Advanced BioFuels USA

Please join the Bipartisan Policy Center and the International Council on Clean Transportation for a panel discussion on how motor vehicle emission standards influence the international competitiveness of auto manufacturers and component suppliers. The effect of federal motor vehicle regulations on innovation and employment in the automotive sector is a subject of an important debate that will play out over the next several years. This timely conversation will help inform that discussion with insights from economics, engineering, and political perspectives.

Featuring:

Timothy Johnson
Director, Emerging Technologies and Regulations, Corning

Zoe Lipman
Director, Vehicles and Advanced Transportation Program, BlueGreen Alliance
@zocontrary

Richard Perkins
Associate Professor of Environmental Geography, London School of Economics and Political Science

David Vogel
Solomon P. Lee Chair in Business Ethics, UC-Berkeley Haas Business School

Moderated by:

Drew Kodjak
Executive Director, The International Council on Clean Transportation
@drewkodjak

Archived footage of the discussion will be posted following the event.  READ MORE and MORE (Associated Press)

Excerpt from Associated Press: Experts and the researchers don’t accuse car and truck makers of cheating, but say testing is not simulating real-world conditions.

“The paper shows how much human failure costs,” said Jens Borken-Kleefeld, a transportation scientist at the International Institute for Applied System Analysis in Austria who wasn’t part of the study.

The researchers included a team from the International Council on Clean Transportation, a nonprofit research and advocacy group, that arranged the testing that first showed VW diesel cars were rigged to cheat on emissions tests. They used previously published tests of pollutants coming from thousands of vehicles, all models, to calculate the extra pollution in 2015. Worldwide, three-quarters of that extra pollution is from trucks and buses.

Other research connects soot and smog to heart and lung diseases, with pollution killing more than 4 million people every year around the world, said lead author Susan Anenberg, a researcher at Environmental Health Analytics and a former U.S. government scientist.

The researchers calculated that the extra nitrogen oxides were responsible for about 31,400 deaths in 2015 because of tiny soot particles in the air and 6,600 deaths from extra smog. The European Union, which has mostly diesel cars, had an extra 11,500 deaths; China, 10,600; India, 9,300; and the United States, 1,100.

In Europe, new truck regulations are working and much of the excess pollution is coming from cars, said study co-author Ray Minjares of the clean transportation group.

Study authors and outside experts said the solution to the problem is stronger enforcement, regulations and testing. READ MORE