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EPA sets strict new emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks and buses in bid to fight climate change

Washington — The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday set strict emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks, buses and other large vehicles, an action that officials said will help clean up some of the nation’s largest sources of planet-warming greenhouse gases.

The new rules, which take effect for model years 2027 through 2032, will avoid up to 1 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the next three decades and provide $13 billion in net benefits in the form of fewer hospital visits, lost work days and deaths, the EPA said. The new standards will especially benefit an estimated 72 million people in the United States who live near freight routes used by trucks and other heavy vehicles and bear a disproportionate burden of dangerous air pollution, the agency said.

“Heavy-duty vehicles are essential for moving goods and services throughout our country, keeping our economy moving. They’re also significant contributors to pollution from the transportation sector — emissions that are fueling climate change and creating poor air quality in too many American communities,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said.

“Reducing emissions from our heavy-duty vehicles means cleaner air and less pollution. It means safer and more vibrant communities. It means lower fuel and maintenance costs for truck owners and operators. And it means healthier Americans,” Regan said.

The new rules for heavy trucks and buses come a week after the EPA announced new automobile emissions standards for passenger vehicles. Those rules relax initial tailpipe limits proposed last year but get close to the same strict standards set out by the EPA for model year 2032.

The auto industry could meet the limits if 56% of new passenger vehicle sales are electric by 2032, along with at least 13% plug-in hybrids or other partially electric cars, the EPA said.

The new emissions rules

The rule for trucks is more complex, with a range of electric-vehicle or other non-traditional sales projected, depending on the type of vehicle and use, the agency said. For instance, 30% of “heavy-heavy-duty vocational” trucks would need to be zero-emission by 2032, the EPA said, while 40% of short-haul “day cabs” would need be zero emission vehicles.

Motor vehicle traffic moves along I-76 in Philadelphia on March 31, 2021.

Matt Rourke / AP

The new rules for cars and trucks come as sales of EVs, which are needed to meet both standards, have begun to slow. The auto industry cited lower sales growth in objecting to the EPA’s preferred standards unveiled last April for passenger vehicles, a key part of President Biden’s ambitious plan to cut planet-warming emissions.

“Our Clean Trucks plan works in tandem with President Biden’s unprecedented investments in America and delivers on this administration’s commitment to tackling climate change while advancing environmental justice,” Regan said.

The new rule will provide greater certainty for the industry, while supporting U.S. manufacturing jobs in advanced vehicle technologies, Regan said. Over the next decade, the standards “will set the U.S. heavy-duty sector on a trajectory for sustained growth,” he said.

Industry groups strongly disagreed. They lambasted the new standards as unreachable with current electric-vehicle technology and complained about a lack of EV charging stations and power grid capacity limits.

The American Trucking Associations and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, which represent large swaths of the industry, predicted supply chain failures and said that smaller independent firms would likely hang onto older diesel trucks that spew more pollution, running counter to the EPA’s goals.

The new limits lower zero-emission sales rates proposed for the 2027 through 2029 model years but require higher sales later, resulting in a practical mandate for electric and hydrogen-powered trucks, the trucking associations said in a statement. The EPA rule limits choices for trucks and buses to unproven technology, the group said.

“The post-2030 targets remain entirely unachievable,” said Chris Spear, the trucking group’s CEO. “Any regulation that fails to account for the operational realities of trucking will set the industry and America’s supply chain up for failure.”

Todd Spencer, president of the independent drivers association, which represents small trucking companies, said the Democratic administration “seems dead-set on regulating every local mom-and-pop business out of existence with its flurry of unworkable environmental mandates.”

The American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, said in a joint statement with the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers that the new rule “is yet another example of the Biden administration’s whole-of-government effort to eliminate choices for American consumers, businesses and industries.”

The rule relies principally on zero-emission vehicles and “disincentivizes the development of other fuel-based technologies — including American-made renewable diesel — that are working in today’s heavy-duty fleet to reduce emissions,” the groups said.

They called for the rule to be overturned by Congress but said they are prepared to challenge it in court.

Regan said the EPA crafted the limits to give truck owners a choice of powertrains including advanced combustion vehicles, hybrids and electric and hydrogen fuel cells.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan speaks on Capitol Hill on Sept. 27, 2023.

Mark Schiefelbein / AP

“There’s a list of options that truck drivers, owners and operators can choose from … while we [do] not sacrifice the very stringent environmental goals that we have set,” he told reporters Thursday.

The EPA calculated that new trucks would save operators a total of $3.5 billion in fuel and other costs from 2027 to 2032, paying for themselves in two to four years. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act also provides tax credits that subsidize the purchase price of new electric vehicles, Regan said.

The new emissions limits will bring immediate health benefits, especially in communities burdened by heavy truck traffic, said Harold Wimmer, CEO of the American Lung Association.

“Transportation is the largest source of pollution driving climate change,” he said in a statement. “These strong standards that will help drive toward a zero-emission future for trucks, buses and other heavy-duty vehicles are a critical part of the solution.”

Margo Oge, a former director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, said medium and heavy diesel trucks make up less than 6% of vehicles on the road “but spew more than half the smog and soot Americans breathe” and contribute to global warming. The EPA standards “are a big step in the right direction to fight climate change and help us breathe cleaner air,” she said.

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Eskom Disputes Report Finding It Leads World Nitrogen Pollution

(Bloomberg) — Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., South Africa’s state power company, disputed the findings of a Greenpeace report that it operates many of the world’s worst emission sites for toxic nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide.

South Africa Has Many of World’s Worst Air Pollution Sites, Study Says

(Bloomberg) — South Africa is home to many of the world’s worst emission sites for toxic nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide and most of those are operated by the nation’s state power utility, according to Greenpeace.

A Mississippi community takes on a U.K. energy giant over pollution concerns

During the last weeks of July, a handful of residents from Gloster, a majority-Black, low-income community in southwest Mississippi, prepared for a meeting with Drax Group, a U.K.-based energy company that operates a wood pellet production plant in the small town.

They planned to present the company with a list of demands meant to address their concerns about the plant’s industrial pollution. Priority items on the list include installing air quality monitors within a quarter-mile of the facility and requiring the plant to cease operations during nighttime hours, per Gloster’s noise ordinances.

But the meeting, like the one before it scheduled for June 2022, was canceled by the company.

“We weren’t really expecting them to answer any of our questions anyways,” said Krystal Martin, a Gloster native and a community leader. “We just want to see action from Drax.”

In an email statement to NBC News, Alex Schott, head of Drax North America communications, said the meeting was canceled due to “an unexpected scheduling clash.”

The canceled meeting is the latest in what has become a yearslong battle between local activists and Drax. Since the facility’s opening in 2016, residents have complained of deteriorating air quality and health, and the state’s environmental regulator has twice issued notices to Drax regarding violations of air pollution regulations.

The company’s Gloster facility is one of many such plants in the American South, which is the world’s wood pellet manufacturing hub. Wood pellets have been embraced by European countries in recent years in the movement toward “biomass” or “biofuels” as an alternative to fossil fuels, accelerated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Biomass fuels like wood pellets are broadly seen as renewable and carbon-neutral sources of energy, particularly in the European Union, where wood pellets are used mostly for electricity generation and even count toward the E.U.’s renewable energy targets for 2030. In 2022, Drax also received about $2.2 million a day in U.K. government subsidies to produce clean energy, according to Sky News.

In recent years, the biomass industry has come under increasing scrutiny. Many environmental groups argue that wood pellets are even worse than fossil fuels in terms of releasing carbon emissions.

Schott said sustainable biomass releases less carbon than alternative fuels, but a report from the Rachel Carson Council, an environmental nonprofit, found that burning wood pellets releases 65% more CO2 than coal, which is widely regarded as the dirtiest energy source.

Still, the wood pellet industry enjoys a reputation for sustainability, said Robert Musil, president and CEO of the Rachel Carson Council. Musil said that status is inflated by Drax’s efforts to market itself as a climate solution.

“They claim to be the good guys, but the industry is one of the most polluting and most damaging to the environment and to communities,” Musil said.

Drax first announced its plans to build its Gloster facility in 2013 and touted the project as a way to bring jobs to an area with few economic prospects. Drax said in an email that it created 70 permanent jobs at the Gloster facility and that 82% of wages go to employees living in rural Mississippi communities. Martin said only a few locals received work at the plant.

The situation has also caught the attention of environmental justice advocates who say Gloster is another example of air pollution disproportionately affecting communities of color. In September, Katherine Egland, a member of the board of directors of the NAACP, told Greenpeace that the plant and its U.K. government subsidies were perpetuating “environmental racism” because Gloster is a majority-Black community. Drax told Greenpeace that community safety was a top priority.

Gloster, which had a median income of under $15,000 in 2021 and has less than 900 residents, has no local school and only one small medical clinic with no presiding physicians. Most citizens regularly travel outside city limits to receive health care.

At the Drax plant, wood pellets are manufactured by turning wood into wood chips, drying the chips, then grinding them into a fine powder, which is shaped into pellets. In this process, Drax releases a range of pollutants.

Drax’s recent permit applications, which were submitted to the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality and have been reviewed by NBC News, state that the plant emits several hazardous air pollutants, a group of chemicals regulated by the federal government for their potential to cause cancer and other serious health impacts, as well as volatile organic compounds, a group of pollutants that include substances that can cause liver, kidney and central nervous system damage.

Such emissions are legal in certain quantities as long as companies operating industrial plants receive a permit from the state. Drax currently has a permit to operate as a minor source of hazardous air pollutants and volatile organic compounds, which allows the company’s plant to emit less than 25 tons of hazardous air pollutants and 249 tons of volatile organic compounds per year.

It’s those emissions that have been the target of local activists, environmental groups and state regulators. In 2020, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality fined Drax $2.5 million for violating its permit’s annual limits on the release of volatile organic compounds. Drax said the company has taken the appropriate steps to come into compliance with volatile organic compound limits.

Outside Mississippi, Drax agreed to $3.2 million in state penalties in Louisiana just last year for air pollution violations, though it did not admit any wrongdoing.

In March, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality issued a notice of violation to Drax, saying its plant exceeded air pollution limits for emissions coming from the plant. The notice alleges that since April 2022, Drax has been operating without a permit as a “major source” polluter by emitting more than 25 tons of hazardous air pollutants annually.

Schott, head of Drax North America communications, said the company is working with environmental consultants to come into compliance.

“Drax is committed to environmental compliance and remains focused on transparency and open communication with the Environmental Protection Agency, MDEQ and the community,” Schott said in an email.

The March notice of violation to Drax serves only as an allegation, Chris Wells, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, said in a phone interview.

“It was and still is an open case,” he said. “The allegations against Drax have not yet been adjudicated.”

The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality’s next step after issuing the notice and receiving a response is to reach an amicable agreement with the company on the violations, then ultimately decide on the appropriate penalty.

If no agreement is reached, the department escalates the matter to the Mississippi Commission on Environmental Quality. Generally, repeat violations mean stronger penalties that may even affect a facility’s permit renewal, Wells said.

Patrick Anderson, an attorney working with the Environmental Integrity Project who has been monitoring Drax’s emissions since 2017, is skeptical of Drax’s commitment to environmental standards.

“What I have seen over and over with Drax and with a lot of other biomass companies is just a complete disregard for environmental compliance,” he said. “To the extent that they claim to be green or care about environmental issues — they do not. And they absolutely do not back that up with their actions.”

Local residents who spoke with NBC News say the impact of Drax’s alleged air pollution has been noticeable since the company first opened the Gloster facility.

“You get outside, and you can tell there’s a difference in the air,” said Jimmy Brown, a lifelong resident of Gloster who wears a face mask whenever he goes outside. “You can smell it and you’ll notice your eyes will burn, your nose will burn — and imagine just breathing that in for almost eight years without anyone telling you what’s going on.”

“You get outside, and you can tell there’s a difference in the air.”

Jimmy Brown, lifelong Gloster resident

Wells said that the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality would alert the public to anything that might pose imminent danger to their health. “A violation of a permit does not trigger the same necessity, as it does not necessarily translate to a negative health impact,” he said.

The discontent from local residents, activists and environmental groups extends beyond Drax to state and federal regulators. Much of the local frustration stems from a community meeting on May 9, where more than 200 Gloster residents gathered to voice concerns about Drax to several officials from the EPA and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality.

Martin said that the local community was unaware of the March notice at the time of the meeting and that not one official mentioned it. The notice came to light following the meeting after Anderson submitted a request for records through the Freedom of Information Act.

That lack of transparency has led to anger and bitterness in the community, she said.

Adam Colette, a program director with Dogwood Alliance, an environmental nonprofit that has been working with the Gloster community since 2019, said that the state agencies’ responses have been “inadequate.”

At the federal level, the EPA is monitoring the situation. In a statement to NBC News, the EPA Region 4 office, which covers Mississippi, said primary enforcement falls to the state, though the agency routinely evaluates state enforcement programs and can engage with individual cases. The EPA declined to comment on its plans regarding the ongoing case.

Gloster citizens like Martin are hopeful that their advocacy will bring change to the small town — and they’re already planning for their next meeting with Drax.

“Some communities don’t have to worry about the air they breathe,” she said. “But we do. And clean air should always be free. We all should have the right to breathe free, clean air.”

Nidhi Sharma

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Inside efforts to avert environmental ‘catastrophe’ in the Red Sea

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.

CNN
—

Moored five miles off the coast of Yemen for more than 30 years, a decaying supertanker carrying a million barrels of oil is finally being offloaded by a United Nations-led mission, hoping to avert what threatened to be one of the world’s worst ecological disasters in decades.

Experts are now delicately handling the 47-year-old vessel – called the FSO Safer – working to remove the crude without the tanker falling apart, the oil exploding, or a massive spill taking place.

Sitting atop The Endeavor, the salvage UN ship supervising the offloading, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen David Gressly said that the operation is estimated to cost $141 million, and is using the expertise of SMIT, the dredging and offshore contractor that helped dislodge the Ever Given ship that blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week in 2021.

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How to remove one million barrels of oil from a tanker

Twenty-three UN member states are funding the mission, with another $16 million coming from the private sector contributors. Donors include Yemen’s largest private company, HSA Group, which pledged $1.2 million in August 2022. The UN also engaged in a unique crowdfunding effort, contributing to the pool which took a year to raise, according to Gressly.

The team is pumping between 4,000 and 5,000 barrels of oil every hour, and has so far transferred more than 120,000 barrels to the replacement vessel carrying the offloaded oil, Gressly said. The full transfer is expected to take 19 days.

The tanker was carrying a million barrels of oil. That would be enough to power up to 83,333 cars or 50,000 US homes for an entire year. The crude on board is worth around $80 million, and who gets that remains a controversial matter.

Here’s what we know so far:

The ship has been abandoned in the Red Sea since 2015 and the UN has regularly warned that the “ticking time bomb” could break apart given its age and condition, or the oil it holds could explode due to the highly flammable compounds in it.

The FSO Safer held four times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez off Alaska in 1989 which resulted in a slick that covered 1,300 miles of coastline. A potential spill from this vessel would be enough to make it the fifth largest oil spill from a tanker in history, a UN website said. The cost of cleanup of such an incident is estimated at $20 billion.

The Red Sea is a vital strategic waterway for global trade. At its southern end lies the Bab el-Mandeb strait, where nearly 9% of total seaborne-traded petroleum passes. And at its north is the Suez Canal that separates Africa from Asia. The majority of petroleum and natural gas exports from the Persian Gulf that transit the Suez Canal pass through the Bab el-Mandeb, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

The sea is also a popular diving hotspot that boasts an impressive underwater eco-system. In places its banks are dotted with tourist resorts, and its eastern shore is the site of ambitious Saudi development projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

The first step of the mission was to stabilize and secure the vessel to avoid it collapsing, Gressly said. That has already been achieved in the past few weeks.

“There are a number of things that had to be done to secure the oil from exploding,” Gressly told CNN, including pumping out gases in each of the 13 compartments holding the oil. Systems for pumping were rebuilt, and some lighting was repaired.

Booms, which are temporary floating barriers used to contain marine spills, were dispersed around the vessel to capture any potential leaks.

The second step is to transfer the oil onto the replacement vessel, which is now underway.

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Oil being removed from tanker near Yemen in Red Sea

After The Safer is emptied, it must then be cleaned to ensure no oil residue is left, Gressly said. The team will then attach a giant buoy to the replacement vessel until a decision about what to do with the oil has been made.

“The transfer of the oil to (the replacement vessel) will prevent the worst-case scenario of a catastrophic spill in the Red Sea, but it is not the end of the operation,” Gressly said.

While the hardest part of the operation would then be over, a spill could still occur. And even after the transfer, the tanker will “continue to pose an environmental threat resulting from the sticky oil residue inside the tank, especially since the tanker remains vulnerable to collapse,” the UN said, stressing that to finish the job, an extra $22 million is urgently needed.

A spill would shut the Yemeni ports that its impoverished people rely on for food aid and fuel, impacting 17 million people during an ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by the country’s civil war and a Saudi-led military assault on the country. Oil could bleed all the way to the African coast, damaging fish stocks for 25 years and affect up to 200,000 jobs, according to the UN.

A potential spill would cause “catastrophic” public health ramifications in Yemen and surrounding countries, according to a study by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine. Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea would bear the brunt.

Air pollution from a spill of this magnitude would increase the risk of hospitalization for cardiovascular or respiratory disease for those very directly exposed by 530%, according to the study, which said it could cause an array of other health problems, from psychiatric to neurological issues.

“Given the scarcity of water and food in this region, it could be one of the most disastrous oil spills ever known in terms of impacts on human life,” David Rehkopf, a professor at Stanford University and senior author of the study, told CNN.

Up to 10 million people would struggle to obtain clean water, and 8 million would have their access to food supplies threatened. The Red Sea fisheries in Yemen could be “almost completely wiped out,” Rehkopf added.

The tanker has been an issue for many people in Yemen over the past few years, Gressly said. Sentiment on social media surrounding the removal of oil is very positive, as many in Yemen feel like the tanker is a “threat that’s been over their heads,” he said.

The tanker issue remains a point of dispute between the Houthi rebels that control the north of Yemen and the internationally recognized government, the two main warring sides in the country’s civil conflict.

While the war, which saw hundreds of thousands of people killed or injured, and Yemen left in ruins, has eased of late, it is far from resolved.

Ahmed Nagi, a senior analyst for Yemen at the International Crisis Group think tank in Brussels, sees the Safer tanker issue as “an embodiment of the conflict in Yemen as a whole.”

“The government sees the Houthi militias as an illegitimate group controlling the tanker, and the Houthis do not recognize (the government),” Nagi told CNN.

The vessel was abandoned after the outbreak of the Yemeni civil war in 2015. The majority of the oil is owned by Yemeni state firm SEPOC, experts say, and there are some reports that it may be sold.

“From a technical point of view, the owner of the tanker and the oil inside it is SEPOC,” Nagi said, adding that other energy companies working in Yemen may also share ownership of the oil.

exp un yemen oil spill tanker achim steiner vause intv FST 071912ASEG2 cnni world_00003204.png

U.N. begins high-risk operation to prevent catastrophic oil spill from Yemen tanker

The main issue, Nagi added, is that the Safer’s headquarters are in the government-controlled Marib city, while the tanker is in an area controlled by the Houthis. The Safer is moored off the coast of the western Hodeidah province.

Discussions to determine the ownership of the oil are underway, Gressly said. The rights to the oil are unclear and there are legal issues that need to be addressed.

The UN coordinator hopes that the days needed to offload the oil will buy some time for “political and legal discussions that need to take place before the oil can be sold.”

While the UN may manage to resolve half of the issue, Nagi said, there still needs to be an understanding of the oil’s status.

“It still poses a danger if we keep it near a conflict zone,” he said.

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