Filed under: Emerging Technologies, MPG, Legislation and Policy, USA



Almost one year after first proposing the stricter vehicle emissions standards known as Tier 3, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today finalized the new levels. These restraints on "harmful soot, smog and toxic emissions" should go a long way to cleaning up the air and reducing the negative health impacts of the cars and trucks we drive. While they reserved the right to change their minds once the full specifics have been studied, the response from the auto industry and other stakeholders have been overwhelmingly positive.
Perhaps that's because the EPA has spent the past 11 months or so getting "extensive input" from these interested parties, and the two key points in the new rules are that a.) the different parts of what makes cars so dirty - the way they burn the fuel as well as the fuels themselves - are being looked at holistically and b.) there will be a national regulatory framework. Among other groups, the EPA worked with the California Air Resources Board to figure out the new levels.

The holistic view means that, while the cars will have to emit fewer emissions from their tailpipes (volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides will need to drop by 80 percent, the particulate matter standard will be 70 percent tighter and toxic air pollutants like benzene will be curtailed "by up to 30 percent," for example), the automakers are getting a boost from cleaner fuels. Tier 3 requires the oil industry to reduce the sulfur level in gasoline by more than 60 percent, to just 10 parts per million (ppm) in 2017. It's currently 30 ppm.
As you can probably figure out, cleaner gasoline will mean that today's cars will burn cleaner as well. The changes should be good enough to "help avoid up to 2,000 premature deaths per year and 50,000 cases of respiratory ailments in children," the EPA says (those numbers have changed from when Tier 3 was first proposed). Not a bad return on an average investment of less than a penny per gallon at the pump and about $72 per vehicle in 2025. That last number is quite a drop from when the EPA proposed the rules and said the cost would be $130 per vehicle. The various parts of the Tier 3 standards start kicking in in 2017. You can get more details in the many press releases below. Pictured above, a worker for the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission tests a vehicle's emissions levels.Continue reading EPA says new Tier 3 emissions levels will clean the air, save lives

EPA says new Tier 3 emissions levels will clean the air, save lives originally appeared on AutoblogGreen on Mon, 03 Mar 2014 14:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.



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