EPA Sets Cleaner Fuel and Car Standards, Slashing Air Pollution and Providing Health Benefits to Thousands

March 03, 2014

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(US Environmental Protection Agency) Based on extensive input from the public and a broad range of stakeholders, including public health groups, auto manufacturers, refiners, and states, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today finalized emission standards for cars and gasoline that will significantly reduce harmful pollution and prevent thousands of premature deaths and illnesses, while also enabling efficiency improvements in the cars and trucks we drive. These cleaner fuel and car standards are an important component of the administration’s national program for clean cars and trucks, which also include historic fuel efficiency standards that are saving new vehicle owners at the gas pump. Once fully in place, the standards will help avoid up to 2,000 premature deaths per year and 50,000 cases of respiratory ailments in children.
"These standards are a win for public health, a win for our environment, and a win for our pocketbooks," said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. "By working with the auto industry, health groups, and other stakeholders, we're continuing to build on the Obama Administration's broader clean fuels and vehicles efforts that cut carbon pollution, clean the air we breathe, and save families money at the pump."
The final standards will quickly and effectively cut harmful soot, smog and toxic emissions from cars and trucks. The Obama Administration’s actions to improve fuel economy and reduce greenhouse gases from these same vehicles will also result in average fuel savings of more than $8,000 by 2025 over a vehicle’s lifetime. The fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards covering model year vehicles from 2012-2025 are projected to save American families more than $1.7 trillion in fuel costs.
Following a proven approach that addresses vehicles and fuels as an integrated system, today’s action will enable substantial pollution reductions at low cost. The standards slash emissions of a range of harmful pollutants that can cause premature death and respiratory illnesses, reducing standards for smog-forming volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides by 80 percent, establishing a 70 percent tighter particulate matter standard and virtually eliminating fuel vapor emissions. These standards will also reduce vehicle emissions of toxic air pollutants, such as benzene by up to 30 percent.
The final fuel standards will reduce gasoline sulfur levels by more than 60 percent – down from 30 to 10 parts per million (ppm) in 2017. Reducing sulfur in gasoline enables vehicle emission control technologies to perform more efficiently. New low-sulfur gas will provide significant and immediate health benefits because every gas-powered vehicle on the road built prior to these standards will run cleaner – cutting smog-forming NOx emissions by 260,000 tons in 2018.
The Tier 3 standards cut tailpipe pollution where people live and breathe – reducing harmful emissions along the streets and roadways that run through our neighborhoods and near our children’s schools. By 2018, EPA estimates the cleaner fuels and cars program will annually prevent between 225 and 610 premature deaths, significantly reduce ambient concentrations of ozone and reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by about 260,000 tons. That is about 10 percent of emissions from on-highway vehicles, with those reductions reaching 25 percent (330,000 tons) by 2030.
By 2030, EPA estimates that up to 2,000 premature deaths, 50,000 cases of respiratory ailments in children, 2,200 hospital admissions and asthma-related emergency room visits, and 1.4 million lost school days, work days and days when activities would be restricted due to air pollution. Total health-related benefits in 2030 will be between $6.7 and $19 billion annually. The program will also reduce exposure to pollution near roads. More than 50 million people live, work, or go to school in close proximity to high-traffic roadways, and the average American spends more than one hour traveling along roads each day.
The final standards are expected to provide up to 13 dollars in health benefits for every dollar spent to meet the standards, more than was estimated for the proposal. The sulfur standards will cost less than a penny per gallon of gasoline on average once the standards are fully in place. The vehicle standards will have an average cost of about $72 per vehicle in 2025. The standards support efforts by states to reduce harmful levels of smog and soot and aids their ability to attain and maintain science-based national ambient air quality standards to protect public health, while also providing flexibilities for small businesses, including hardship provisions and additional lead time for compliance.
EPA conducted extensive outreach with key stakeholders throughout the development of the rule, held two public hearings in Philadelphia and Chicago, and received more than 200,000 public comments. The final standards are based on input from a broad range of groups, including state and local governments, auto manufacturers, emissions control suppliers, refiners, fuel distributors and others in the petroleum industry, renewable fuels providers, health and environmental organizations, consumer groups, labor groups and private citizens.
The final standards will work together with California’s clean cars and fuels program to create a harmonized nationwide vehicle emissions program that enables automakers to sell the same vehicles in all 50 states. The standards are designed to be implemented over the same timeframe as the next phase of EPA’s national program to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cars and light trucks beginning in model year 2017. Together, the federal and California standards will maximize reductions in GHGs, air pollutants and air toxics from cars and light trucks while providing automakers regulatory certainty, streamlining compliance, and reducing costs to consumers.
To meet the cleaner gasoline standards necessary to reduce tailpipe emissions and protect public health, the agency has built in flexibility and adequate time for refiners to comply. For those refineries that may need it, the program would provide nearly six years to meet the standards. To provide a smooth transition for refiners to produce cleaner gasoline, the program is structured in a way that allows the industry to plan any additional investments needed. In addition, the agency is giving special considerations to small refiners, while offering provisions for compliance assistance in the case of extreme hardship or unforeseen circumstances. READ MORE and MORE and MORE and MORE and MORE (Advanced Biofuels USA) and MORE (Ethanol Producer Magazine) and MORE (Biofuels Digest) and MORE (Ethanol Producer Magazine)

Excerpts from EPA's Regulatory Announcement: ...EPA is also finalizing an ethanol content of 10 percent (E10) for emissions test gasoline (as opposed to the proposed 15 percent ethanol (E15) test fuel). READ MORE

Excerpt from EPA's Final Rule: ... e. Emissions Test Fuel
As described above, after reassessing market trends and considering comments, EPA is finalizing E10 as the ethanol blend level in emissions test gasoline for Tier 3 light-duty and heavy-duty gasoline vehicles. We will continue to monitor the in-use gasoline supply and based on such review may initiate rulemaking action to revise the specifications for emissions test fuel to include a higher ethanol blend level. EPA is also making additional changes that are consistent with CARB’s LEV III emissions test fuel specifications, including new specifications for octane, distillation temperatures, aromatics, olefins, sulfur and benzene. (See Section IV.F below for a detailed discussion
of all the revised emission test fuel parameters.)
As discussed in Sections IV.A.7.d (tailpipe emission testing) and IV.C.5.b (evaporative emission testing), we are requiring certification of all Tier 3 light-duty and chassis-certified heavy-duty gasoline vehicles on federal E10 test fuel. The new test fuel specifications will apply to new vehicle certification, assembly line, and in-use testing. With a change in the ethanol content of the test fuel, EPA also needed to consider whether a change is warranted in the volatility of the test fuel, typically expressed as pounds per square inch (psi) Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP). As discussed in detail in Section IV.F below, after considering several technical and policy implications as well as stakeholder comments, EPA has concluded that the most appropriate approach is to maintain an RVP of 9 psi for the E10 certification fuel at this time.
In addition to finalizing a new E10 emissions test fuel, we are also finalizing detailed specifications for the E85 emissions test fuel used for flexible fuel vehicle (FFV) certification, as discussed in Section IV.F.3.15 This will resolve uncertainty and confusion in the certification of FFVs designed to operate on ethanol levels up to 83
percent. Furthermore, we allow vehicle manufacturers to request approval for an alternative certification fuel such as a high-octane 30 percent ethanol by volume blend (E30) for vehicles that may be optimized for such fuel.
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The vehicle emissions standards finalized today are fuel-neutral (i.e., they are applicable regardless of the type of fuel that the vehicle is designed to use). There currently are no sulfur standards for the fuel used in compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquid propane gas (LPG) vehicles. We requested comment on whether it is necessary for
EPA to establish sulfur standards for CNG and LPG to enable them meeting more stringent vehicle emissions standards. EPA is deferring finalizing in-use sulfur requirements for CNG/LPG in this final rule to provide additional time to work with stakeholders to collect data on current CNG/LPG sulfur content, to determine whether
additional control of in-use CNG/LPG sulfur content is needed, and to evaluate the feasibility and costs associated with potential additional sulfur controls (see Section V.J).
Given that the information provided suggests that CNG/LPG sulfur levels tend to be low already, the vehicle emissions standards finalized today will apply to CNG/LPG vehicles in addition to vehicles fueled on gasoline, diesel fuel, or any other fuel. The sulfur content of highway diesel fuel is already required to meet a 15 ppm sulfur cap, which is sufficient for diesel fuel vehicles to meet the Tier 3 emissions standards.
As the number of flex-fuel vehicles (FFVs) in the in-use fleet increases, it is becoming increasingly important that all fuels used in FFVs, not just gasoline, meet fuel quality standards. A lack of clarity regarding the standards that apply to fuels used in FFVs could also act to impede the further expansion of ethanol blended fuels with concentrations greater than 15 volume percent, which is important to satisfying the requirements of the RFS2 program. Hence, we sought comment on appropriate regulatory mechanisms to implement in-use quality standards for E51-83 and E16-50 in the Tier 3 proposal. Additional work is needed on some issues that could not be accommodated within the timeline for this Tier 3 final rule. Therefore, we are choosing not to finalize these provisions at this time. We intend to finalize in-use fuel quality standards for E51-83 and perhaps E16-50 as well in a follow-up final rule. READ MORE (pages 28-31)
and
2. Other Gasoline Emissions Test Fuel Specifications
...
As mentioned earlier, we will continue to allow manufacturers to test vehicles on premium-grade gasoline should the vehicles require it. In addition, since we cannot predict all future changes in gasoline vehicle technologies and in-use fuels, we will allow vehicle manufacturers to specify an alternative test fuel under certain situations. Under this provision, if manufacturers were to design vehicles that required operation on a higher octane, higher ethanol content gasoline (e.g., dedicated E30 vehicles or FFVs optimized to run on E30 or higher ethanol blends), under 40 CFR 1065.701(c), they can petition the Administrator for approval of a higher octane, higher ethanol content test fuel if they can demonstrate that such a fuel would be used by the operator and would be readily available nationwide, vehicles would not operate appropriately on other available fuels, and such a fuel would result in equivalent emissions performance. For vehicles certified on high-octane, high-ethanol gasoline, all EPA confirmatory and in-use testing would also be conducted on high-octane, high-ethanol gasoline. This could help
manufacturers who wish to raise compression ratios to improve vehicle efficiency as a step toward complying with the 2017 and later light-duty greenhouse gas and CAFE standards. This in turn could help provide a market incentive to increase ethanol use beyond E10 and enhance the environmental performance of ethanol as a transportation
fuel by using it to enable more fuel efficient engines.
We received comments in general support of allowing certification on higher octane fuels if the vehicles require it, although some commenters believe that the criteria EPA is specifying for such an allowance are too severe. We have considered these comments, and as discussed in the Summary and Analysis of Comments document, we continue to believe that our approach is appropriate, and we are finalizing these provisions as proposed.
(page 272) READ MORE