of formaldehyde occurs from gasoline exhaust components. The dispute is discussed at greater length in Gregory Nowell, A Crack in the Empire of Oil: the Plan to Phase Out Gasoline and Petroleum Fuels in the South Coast Air Quality Management District, Interim Report Submitted to the International Motor Vehicle Program, MIT, Cambridge, MA, 1990, pp 149-153. 14Critical views of methanol are summarized in Thomas Austin, R.G. Dulla et al, Potential Emissions and Air Quality Effects of Alternative Fuels: Final Report, No SR89-03-04, Sierra Research, Inc, Sacramento, CA, 1989. 15Oil company figures from Chevron Corporation, 'Potential for methanol as a motor vehicle fuel', prepared for the Conference on Oxygenated Fuels in Europe, Amsterdam, 13-14 June 1989, Chevron Corporation, San Francisco, CA, 1989; methanol forecasts from Carl Moyer, 'Projected availability and cost of methanol for fuel use', Presentation to the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Air and Waste Management Association, Acurex Corporation, Mountain View, CA, 1989. 16Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Methanol and Alternative Fuels Promotion Act of 1987: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on the Consumer, S. 1518, Senate Hearing 100-459, US Senate, 100th Congress, 1st Session, 12 November 1987. Members of the automobile industry contend the $700 to $1000 figure overestimates the value of the credit. ~TMichael Jackson, Mark Burnett, Carl Moyer, et al, California Advisory Board on Air Quality and Fuels: Report to the California Legislature, 5 vois, Air Resources Board, Sacramento, CA, 1990. ~SThe most comprehensive treatment of alternative fuels is Daniel Sperling, New Transportation Fuels: A Strategic Approach to Technological Change, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1988. An oil industry position publication is available from the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance in San Francisco, CA: Evelyn Heidelberg, Alternative Motor Vehicle Fuels to Improve Air Quality: Options and Implications for California, EFH Associates, Sacramento, CA, 1990. 19See the editorial in the Wall Street Journal, 'Ethanol porkery', 29 August 1989, p A16. 2°Ethanol fuels were widely used in the pre-second world war international market usually over the objections of the oil industry. South Africa experimented with ether additives, but not MTBE, in the 1920s. See Gregory Nowell, 'International relations theories and technological development: the oil market and the case for non-determinate outcomes', in P. Zarembka and T. Ferguson, eds, Research in Political Economy, JAI Press, Greenwich CT, 1985, pp 95--143. 2~The bill was signed by the governor in September 1988, Assembly Bill No. 2595, Chapter 1568, California State Assembly, Sacramento, CA. In Section l(a)5, the bill calls for 'the required use of cleaner burning fuels, the implementation of stricter new vehicle emissions s t a n d a r d s . . . ' (emphasis added). 22Compare with Michael Kennedy and Patrick Lee, 'Shell selling low polluting gas in 9 smoggiest cities', Los Angeles Times, 12 April 1990, p A1. ARCO and other companies are also marketing 'clean' or 'reformulated' gasolines with ether additives, supplies of which are insufficient to permit widespread use in the near term. See Thomas Hayes, 'Shortage of additive limits clean ~3asoline', New York Times, 18 April 1990, p A1. See Community Redevelopment Agency, City of Los Angeles, Strategic Actions for Improving Transportation in Downtown Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, April 1987. 24Environmental Protection Agency, 1988 Test Car List - Passen~ffSr Cars, Ann Arbor, MI, 1988. perling, op cit, Ref 18, p 326. 26Ibid, p 326. 27Larry Stammer,, 'AQMD adopts global view on regulation', Los Angeles Times, 7 April 1990, p A1. 2SRobert Reinhold, 'Politics of the environment, California will test waters', New York Times, 27 April 1990, p A1.
ENERGY POLICY September 1990
California has made great strides in the regulation of photochemical smog. Pofitical constituencies favouring change in the gasoline market include regulatory agencies and regional interest groups; some have attempted to mandate methanol use in the USA's second largest city. Anxious to forestall mandatory methanol use, oil companies have introduced 'reformulated gasolines' in major urban areas of the USA. Photochemical smog regulation has forced changes in the automobile fuel market. Recent proposals by regional regulators and a statewide referendum seeking to add greenhouse gases (especially carbon dioxide) to the regulatory agenda may bring about more aggressive emission control efforts. Keywords:Smog;Alternativefuels; Greenhousegases Built around a massive freeway system and totally dependent on gasoline-powered automobiles, Los Angeles is the archetype of 20th century urban sprawl. The city's sustained boom since the second world war has driven it to the limits of its own growth potential; a rapidly increasing population and millions of automobiles are testing the outer limits of regional congestion and pollution control. If the Los Angeles urban area is to continue developing in the 1990s it must change radically. This article examines a crucial element: the debate over banishing gasoline-powered automobiles in the Los Angeles region in the next decade. This proposal is the most controversial element in a comprehensive programme for regional air pollution control. The chief characteristic of Los Angeles is to be 'first with the worst' in terms of pollution and industrial growth GregoryP. Nowellteaches PoliticalScienceat the State University of New York at Albany. His work on alternative fuels is sponsored by the Center for Technology,Policy, and Industrial Development at the MassachusettsInstituteof Technology.
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problems. The solutions being debated will be of great interest to national and international constituencies as they envisage unprecedented constraints on gasoline consumption.
Rising external costs of urban development The Los Angeles area has been concerned with controlling automotive emissions for more than 30 years; air pollution control is not only a 'green' but a pocket book issue. Los Angeles is the largest manufacturing area in the USA and the economic engine of the fastest growing state in the country. The region is home to more than 5% of the nation's automobiles. California boasts a population of 29 million and the eighth largest GNP in the world. Opponents argue that air quality controls will impose 'unreasonable' costs on development. They neglect externalities which are readily becoming apparent; chief among these are the automobile-related problems of a saturated metropolis. The two principal problems stemming from automobile use are congestion costs and 'quality-of-life' issues. Congestion imposes economic costs because it slows the delivery of goods and services, and seriously impedes access to the downtown business sector. It delays millions of commuters on jammed freeways for hours each day. Even if there were no pollution from automobiles, congestion would constitute a substantial block to growth. Congestion is linked to the air pollution issue because slow moving cars produce greater quantities of pollution. Nestled in a ring of mountains which restrict air dispersion, and subjected year-round to temperature inversions, the Los Angeles area suffers from the economic costs of congestion, the inconvenience of slow transport, and the medical costs of air pollution. 1 Industry analysts have estimated that traffic congestion costs the state of California as much as $17 0301-4215/90/070652-09 © 1990 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd
The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned? Table 1. Forecasting parameters for Los Angeles population growth and automotive use. Projections for 2010 relative to 1985 baseline
Population Housing units Total employment Vehicle miles travelled Vehicles in use Vehicle trips
37% 46% 47% 68% 35% 40%
increase increase increase increase increase increase
Source: Alan C. Lloyd, J.M. Lents, C. Green and P. Nemeth, 'Air quality management in Los Angeles: perspectives on past and future emission control strategies', Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association (JAPCA), Vol 39, No 5, 1989, p 700.
billion a year. 2 The massive freeway system in Los Angeles can accommodate travel speeds well in excess of the official 55 mile per hour limit during off-peak hours. But traffic backs up during daytime travel hours, which are increasingly one long 'rush hour', rather than a bimodal morning and evening rush. Freeway speeds are expected to decline from 34 miles per hour today to 17 miles per hour as vehicle ownership and miles travelled per vehicle continue to rise. 3 Members of the business community have called for restricting the access of large trucks to city streets to off-peak hours in the morning and evening. 4 Housing and local business interests have benefited from the region's intensive use of automobile travel, but with over 60% of urban space dedicated to roads and parking it is obvious that continued growth of population and industry will require radical changes in transportation and traffic infrastructure. Slow travelling vehicles increase automotive emissions, and greater numbers of automobiles are correlated with demographic growth and economic development. Projections of the increases facing the area can be seen in Table 1. Clearly, holding on to workers and attracting new businesses to the area will be difficult. A recent poll commissioned by the California and Los Angeles
Chambers of Commerce showed that 58% of respondents had considered moving out of the Los Angeles area in the last year because of smog. 5 While the area still acts as a great magnet to in-migrating populations from foreign countries (especially Latin America), more affluent residents have moved out. But if the area is growing so rapidly, why should a population loss pose such a problem? The rapidity of change is likely to affect the social composition of the city and the educational level of the work force. Were it not for legal and illegal immigration from south of the border, there would be a net decline in the growth of America's second city. The Los Angeles area attracts migrants from countries where air quality and traffic jams are secondary problems. To those with higher expectations and the means to change cities, the area is becoming unattractive. 6 The balance between immigrating and out-migrating7 populations can be seen in Table 2 and Table 3. Demographic shifts of this magnitude portend the growth of sweatshops, slum areas, heightened racial tensions, gang violence and drug use. These social changes, coupled with environmental degradation, congestion, and lower 'quality of life' standards, provoke great concern. Regional political elites have called for local and state regulatory efforts to be more aggressive. As a result, regulation will increasingly affect business and manufacturing enterprises. Possible transportation solutions at the regional level will set the pace for new energy controls beyond the 1990s; they could even lead to the limiting or the outright banning of gasoline.
Smog formation and its control Debate began in the 1950s over smog's causes but it took a decade to establish that automobiles were the major contributors to smog. 8 Today the responsibility of the automobile as the principal cause of smog
Table 2. Income distribution of households in Southern California area government region (1980 data (%)). Group
Household income < $10 000 $10--15 000
$15-25 000
$25-35 000
> $35 000
Immigrants In-migrants Residents Outmigrants
32.7 20.4 18.4 23.5
17.7 14.7 12.7 15.7
25.9 26.1 25.4 28.2
12.5 18.0 20.0 16.8
11.2 20.2 23.5 15.8
Total
19.3%
13.1%
25.5%
19.5%
22.6%
Source: Southern California Association of Governments, Outmigration from Southern California, 1975-1980, Los Angeles, 1988, p 43. Total figures exclude outmigrants. Note that 32.6% of the outmigrants (people leaving the area) are in the top two income categories, as opposed to 23.7% of the immigrants (people coming in from other countries), which comprise the largest single category of replacement population.
ENERGY POLICY September 1990
653
The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned? Table 3. Highest educational attainment level, Southern California area government region. Group
None
Elem
F elem
HS
FHS
Col
F col
Immigrants In-migrants Residents Out-migrants
4.3 0.8 1.0 0.8
40.3 19.0 21.7 19.0
2.8 1.7 2.7 1.9
15.9 13.1 18.6 15.7
12.0 20.2 23.0 23.0
13.6 24.6 21.4 24.6
11.1 20.6 11.6 15.0
Source: Southern California Association of Governments, Outmigration from Southern California, 1975-1980, Los Angeles, CA, 1988, p 40. Elem = some elementary; F elem = finished elementary; HS = some high school; FHS = finished high school; Col = some college; F col = finished college. Note that 39.6% of the out-migrating population falls into the top two educational categories, versus 24.7% of the immigrating population.
is a cliche. Although the automobile, along with other gasoline and diesel powered vehicles, accounts for the largest single source of air pollution, controlling their emissions will not guarantee the elimination of smog. Ozone is the most difficult element of photochemical smog to control. Yet if all automobiles were to be entirely removed from the Los Angeles area, the total formation of ozone would decline by only 23% .9 Seventy percent of the elements contributing to ozone formation come from stationary pollution sources, ranging from electric utilities to bakeries, though automobiles remain the single largest regulatable source of emissions. Figure 1 provides a projection of Los Angeles basin pollutants and their sources to the year 2000. Ozone is formed by the intermixing of reactive organic gases (ROGs) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the atmosphere. 'Cooked' in the heat of sunlight, chemical reactions occur which produce ozone. NOx is produced from the nitrogen which comprises nearly three-quarters of the atmosphere. Whenever a fuel is burned at high temperatures, nitrogen is oxidized. This 'burned' nitrogen is produced by gas
a Oil refining Diesel sources 4%
stoves, automobiles, power utilities, or anything using ordinary air for combustion. Even for 'clean' fuels, NOx formation is difficult to control. Reactive organic gases, sometimes called volatile organic compounds, literally evaporate into the air. This property is exploited in paints and solvents which are used as cleaning agents, where the escaping organics allow a quick drying effect. Gasoline smells at the gasoline station are caused by the evaporation of ROGs from fuel tanks, leaking hoses and spillage by customers. The smell is caused by lighter aromatics, such as benzene and toluene, which are among the dozens of chemicals that comprise gasoline. Even the natural respiratory cycle of trees emits limited quantities of ROGs. Reactive gases from any of these sources, combined with nitrogen oxides, will react with sunlight to form ozone. Controlling ground level ozone is not to be confused with preventing the growth of the ozone 'hole' over the South Pole. At high altitudes, ozone screens ultraviolet radiation; at ground levels it is a respiratory toxin. Unfortunately, ozone emitted at ground levels is too unstable to waft upward to replace the stratos-
b Oil refining 6%
16% Sources not affected by
Non-diesel automobiles 16%
methanol conversion, ie industrial processes, solvent usage, etc 46%
qon-diesel trucks 12%
Sources not affected by methanol utilization, ie industrial processes, solvent usage,etc 67%
~
Mobile sources
~ ~
23%
Off-road mobile sources, ie farm equipment 3%
Off-road mobile sources,
ie farm equipment 6%
Figure 1. Carnegie-Mellon University forecast of nitrogen oxide and reactive organic gases inventories for the year 2000. Source: A. Russell, J. Harris, J. Milford, D. St. Pierre, Quantitative Estimate of the Air Quality Effects of Methanol Fuel Use, prepared for the California Air ResourcesBoard and the South Coast Air Quality Management District, ARB No A6-048-32,Carnegie-Mellon University, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pittsburgh, PA, 1989, p 8.
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ENERGY POLICY September 1990
The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned?
pheric ozone destroyed by man-made pollutants. NOx and ROGs combine to pollute the atmosphere of many of the world's major cities. The pollution control problem in Los Angeles tends to make it 'first with the worst' in pollution due to a combination of circumstances: the air trapping effect of the area's surrounding mountains, the warm climate which raises the temperature and drives the photochemical reactions, and the automobileintensive form of urban sprawl. Successful control programmes will require adherence to very narrow criteria. The dynamics of air flows over the Los Angeles basin have been thoroughly analysed and a good estimate of total permissible amounts of pollution has been established. Staying at or beneath the maximum permissible amounts of pollution will require adherence to absolute, not relative, limits on total emissions in the region. Once threshold levels of pollutants are exceeded, the atmosphere in the regional basin will become polluted well beyond Federal control standards. The total emissions in the greater Los Angeles area cannot exceed, on any given day, 200 tons of reactive organic gases, 364 tons of nitrogen oxides, 47 tons of sulphur, and 1 370 tons of particulate matter. 1° These totals apply regardless of whether one person lives in the Los Angeles basin or three million. Relative control measures include the 96% efficient control on automotive emissions currently achieved by catalytic converters. This looks impressive taken by itself, but the achievement is undermined if the escaping remainder of 4% is multiplied by millions of vehicles. Total pollution tonnage already exceeds the specified 'critical mass' at which ozone formation occurs at unacceptable levels. The air pollution problem in Los Angeles is a typical, but more accentuated version, of pollution control problems found in major cities. Large-scale environmental damage is not the result of an individual's actions but rather the consequence of multiplying damage at the margin by millions of individual producer and consumer choices. Air quality regulators in Los Angeles have to adjust to intensive demographic growth in a society whose principal consumer products contribute to the pollution, yet at the same time to keep the atmosphere within tightly defined boundary limits for acceptable emissions. The region and the state employ more professional surveillance and regulatory staffs to police air quality than anywhere else in the world. The California Air Resources Board is a state agency responsible for setting standards for tailpipe emissions. Stationary pollution sources are regulated by autonomous single-county and multiple-county districts.
ENERGY POLICY September 1990
The boundaries between these regulatory authorities have blurred as circumstances have forced the local districts, first in Los Angeles and then in other areas of the state, to participate in the control of mobile sources. The area office in Los Angeles even operates a no-charge phone number (1-800-CUTSMOG) so that concerned citizens can report excessively polluting automobiles on a 24-hour basis. The owners of these vehicles later receive letters inquiring if their automobiles are operating within state emission standards. The greatest political controversy has centred on the three-tier South Coast Plan articulated by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (the Los Angeles area). Its aim is: 1. to apply available technologies to reduce emissions from all sources; 2. to accelerate new technologies deemed highly probable in the near future; 3. to promote research in future technologies whose likelihood of use seems remote at this time. The corresponding policy measures adopted in transportation are: 1. encouraging ride-sharing and discouraging lowcapacity automobile use; 2. mandating a transition to methanol or some other kind of cleaner fuel during the 1990s; 3. promoting the development of electric or hydrogen powered vehicles for the year 2010 and beyond. The objective is to limit reliance on gasolinepowered, smog producing cars and to move eventually to the elimination of gasoline as the basic fuel of transportation.
The quest for alternative fuels The most controversial element of the South Coast Plan for clean air in Los Angeles is the second objective, to mandate the sale of methanol powered vehicles in the area. The controversy involves two considerations, one political, the other technical. The political element raises the question of how a regional public authority can muster political support to challenge the strength of the major oil and automobile industries. Most of the representatives of districts around Los Angeles in the California Assembly have called for greater regulatory authority to cope with the region's smog and to limit its drift into other areas. The effects of this drift can be seen from the four-county area depicted in Figure 2. The eastward accumulation of Los Angeles smog
655
The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned?
Basin Peak 12.6 pphm
Los Angeles
San
Riverside Orange
II
0-4 pphm
4-8 ~ 8 - 1 2 ~ pphm pphrn
>12 pphm
Figure 2. Los Angeles basin smog drift. Source: Adapted from Southern California Edison, Presentation for ROG-Focused AQMP Alternative, SCAQMD Alternatives Workshop, Southern California Edison, Rosemead, CA, 1989. This is a forecast of what Los Angeles basin ozone formation would look like after the successful implementation of a stringent control programme. The figure shows the most intractable regions of the four-county (Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside) South Coast air quality district. The 'basin peak' ozone area is the worst area in the entire control region, since the confluence of air flows and pollutants creates the highest measured readings of ozone. The eastward drift of the worst smog concentrations is evident.
prompts fierce political arguments in the immediate region, and well beyond. Up to 15% of air pollution formation in San Diego, 120 miles to the south, is due to Los Angeles smog. Colorado and Arizona have measured Los Angeles smog drift hundreds of miles to the west. u It is not just the people and the politicians of Los Angeles, but also their neighbours for hundreds of miles around, who are determined to control smog and support new technologies such as methanol fuels. This political alignment counters the conservative influence of the car manufacturers and the oil industry, and it might succeed in banning gasoline in the 1990s. Methanol's technical feasibility has been demonstrated by a decade of research sponsored by the California Energy Commission. The chief advantage of methanol is that tailpipe emissions have a lower reactivity than those from gasoline; on a grams per mile basis, emissions from a methanol fueled vehicle (if equal by weight to a gasoline powered car) will halve the ozone forming propensity. 12 Oil companies and other opponents of methanol fuel object that the lower energy density of methanol will limit vehicle range. They also cite a number of additional problems. A probable carcinogen, formaldehyde is found in the exhaust of methanol and gasoline vehicles, but at much higher levels in methanol fueled vehicles. 13 The corrosivity of alcohol-based fuels poses design
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problems for the entire fuel system and the combustion chambers. The ability of catalytic control devices to perform adequately with methanol fuel has also been questioned. The results of complex atmospheric models of the Los Angeles basin have been subject to dispute. 14 Nonetheless, of all the alternative fuels, methanol best compares with gasoline in terms of price and distance between refueling. The oil industry estimates that a blend (15% gasoline, 85% methanol) of gasoline and methanol would cost 25% to 75% more than gasoline in projected 1997 prices. Methanol advocates see future costs for the fuel as about equivalent to projected premium gasoline prices. 15 Ford and General Motors have developed 'flexible fueled vehicles' which can run on various ratios of gasoline and methanol. A sensor in the automobile's fuel line is linked to a monitoring computer chip capable of making rapid adjustments in the engine timing and carburetor. The standard fuel for these vehicles would be M85, a fuel composed of 85% methanol and 15% gasoline. Motorists would use M85 in the immediate urban area but they could switch to conventional gasoline when travelling outside cities or beyond the limits of the methanol distribution network. Although automobile companies currently oppose the mandated manufacture of the flexible fueled vehicles now under develop-
ENERGY POLICY September 1990
The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned?
ment, the automobile companies won from the US Congress a substantial incentive to market these vehicles. A revision was incorporated in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Act (CAFE) in 1988 so that low-mileage alternative fueled vehicles will be counted as high-mileage cars. This could bring CAFE credits worth as much as $700 to $1 000 for each methanol vehicle sold. 16
Political lobbying for alternative fuels If the infrastructure for the sale of M85 should be commercially put in place, a pure methanol fuel could later eliminate gasoline altogether. This 100% methanol fuel (M100) is twice as effective as M85 in reducing pollution. But advocates want to go further than methanol fuels and develop an altogether new generation of automobile. The oil companies naturally show no enthusiasm for this plan; it calls first for large investments to facilitate the production and distribution of M85 and M100, and then for phasing out both. The oil industry's existence would not directly be threatened; the South Coast Plan foresees the continued use of gasoline fueled automobiles in non-critical pollution areas. But oil company fears would be justified if the radical changes contemplated in Los Angeles led to revolutionary changes in the entire national market for cars and gasoline. The oil industry has taken seriously the threat of mandated methanol use. In 1987, the lower house of the California legislature passed a bill approving the transition to a methanol market in southern California. That such a measure could go even that far came as a shock to the oil industry. It finally succeeded in stopping the measure but it had to agree to a commission to study all available alternative fuels involved in the air pollution problem. 17 The commission involved other potential suppliers of alternative fuels, such as the power utilities (who look to the development of electric vehicles) and the producers of compressed natural gas (who look to the development of natural gas powered vehicles). 18 These are powerful and well-financed lobbies. The natural gas producers and power utilities collaborated with the oil industry, fearing that a rush to methanol might exclude them from future transportation markets. The oil industry's need for their help in stopping the methanol bill was a sign of its relative weakness in environmental politics. Lobbying for alternative fuels has been intense, and it is uncertain which producer groups will triumph. Gasoline might one day be replaced not by one fuel, but by several. Methanol is the most likely
ENERGY POLICY September 1990
substitute; it is most similar to gasoline and could be marketed with few alterations to the existing infrastructure. It remains a favourite choice of regulators at the state and local level. Their preference is backed by chemical companies, such as HoechstCelanese and Imperial Chemical Industries, who would stand to profit from the development of a large methanol market. In addition the Virginia and Pennsylvania coal industries could become suppliers of methanol feedstock. They have lobbied on behalf of methanol fuel in the US Senate. Research and development of battery powered vehicles remains the favourite project of the power utilities, such as Southern California Edison, which wield great influence in the state. The position of the natural gas lobby is difficult because its interests are split between compressed natural gas (CNG) and methanol. Natural gas can fuel automobiles directly as CNG or as a feedstock for the production of methanol. The preference of individual gas producers between methanol and CNG depends on their market access. Texas natural gas interests favour CNG because it can be shipped through existing pipeline networks and priced at the same costs charged to the power utilities. But to compete in a methanol market Texas natural gas suppliers would have to lower bulk delivery prices to methanol producers while charging higher bulk delivery prices to utilities. This would be impossible in a heavily regulated market since utilities are fully able to defend themselves. Most of the world's natural gas, including some marginal fields in North America, is too remote to be linked to the Canadian and Texas network which supplies California. To be used as a transportation fuel this gas would have to be converted to methanol and then shipped to market. Supply forecasts assume that the switch to a methanol fuel in California would bring a windfall to overseas suppliers who currently cannot market their natural gas reserves at home.
Reformulated gasoline Oil companies such as ARCO and Shell have recently marketed in some cities a 'reformulated gasoline' in an attempt to fend off the mandates threatened by environmental regulators in California. Reformulated gasoline is cleaner than conventional gasoline and requires far fewer technical changes than alternative fuels such as methanol. Nationally, the Environmental Protection Agency has sought to follow the lead taken by the California regulators in favouring alternative fuels. Regulators at the state and federal level favour the reformulated gasolines
657
The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned?
as one step in a process which will also lead to the production of alternative fuels. But the desires of agency regulators form only part of the policy process. There is no doubt that the recent introduction of reformulated gasolines by the oil companies is intended to reduce the threat of mandatory production of alternative fuels; the threat is still pending revision in the Clean Air Act before the Congress. The more volatile aromatic components of ordinary gasoline, such as benzene and toluene, are removed in reformulated gasoline. In their place is added either MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) or ETBE (ethyl tertiary butyl ether) to raise the octane rating. MTBE is manufactured from a natural gas feedstock, while ETBE is made from organic sources such as grain. ETBE is competitive in price so long as it is subsidized. The international grain and food processing company, Archer-DanielMidlands, has lobbied for substantial tax credits to enable it to market ETBE. 19 The ether chemicals made from a methanol (MTBE) or ethanol (ETBE) feedstock should not be confused with the pure methanol used in such fuels as M85 (85% methanol) and M100 (100% methanol). 2° Removing the aromatics from ordinary gasoline and substituting one of the ether derivatives is preferred by the oil companies for two reasons. First, unlike methanol fuels, ether additives will require no new investment in distribution facilities. Second, the reformulated gasolines will require far fewer changes in refining practices than the development of a methanol market. M85 is cleaner than current conventional gasolines and oil companies hope to match the emissions characteristics to M85 with reformulated gasolines. In this manner they hope to forestall the push to M85. But regulators envisioned M85 as only a transition to M100. Reformulated gasolines with ETBE and MTBE do not, at this time, appear able to achieve the benefits foreseen with M100. At present alternative fuels do not appear to be making great progress in Washington, though they enjoy great political support within California. The policy outcome is therefore uncertain. California passed its own Clean Air Act in 1988, and it is more rigorous than any anticipated Federal version. It endorses the South Coast Plan for the Los Angeles area. zl Reformulated gasolines will not provide an adequate reduction of emissions and at best will buy time for the oil companies. Since reformulated gasolines will cost more at the pump, their adoption will help other alternative fuels to become more competitive in price. In addition, prospects for alternative fuels would also improve if research and de-
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velopment lowered the expected retail costs and increased the mileage between refueling for alternative fueled vehicles. This would probably speed the elimination of gasoline in southern California in the 1990s.
Will Los Angeles lead the pace of change? The future of alternative fuels remains uncertain. First, it will be expensive to build facilities for the mass production and distribution of an alternative fuel, and to produce automobiles to use it. 22 Second, political considerations will determine how much money is to be spent on research and development for new fuels, and the degree of coercion which government agencies will use to speed the market entry of new fuels. Air quality regulators may feel that their exertions have achieved little relative to their ambitious objectives. The ability of the oil and automobile industries to resist regulatory initiatives remains great. But as a response to the threat of mandatory methanol production the development of a national market for reformulated gasoline is a triumph of regulatory authorities. This triumph is largely due to the efforts of regional and state agencies in California. There is nothing to indicate that they will lose any regulatory commitment as they prepare long-term changes in the Californian and the entire US markets. Even the implementation of a vigorous air quality control strategy in Los Angeles will not satisfy all the objectors who call for restraining growth. Social factors such as crime, congestion, the expanding demand for industrial and residential electric power and (most difficult of all) water, will challenge California politics. This article cannot address these issues, except to note that congestion has two principal external costs. The first is smog, which contributes to the demand for alternative fuels and clean air standards. The second is the slowdown of the transportation system and the costs this implies for business and consumers. Indeed, congestion was the primary factor which in the early 1980s motivated the promotion and subsequent voter approval of a multi-billion dollar rail system. This system is now being constructed in the Los Angeles area. 23 Air quality regulators do not anticipate that the system under construction will greatly contribute to their problem of reducing total vehicle tonnages of emissions. The primary purpose of the rail system is to facilitate a higher volume access to downtown business areas. Nonetheless, the cost of the project alone is indicative of the high level of local commitment to alternatives to automotive transportation in its cur-
ENERGY POLICY September 1990
The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned?
rent form. A region which has committed itself to such massive construction is unlikely to shrink from alternative fuels or from controlling the major external costs incurred by automobiles. The 1990s will see continuing pressure for largescale government intervention in the fuel market. This article has focused on measures to control photochemical smog. Growing concern about global warming as a result of the greenhouse effect has added a new potential for automotive emissions controls. Control of photochemical smog emissions from an automobile is difficult; control of CO2 next to impossible. The problem lies in the quantity of CO2 emissions; they preclude using a trap or catalytic converter analogous to the devices now used to control NOx and ROGs. An economy model such as the 1988 Toyota Tercel emits NOx at the rate of 0.18 grams per mile; its CO2 rating is 255 grams per mile, or roughly two thousand times as much material. Corresponding numbers for a luxury car like the 1988 Ford Crown Victoria are 0.61 grams per mile on NOx, and 642 grams per mile on CO2 (roughly one thousand times as much CO2 a s NOx). 24 A CO2 control device on the gasoline-powered Crown Victoria would have to store 642 kilograms (1 412 pounds) of material every one thousand miles. The collected CO2 would also have to be disposed of in a way that prevented its escape into the atmosphere. The use of a fuel which did not produce CO2 would be far simpler. Greenhouse gases will open a whole new chapter in the history of pollution control. Methanol has a CO2 emissions profile similar to gasoline and it is unlikely to be acceptable if the new greenhouse dimension is added to traditional photochemical smog control criteria. Methanol manufactured from natural gas emits about 8% less CO2 than conventional gasolineY This is a marginal improvement, especially since the direct use of natural gas reduces CO2 emissions by 43%, and hydrogen by 1 0 0 % . 26 Regulators in California remain committed to methanol because it provides prospects for mediumterm improvement in Los Angeles' pollution. Holding up the transition to methanol in order to develop an alternative fuel that addresses greenhouse gases is one more excuse for avoiding a serious problem. In this view, steps must be taken today to control photochemical smog regardless of what is eventually done about the greenhouse effect. No one knows at this time how the regulation of greenhouse gases will affect the regulation of photochemical smog. Whatever the uncertainties, two recent events have drawn attention to the regulation of greenhouse gases in California. First, the South Coast Air
ENERGY POLICY September 1990
Quality Management District (SCAQMD), has recently enacted regulations which will eventually elim i n a t e c h l o r o f l u o r o c a r b o n s ( C F C s ) in its jurisdiction. 27 This action extends regulatory authority beyond the traditional domain of photochemical smog. The agency's rationale is that global warming will increase the reaetivity of photochemical smog ingredients, and negate the gains anticipated by implementing the South Coast Plan. The legal authority of the SCAQMD to regulate greenhouse gases may be challenged. If SCQAMD is upheld, the regulation of CFCs will serve as a precedent for controlling CO2. Second, California will soon vote on a referendum to strengthen several environmental controls, including air quality and global warming. If voters agree, the referendum will mandate a reduction of state-wide CO2 emissions by 20% in the next 10 years. 2s SCAQMD does not strictly need passage in order to proceed with its own agenda for the control of greenhouse gases; but there is little doubt that successful passage of the referendum will reinforce the political power of air regulatory officials locally and state-wide. Even if the referendum should fail, it may yet help the air regulators by promoting debate and increasing the level of public awareness about the consequences of gasoline use.
The gasoline-automobile market has dominated ground transportation in this century. Now change is in the air. The increase in 'green' politics and in anxieties over global warming will add to popular concern with photochemical smog controls and it may force the adoption of alternative fuels. The ecological rationale for a fuel transition could also be reinforced by stategic consideration. New fuels will reduce the demand for gasoline or, at a minimum, reduce the rate of increase of gasoline demand. This would affect the demand pattern of California and the USA, especially if an alternative fuel developed in California began to be marketed elsewhere. The development of alternative fuels will necessarily bring about changes in automotive technology and the introduction of new fuels and technology could basically change international markets. Given popular concern for greenhouse gases, the future prospect for world energy markets could be nothing short of revolutionary. Movement has already begun and air quality efforts have already brought about a nation-wide introduction of reformulated gasolines. At a minimum, reformulated gasolines will spur major growth in market demand for MTBE and ETBE in the years ahead, and alter established refining practices. The reality of California's urban sprawl in the 20th century may prompt technological
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The air quality debate in California: should gasoline be banned?
innovations that will bring far-reaching consequences to the world economy. Most revolutionary would be the substitution of alternative fuels for smog-generating gasoline in the 1990s. In the next century Los Angeles will probably lead the way to methanol, CNG, electric or hydrogen-powered cars. The gasoline age, like the coal age before it, will fade into obsolescence. The author wishes to thank Walter Goldstein, Volker Mohnen, and Michael RineUa, State University of New York at Albany; Daniel Sperling, University of California at Davis; Carl Moyer, Acurex Corporation, Mountain View, CA; Mark Abramowitz at the Coalition for Clean Air in Los Angeles; and Daniel Roos, John Ehrenfeld, and James Womack at MIT. The report from which this article is abstracted is available from CTPID Building E40-213, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139. Opinions, errors, and omissions in this article are those of the author. ~Medical costs are reviewed in Morton Lippman, 'Health effects of ozone: a critical review', Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association (JAPCA), Vol 39, No 5, May 1989, pp 672-695. 2Ronald Taylor, 'Traffic endangers State's future, two groups warn', Los Angeles Times, 2 February 1990, p A2. 3Various estimates are to be found in Southern California Association of Governments, Regional Mobility Plan, Los Angeles, CA, 1989, Section I, p 2; and Judy Wright, 'We're driving ourselves to a lousy quality of life in our smogmaker cars', Los Angeles Times, 4 December 1989, p B5. 4Jane Fritsch, 'Council OKs rush-hour ban on most large trucks', Los Angeles Times, 15 November 1989, p A1; Federick Muir, 'Mayor Bradley wins truck bill compromise', Los Angeles Times, 24 August 1989, Part II, p 1. Independent truckers and members of the construction industry oppose these restrictions because they find a fixed schedule onerous for their irregularly scheduled deliveries. The construction industry prefers to deliver materials when workers will be on hand to receive them. Operators of large delivery fleets such as oil companies and grocery chains do not oppose the measure. 5Larry Stammer, '43% feel business should foot bill for clean air, ~sOil finds', Los Angeles Times, 7 November 1989, p B3. outhern California Association of Governments, Outmigration from Southern California, 1975-1980, Los Angeles, CA, 1988, pp 1; 31-34. The study notes (p 1) that the Los Angeles region was now 'relatively unattractive in domestic terms, but increasingly attractive in international terms'. 7Out-migration means those leaving Los Angeles but staying in the US, as opposed to emigration. In-migration refers to people moving to Los Angeles from other areas of the US, as opposed to immigration from foreign countries. SA good history is James E. Krier and Edmund Ursin, Pollution and Policy: A Case Essay on California and Federal Experience with Motor Vehicle Air Pollution, 1940-1975, University of California Press, 1977. See also Lawrence J. White, Regulation of Air Pollutant Emissions from Motor Vehicles, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC, 1980. 9A. Russell, J. Harris, J. Milford, D. St. Pierre, 'Quantitative estimate of the air quality effects of methanol fuel use', prepared for the California Air Resources Board and the South Coast Air Quality Management District, ARB No A6-048-32, Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pittsburgh, PA, 1989, p 143. 1°South Coast Air Quality Management District, Paths to Clean Air: Attainment Strategies, El Monte, CA, 1989, pp 10-11. HLarry Stammer, 'Who should bear burden when LA exports smog?', Los Angeles Times, 17 February 1990, p A1. 12See for example Carl Moyer and Michael Jackson et al, Methanol as a Motor Fuel: Review of the Issues Related to Air Quality, Demand, Supply, Cost, Consumer Acceptance and Health and
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Safety, California Energy Commission, Sacramento, CA, 1989. 13The formaldehyde element of the methanol controversy is quite complicated. Methanol proponents contend that formaldehyde exhaust is controllable and that secondary atmospheric formation of formaldehyde occurs from gasoline exhaust components. The dispute is discussed at greater length in Gregory Nowell, A Crack in the Empire of Oil: the Plan to Phase Out Gasoline and Petroleum Fuels in the South Coast Air Quality Management District, Interim Report Submitted to the International Motor Vehicle Program, MIT, Cambridge, MA, 1990, pp 149-153. 14Critical views of methanol are summarized in Thomas Austin, R.G. Dulla et al, Potential Emissions and Air Quality Effects of Alternative Fuels: Final Report, No SR89-03-04, Sierra Research, Inc, Sacramento, CA, 1989. 15Oil company figures from Chevron Corporation, 'Potential for methanol as a motor vehicle fuel', prepared for the Conference on Oxygenated Fuels in Europe, Amsterdam, 13-14 June 1989, Chevron Corporation, San Francisco, CA, 1989; methanol forecasts from Carl Moyer, 'Projected availability and cost of methanol for fuel use', Presentation to the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Air and Waste Management Association, Acurex Corporation, Mountain View, CA, 1989. 16Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Methanol and Alternative Fuels Promotion Act of 1987: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on the Consumer, S. 1518, Senate Hearing 100-459, US Senate, 100th Congress, 1st Session, 12 November 1987. Members of the automobile industry contend the $700 to $1000 figure overestimates the value of the credit. ~TMichael Jackson, Mark Burnett, Carl Moyer, et al, California Advisory Board on Air Quality and Fuels: Report to the California Legislature, 5 vois, Air Resources Board, Sacramento, CA, 1990. ~SThe most comprehensive treatment of alternative fuels is Daniel Sperling, New Transportation Fuels: A Strategic Approach to Technological Change, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1988. An oil industry position publication is available from the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance in San Francisco, CA: Evelyn Heidelberg, Alternative Motor Vehicle Fuels to Improve Air Quality: Options and Implications for California, EFH Associates, Sacramento, CA, 1990. 19See the editorial in the Wall Street Journal, 'Ethanol porkery', 29 August 1989, p A16. 2°Ethanol fuels were widely used in the pre-second world war international market usually over the objections of the oil industry. South Africa experimented with ether additives, but not MTBE, in the 1920s. See Gregory Nowell, 'International relations theories and technological development: the oil market and the case for non-determinate outcomes', in P. Zarembka and T. Ferguson, eds, Research in Political Economy, JAI Press, Greenwich CT, 1985, pp 95--143. 2~The bill was signed by the governor in September 1988, Assembly Bill No. 2595, Chapter 1568, California State Assembly, Sacramento, CA. In Section l(a)5, the bill calls for 'the required use of cleaner burning fuels, the implementation of stricter new vehicle emissions s t a n d a r d s . . . ' (emphasis added). 22Compare with Michael Kennedy and Patrick Lee, 'Shell selling low polluting gas in 9 smoggiest cities', Los Angeles Times, 12 April 1990, p A1. ARCO and other companies are also marketing 'clean' or 'reformulated' gasolines with ether additives, supplies of which are insufficient to permit widespread use in the near term. See Thomas Hayes, 'Shortage of additive limits clean ~3asoline', New York Times, 18 April 1990, p A1. See Community Redevelopment Agency, City of Los Angeles, Strategic Actions for Improving Transportation in Downtown Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, April 1987. 24Environmental Protection Agency, 1988 Test Car List - Passen~ffSr Cars, Ann Arbor, MI, 1988. perling, op cit, Ref 18, p 326. 26Ibid, p 326. 27Larry Stammer,, 'AQMD adopts global view on regulation', Los Angeles Times, 7 April 1990, p A1. 2SRobert Reinhold, 'Politics of the environment, California will test waters', New York Times, 27 April 1990, p A1.
ENERGY POLICY September 1990