California's Freight Advisory Committee met Tuesday in Sacramento to begin the process of implementing Gov. Jerry Brown's executive order to develop a statewide sustainable freight policy that will transition ports, motor carriers, railroads and other transportation modes toward zero emissions.
An electric truck at the Port of Los Angeles.
Some transportation industries find the goal of zero or even near-zero emissions to be scary, costly and impossible to achieve. Others find meeting this goal to be necessary if major port cities and inland transportation hubs are to stem the increase in cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, and deaths caused by harmful emissions from port operations, trucks, trains and ocean-going vessels.
"California must find ways to cut the pollution generated by our network of rail, ports, highways and airports. The governor's executive order will lead to clear efficiency targets and cleaner vehicles and fuels," said John Laird, secretary of the state's Natural Resources Agency.
Ports nationwide are leading the charge for cleaner air because ports are pollution nodes where ocean-going vessels, harbor craft, marine terminals, trucks and trains converge each day. As the Environmental Defense Fund stated in its Clean Air Guide for Ports and Terminals, some ports are located in regions that fail to meet federal health-based standards, and many ports operate in or close to communities that face significant clean-air challenges.
The tension between ports and their neighboring communities burst into public consciousness in Los Angeles when community activists and the NRDC in 2001 combined their efforts to block construction of the China Shipping Container Line terminal until the port developed a program to slash harmful diesel emissions from all of the modes of transport that converge at the port.
If Los Angeles , and in the ensuing years Long Beach, had not developed their Clean Air Action Plan, the China Shipping terminal would have never been built, nor would any other marine terminal in the largest U.S. port complex. Just as the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 is credited as forcing the environmental movement on to the national stage, the China Shipping project is now recognized as launching the environmental movement that has brought clean-trucks programs, slow-steaming for vessels, cold ironing of vessels at berth, and dozens of other measures deployed by ports to reduce their impact on surrounding communities.
Given the overall air pollution problems in Southern California, Los Angeles and Long Beach have been the first to implement widespread clean-air measures in the U.S., and their measures are the strictest in the country. Some of the goals, like zero emissions, may never be duplicated. Their joint Clean Air Action Plan sets the gold standard for pollution reduction, and other ports fashion their scaled-down versions to meet their particular needs.
Rick Cameron, managing director of environmental affairs and planning at the Port of Long Beach, who participates in the EDF's Environmental Recognition Program for Ports, said each port community has its unique challenges and pollution level, so each port must tailor a program that is feasible and effective for its region given its level of pollution and financial resources. "We always have to ask, who will pay for it," he said.
Although it continues to be extremely costly, the joint CAAP in Los Angeles-Long Beach has been quite successful. According to the Port of Los Angeles Draft Zero-Emission White Paper, the action plan has reduced health-risk emissions by 57 percent for nitrogen oxides, 90 percent for sulfur oxides and 80 percent for particulate matter, from the baseline year of 2005.
The clean-trucks component of the CAAP on its own has slashed harmful diesel emissions from trucks by 90 percent, and it did so not with futuristic technologies, but by requiring the rapid phase-out, by 2012, of pre-2007 model year trucks. The 2007 trucks meet the federal Environmental Protection Agency's standards for emissions reductions. Since then, 2010 engines are even cleaner, and producers of trucks, engines and fuels continue to improve their products, which are available, and affordable now, for harbor drayage companies nationwide.
That is why environmental and community groups across the country are pressing ports to expedite the retirement of old, polluting trucks, and to offer financial incentives to drayage operators to purchase 2007 and newer trucks. Those groups are also attacking ports that they feel are underachieving in this area.
Earlier this week, the group Coalition for Healthy Ports criticized the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for appropriating only $200,000 for a truck-replacement incentive program. Amy Goldsmith, chairman, said that would allow for the purchase of only eight new trucks, while thousands of polluting trucks descend each day on the largest East Coast port.
The port authority contends the grants will be given out in much smaller amounts to dozens of drayage operators to go toward either the purchase of compliant trucks and that it participates in other programs that distribute millions of dollars to encourage the retirement of old trucks.
It should also be noted that the cost of a compliant (2007 or newer) truck is now much more affordable because thousands of those trucks are making their way into the used market. The normal scenario is for new clean-diesel trucks that cost more than $100,000 to begin life in a long-haul operation and after being driven hundreds of thousands of miles is then sold to harbor drivers at a fraction of the original cost.
Clean-truck programs, normally scaled down from the Los Angeles-Long Beach model, are commonplace today. James Jack, executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation, cited the following examples:
Port of Oakland banned pre-2007 trucks effective Jan. 1, 2014, putting Oakland in accordance with the standards promulgated by the California Air Resources Board in its drayage truck rule. New York-New Jersey's truck ban for pre-2007 trucks is to be fully implemented by Jan. 1, 2017; Seattle-Tacoma's ban for pre-2007 vehicles will take effect by Jan. 1, 2018 and Port of Charleston's ban on pre-1994 trucks was effective as of Jan. 1, 2014.
Jack also noted that in addition to banning old trucks, ports have developed incentive programs for the voluntary retirement of older trucks. Norfolk, Houston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Wilmington and Boston have such programs.
Elena Craft, senior health scientist at the EDF, said the organization's stakeholders' group will meet in Chicago in late October to consider proposed measures to be included in EDF's port recognition program. General concepts include that there be no barriers to entry into the program, that the effort does not result in ranking ports or comparing ports to each other in their clean-air efforts and that suggestions be developed for continuous improvement. These and other concepts were discussed at a federal Environmental Protection Agency summit in April 2014.
Craft said the concept of establishing clean trucks programs is catching on with many ports, "although we're not seeing enough of them," and overarching clean-air programs for all sources of port pollution are now on the radar screen of many ports, although "it may not be getting as much attention as it deserves." These programs require buy-in from reluctant truckers, shipping lines, marine terminals, railroads and other port stakeholders.
In its Clean Air Guide for Ports and Terminals, EDF discusses the latest technologies for reducing harmful emissions from all of those sources, and encourages ports to partner with private-sector companies to leverage their resources and to seek available government grants.
The Los Angeles-Long Beach clean trucks program, which replaced an estimated 10,000 old, polluting trucks in five years, attracted some grant money from government sources, but the ports themselves contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the program and the drayage operators spent an estimated $1 billion on the purchase of new trucks.
The overall Los Angeles-Long Beach Clean Air Action Plan is also generating billions of dollars in private sector, government and private industry investments in measures to reduce pollution from ocean-going vessels (cold ironing at berth, use of cleaner fuels, etc.), marine terminal equipment (electrification of ship-to-shore cranes, use of alternative fuels, engine retrofits, etc.); repowering of tugs, harbor craft, and locomotives (gen-sets on switching engines and idling devices). EDF cites those and other measures in its clean-air guide.
California, which has the nation's worst overall clean-air problems, is leading the charge for zero-emission freight movement, which would involve either battery-powered or hydrogen cell electric yard tractors at marine terminals and heavy-duty drayage trucks. The ports are also looking at interim near-zero measures such as plug-in hybrid trucks that operate in the zero-emission electric mode and switch to clean-diesel to complete the duty cycle. The ports are sponsoring pilot projects that use these technologies in the port environment, with the goal being private sector refinement of the technologies to make them operationally and financially feasible in the rigorous port environment.
Developing zero and near-zero emission marine terminals, trucks and locomotives is a long-term goal of the ports, and the state of California. This effort would also entail investments in recharging and refueling infrastructure, an effort that will take years to complete and the success of these efforts is not guaranteed.
However, such goals often do produce results, such as operating container ships from shoreside power, which is happening regularly now in Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland. Also, Port Metro Vancouver this week announced that its $12 million