EPA: Oil industry assumptions about Tier 3 are wrong

Margo Oge, EPA’s Director of Office of Transportation and Air Quality, has confirmed what I wrote in my Tier 3 post last week, which described the agency’s possible approach in its upcoming proposal to create a new rule to reduce emissions from the nation’s cars, light trucks, and sport-utility vehicles (regulated together as “light-duty vehicles”).

According to a story published today at Inside EPA, Oge was speaking at the Washington Auto Show on January 26, and said that the oil industry’s study of the possible costs of a new Tier 3 program of cleaner fuels and vehicles is based on costs of a program “EPA is not planning to propose.”

I’m not going to repeat the details of the industry’s arguments. They are pulling out the usual “this will cost too much money, cost jobs, etc.” arguments that they always use, despite a long history of cleaner fuels and cleaner vehicles regulations that have consistently been extremely cost-effective investments to improve human health.

With respect to Tier 3, the industry really has its facts wrong. 

Most of the industry’s presumed cost increases are due to tightened limits on something called Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP), a measure of fuel volatility.

But Oge made it clear: there are no plans to tighten RVP in the Tier 3 proposal.

The industry study also assumed a drop in sulfur levels from today’s 30 ppm to 5 ppm.  

But again, Oge confirmed that the industry is talking about a program that “EPA is not planning to propose.”  She confirmed that the Tier 3 proposal would not include a reduction to 5 ppm.  Indeed, sources have been saying that sulfur would likely be reduced to 10 ppm for months.

(This may not sound like a big difference, but refinery costs go up as you get closer and closer to zero sulphur, so the industry’s error is significant).

As I wrote last week, the bottom line is this:

If EPA implements a Tier 3 program that harmonizes its standards with the standards that will soon exist in California and other states that follow California’s standards, nitrogen oxides would be reduced by 29 percent, hydrocarbons by 26 percent, and carbon monoxide by 38 percent, according to an important study released last fall by a highly-respected association of state and local air regulators.  

Tier 3 standards would help states meet existing clean air requirements without requiring costlier controls on other air pollution sources--and improve human health for millions of people around the nation.

Nobody—neither the EPA, nor the White House, nor consumers and drivers—should fall for the oil industry’s scare tactics, especially when they get the facts so wrong.