As the fallout from Volkswagen’s cheating on its “clean diesel” emissions continues to mount, the Obama administration on Thursday unveiled a new regulation for ground-level ozone, the smog-causing emissions from smokestacks and tailpipes.
The new standard drops from 75 parts per billion to 70 ppb – the high end of what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific panel recommended: 60 to 70.
It isn’t enough, but it’s better than nothing. Maybe.
Smog has been linked to asthma, heart and lung disease and premature death. But the question is whether this new rule will actually bring down smog levels, since rising global temperatures actually serve as a catalyst to the chemical reactions of pollution in the air to cause and increase smog. Scientists call the warming factor a “climate penalty.” That’s why we hear warnings of “bad air days” due to ozone pollution most often during the summer and on cloud-free days.
Smog is formed when pollutants such as nitrogen oxides from cars and power plants interact with heat and sunlight. The resulting pollution can trigger chest pain, coughing, throat irritation and congestion. It can worsen bronchitis, emphysema and asthma. High levels can also damage crops.
But we should add the VW factor to the climate penalty, and the VW factor wasn’t a consideration until we learned about the automaker’s deliberate cheating.
Volkswagen has admitted that some 11 million clean diesel cars sold worldwide contain software to fool regulators. The vast majority of those cars are in Europe, but nearly half a million are in the U.S.
Air knows no borders or property lines, of course. In Chattanooga, we know this all too well. Our city, for instance, is lovely in its frame of mountains and ridges. But that same beautiful geography becomes a bowl that can trap pollution in the valley where the city sits or cause it to hover along mountain brow lines.
Brad Plumer, a senior editor at Vox, recently estimated that Volkswagen’s 482,000 problematic U.S. cars currently emit between 5,800 to 14,200 additional tons of nitrogen oxide pollution each year (over and above the emissions expected had VW adhered to the legal limit), assuming the cars are driven the U.S. average of 11,244 miles a year.
Extrapolating that to 11 million not-so-clean diesel VWs around the world, Plumer calculated that VW’s fraud brings us somewhere between 86,800 and 212,500 additional tons of NOx emissions per year.
At the high end globally, that’s roughly the equivalent of 20 typical coal plants operating each year without emission controls.
Plumer also used EPA estimates to calculate how many more premature deaths the VW deceit might cause: five to 27 more a year in the U.S. and 74 to 404 more globally.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to review our national ozone standards every five years and update them as needed to protect human health. EPA, by law, must not consider costs either to government or commerce when crafting these rules.
In 1997, the Clinton administration set the standard at 84 parts per billion. In 2006, as researchers realized ground-level ozone might actually be killing people, the EPA recommended 60 to 70 ppb. But in 2008, the Bush administration proposed a less stringent standard of 75 ppb. The American Lung Association and others sued to stop the Bush rules. President Obama shortly after he first took office promised aother review and in 2011, EPA again proposed 60 to 70 ppb. Industry cried it “could cost billions,” and the new rules were postponed until after the 2012 election. This time environmental groups sued and courts agreed, setting a deadline of Oct. 1, 2015. So here we are.
Today, the EPA says only 241 counties in America are over the 70 ppb limit – most of them in the West. In Tennessee, only Sumner and Jefferson counties are not already in compliance. In Georgia, a handful of counties around Atlanta are not at or under the new limit.
States will still have flexibility in how to cut pollution in non-attainment areas. Some past research has found that companies just end up moving to counties with less smog in order to comply. Health wise, that’s good. It reduces the concentration of pollution in one place. The EPA has estimated that the new standard will produce between $2.9 billion and $5.9 billion (in today’s dollars) within the coming decade. As for cost to companies? EPA says $1.4 billion a year overall.
As for VW’s evasion of our pollution laws?
Well, thanks to them and companies acting like them, tightening the standard continues to be necessary to eventually achieve the overarching goal they thwarted.