Rich Kassel's Blog
Cleaner diesel fuel - at no extra cost
April 24, 2008
Posted by Rich Kassel in Curbing Pollution , Green Enterprise , Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil , The Media and the Environment , U.S. Law and Policy
Recently, a good friend asked me about last year’s transition to ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD). fuel. More specifically, he wondered about the price differential between ULSD and the prior low-sulfur diesel fuel (yes, in the jargon of the policy world that I travel in, it’s commonly referred to as “LSD”), and how that affected the overall diesel market.
It struck me that the successful transition to this new, cleaner diesel fuel is one of the most uncovered environmental stories out there.
But it’s a real success story.
Here’s the story: in late 2000, then-President Bill Clinton signed an EPA rule that required oil refiners to cut the sulfur levels in their highway diesel fuel (i.e., all diesel fuel used by trucks, buses and cars) from 500 parts-per-million to 15 parts-per-million. This 97 percent cut would eliminate sulfate-based soot pollution overnight, and would open the door to advanced catalysts and soot filters that would reduce particulate emissions and nitrogen oxides from new diesel engines by more than 90 percent. More recently, EPA rules have adapted this approach to farm, construction, industrial and other nonroad equipment, and to locomotive and marine diesel engines.
(A quick primer on why this matters: Soot particles trigger asthma emergencies, bronchitis, cancer, heart attacks and tens of thousands of premature deaths every year. Nitrogen oxides are a key component of acid rain, summertime smog, and even contribute to more particles in the air. Both the black carbon core of a diesel soot particle and the nitrogen oxides are contributing to global warming’s impacts too).
Of course, environmentalists were thrilled, and the various oil and trucking industry groups were alarmed.
As we’ve often heard from industry, these changes would drive up prices, hurt consumers, and wreak havoc throughout the industry in unforeseen ways.
But the reality turned out to be much different: the anticipated price hikes due to the transition to ULSD never happened (yes, diesel prices are sky-high, but that’s principally because of high refinery margins and the escalating price of a barrel of petroleum, not because of the cleaner diesel fuel).
So, what’s the reality?
Industry had four years to gradually phase in ULSD, yet almost all diesel fuel (well over 90 percent) switched right away. The price differential between LSD and ULSD (where you can find the dirtier fuel) is meaningless in almost every case.
Today, according to the folks at Travel Centers of America, who track retail diesel prices in all of the states where they sell fuel, the differential between these two fuels is 3/10 of one cent in almost every station they have. At more than $4/gallon, I’d say this is a pretty meaningless differential.
The bottom line: the transition to cleaner, ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel has been a mostly-uncovered success story. Today’s diesel fuel is cleaner than it’s ever been, and at no noticeable incremental cost to the old, dirtier diesel fuel.
And that’s a story worth telling.
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- Rich Kassel
- Senior Attorney and Director, Clean Fuels and Vehicles Project
- New York City
- I came to NRDC in 1991 on a three-year grant, and never left. Over the...
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