How do cars pollute? In two main ways, through inefficient mileage (guzzling a gallon of gas every eight or 10 or 14 miles) and through tailpipe emissions.

There’s the pollution associated with manufacturing, also, but to keep it simple let’s stick with emissions and mileage. Obviously, both affect the air. Think of mileage as a measure of your car’s pollution volume over time – if a gallon of gas doesn’t take you very far, you have to burn a lot more gas — and emissions as the chemistry of that pollution; if the mix is particularly noxious, your car will be a bigger offender than one with better tailpipe controls.

So if you want to buy the cleanest car you can — in the price range you need — you’ll look at both factors. Fortunately, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has already done this work, assigning a  “greenhouse gas” score to most models. Find it at the EPA’s Green Vehicles website.

The EPA’s “greenhouse gas” score considers how much a vehicle contributes to global warming via its full lifecycle emissions of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (NO2), and hydroflurocarbons (HFCs). The rating is mainly a function of a car’s gas mileage, but the analysis also looks at the fuel a car uses (gasoline, natural gas, diesel, ethanol) to factor in emissions.

Cars are given a score between 1 and 10, with 10 being the highest (the Prius solos at this rating) and 5 being not so hot (the Lincoln Town Car) and 3 (the GMC Sierra 15 gasoline model) being about as low as it goes. (The Sierra 15 jumps to a 6 on ethanol though.)

At the same site, the EPA chart also breaks out a column that considers just regulated tailpipe emissions — which doesn’t capture all the greenhouse gases and considers some outputs that aren’t greenhouse gases — giving each model an “air pollution score” as well. A diesel, say, might not score as well on this scale as it would on the greenhouse gas scale.

Interested in seeing just the EPA’s gas mileage ratings? Look to fueleconomy.gov, courtesy of the Department of Energy.

Do I believe in love at first sight? Yes, I’m certain it happens all the time. Like when driving the 2010 Mazda3 to the grocery store.

We had just made a left out of our subdivision, accelerated sharply, hit a big sweeping country-road sort of curve and coming out the other end – less than two miles into a week-long test drive – I said aloud: “I like this car.”

Mazda’s biggest seller – 44 percent of North American sales in 2008 – is redesigned inside and out for the coming automotive model year, which, like Christmas, seems to get here earlier and earlier. The end result of all the tinkering is a compact that raises the bar for a crowded category that includes the Honda Civic, Ford Focus and Nissan Sentra.

The Mazda3, unlike many econ-boxes, feels rock solid.  The steering precision and feel is like that of a more costly sports sedan, the result, Mazda says, of adding a third mounting point near the center of the electro hydraulic-assisted rack-and-pinion steering gear.

The 2.5-liter inline four-cylinder engine is bigger than the power plant of earlier generations of the Mazda3. The 168-horsepower won’t snap your neck, but there is some fun-to-drive spunk.

Fuel economy is good, but not great. The EPA estimate is 22 mpg in city driving and 29 mpg on the highway. We got 23.5 mpg in a mix of driving that was heavy on suburban stop-and-go traffic.

The Mazda3 has earned the EPA’s SmartWay designation given vehicles that score 6 or better on a scale of 1-10 on each of the air pollution and greenhouse gas indices.

The interior design of this entry-level car is decidedly upscale, with a gauge and screen display unmatched in any car of any price. The display screen containing navigation, audio, and trip information is positioned high on the instrument panel to allow the driver to keep his/her eyes on the road. A second screen slightly to the right provides station frequency and climate control setting information.

The fit, finish and materials are good, and neon blue accent lighting is hidden behind the door handles. A cool touch.

Front passengers will be quite comfortable, but those riding in the back seat have, at best, just adequate legroom. The trunk is plenty big and a 60-40 split-folding rear seat expands the cargo compartment.

Safety gear includes side impact air bags.

The loaded test car  – equipped with navigation system, satellite radio, moonroof and 242-watt Bose sound system – had a sticker price of $22,800.

See more photos on the next page.

The first full day of hearings on that proposed law known as Waxman-Markey, which would promote clean energy, foster green jobs and set up a system to curb greenhouse gas emissions, began — fittingly — on Earth Day.

But how do we make sense of this sweeping piece of legislation that affects everything from the air you breathe to the refrigerator you use? You could watch the hearings on C-Span over the next few weeks. (If you are unemployed, have all day long to plop in front of the tube and can remain alert for extended periods while people discuss abstractions like “carbon allowances” and “international offsets” this might be for you!)

Or you could read the bill. It is 648 pages. But as we learned from the recent stimulus escapades, even people in Congress don’t read these things.

So let’s stick to the executive summary of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. It is five pages long. For serious climate watchers, politicos, green collar workers and would-be Earth advocates, scanning this document is not a bad idea.

Fortunately we’re not the only ones trying to find ways to make this incredibly complex matter digestible. The EPA is on the job. The agency that would regulate and guide many of the directives in Waxman-Markey, should it pass, has put out an analysis of how it would help grow the economy and boost personal income while transforming the U.S. energy landscape and curtailing carbon emissions. (Though we’re back up to nine pages on this one.)

The EPA review — done at the request of House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) — looked mainly at how emissions reductions and cap-and-trade guidelines would affect the economy (Title III in the Act.). It found that the W-M bill would:

• Make it more economical to invest in energy efficient manufacturing, housing and transportation, which would reduce energy consumption, delaying until mid-century the consumption levels we’d otherwise reach by 2015.

• Grow renewable energy; push forward new technology for coal production, bringing coal carbon capture and storage online in 2015.

• Its cap-and-trade provisions would result in carbon costs of about $13-$17 per metric ton in 2015, rising to $17-$22 by 2020 – propelling the development of cleaner alternatives.

• More clean energy would offset the need for increased petroleum use (a major security issue), keeping it nearly static through 2050. (Which tells you a bit about where the opposition to W-M will come from.)

The EPA report says a lot more. But it’s as thick as Ulysses. It needs deciphering. The Natural Resources Defense Council is trying, having asked its chief economist to analyze the EPA’s analysis (only in Washington).

Laurie Johnson, chief economist for the NRDC, looked at what the EPA was (trying) to say about household income under Waxman-Markey and found that:

• Households will become 18-19 percent richer between 2010 and 2020, and 36-40 percent by 2030. By contrast, the investment of the average household in the bill would only be $98 to $140 a year.

Takeaway: The Congressional prescription for global warming and our ailing economy won’t cost us too much net-net, and could even make us better off. If all goes well.

Take it with a grain of salt. And stay tuned.

(The NRDC has other decipherers. See David Doniger’s blog “First Read” of the Waxman-Markey Energy and Climate Discussion Draft. This excellent piece breaks the Act down into its significant parts.)

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Those who’ve tried The Blade say it works – though, so far, we’ve not met any of them. The purported fuel-conserving, emissions cleansing attachment for autos hit the market late last year amid kudos and celebrity endorsements (Sheryl Crow, Laura Dern and Ben Harper say it’s da bomb).

The simple tail-pipe attachment/filter is said to cut auto emissions by 57 percent, and greenhouse gases by six to 34 percent, depending on the model of your car. That makes the $200 price tag reasonable enough for the carbon-conscious.

But the fact that it can increase fuel economy up to five miles per gallon makes it attractive to just about every Joe and Jane Sixpack in the country.

While we haven’t yet tried one ourselves, the Austin, Texas-based maker Sabertec has enlisted people to sample the device in Los Angeles where it hosted “Drive the Change,” an event attended by Dern, Harper and others promoting the new technology in one of the most carbon-challenged cities in the country.

During the event, the makers asserted that “if all 12 million drivers in Los Angeles installed a Blade on their automobile, we’d reduce emissions…equal to removing six million (cars) off the road.”

Sabertec CEO Bill O’Brien’s claims are pretty impressive. The future will bear out whether they’re accurate. The Blade has been tested in several reputable labs, including California’s Automotive Testing and Development Services Inc., and has been certified by the California Air Resources Board. The Blade also has been approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Basically, the apparatus looks like a futuristic aluminum tube that fits onto your muffler (check out muffler and car specs here) and captures particulate matter via replaceable filters - which are $20 each, to be changed every 10,000 miles. Sabertec’s press folks say the attachment will pay for itself within three to four months. Also, the company’s website states that for many cars, particularly four cylinders, the installation is a do-it-yourself deal. Bigger engines may require a trip to the muffler shop, averaging about $50 for the fix.

If over the coming months the Blade proves to do what Sabertec claims it does, then any driver worth his wheels will go online and by one. However, given that it’s still a new technology with some pretty big claims, the jury’s still out. We’d like to see and hear more.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

When David Kilbourne picked up his 8-year-old son from Lake Travis Elementary in spring 2007, he noticed smoke billowing from idling buses parked in queue behind the school. The exhaust fumes his son was breathing each day as he waited to be picked up, he says, were contributing to his son’s migraine headaches. “My son is the quarterback for his youth football team,” said Kilbourne. “Because there’s only one quarterback, when he gets these headaches, it affects the team.”

Kilbourne remembers noticing the bus exhaust during the school’s bus safety week. “They were talking about how buses are safe when it comes to traffic accidents,” he said, “but there’s more to a bus’s safety than traffic accidents, like having air that’s safe to breathe.”

The coincidence spurred Kilbourne to take action. Not only did he write several letters to his local newspaper, but Kilbourne approached the head of his district’s transportation department to discuss air quality in and around its buses. After he spoke to Rick Walterscheid, the transportation director at the Lake Travis Independent School District, the school system put a no-idling policy into effect.

Walterscheid didn’t stop there, either. Later that year the 79th Texas Legislature adopted House Bill 3469, which established and authorized the formation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to administer a statewide clean school bus program.

With the goal of reducing diesel exhaust emissions, TCEQ offers grants to all Texas public school districts and charter schools that operate at least one diesel-fueled school bus. The TCEQ’s grants offset the cost of school district’s sometimes daunting costs to retrofit school buses, as well as other projects that reduce emissions of diesel exhaust.

Lake Travis ISD, located in a Hill Country suburb of Austin, Texas, was among more than 50 Texas school districts that were eligible for TCEQ’s funding in 2007. That year, Walterscheid’s district applied for and received more than $80,000 in grant money to retrofit a portion of its fleet of buses.

Walterscheid, who manages a fleet of 76 buses that shuttle about 2,500 students each day, said the district’s students are all breathing a little easier these days with help from the TCEQ and its grant program.

“Looking back, the process wasn’t that difficult,” he says, explaining that the district put diesel particulate filters on nine of its buses last year, resulting in “a 90% improvement (in emissions).”

Lake Travis ISD is certainly among the trend setters; one of several districts nationwide that have made firm commitments to clean the air its students and others breathe. This growing national trend includes school districts adopting no-idling policies and those moving to alternative fuels as well.

Nationally, several large city school systems have retrofitted many of their school buses to reduce harmful emissions, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, which is leading a campaign to clean up school buses nationwide.

The non-profit environmental group reports that the entire fleet of New York City’s 4,070 large buses is scheduled to be retrofitted by 2008; Atlanta has installed passive filters on 353 long school buses and Boston has retrofitted 328 school buses.

Environmental Defense points to the NYC plan and Texas’ program, which is better funded than many, as model projects. Parents and educators can get up to speed on the basic steps to take at ED’s Four Steps to Cleaner Buses.

FIXING THE PROBLEM

In recent years, several environmental groups have documented that exhaust from diesel-fueled buses make the safe ride to school a truly unhealthy one. Diesel exhaust comprises a cauldron of cancer-causing agents: particulate matter (or soot), smog-forming nitrogen oxides, and a complex mixture of gases. Studies have found that those gases don’t stay outside the bus, either, but permeate the interior.

This “indoor pollution” problem has wide implications: An estimated 24 million children get to class by riding school buses in the United States.

In Texas, with some 1.3 million children hopping on its more than 36,000 buses each school day, the pollution problem for the children is compounded by their sometimes lengthy commutes.

Many school buses in Texas haven’t been making the grade. More than a third of the school buses in the state are more than 10 years old. Not only do these older buses emit more pollution than newer models but they expose children unnecessarily to diesel exhaust, which has been found to make breathing even harder for children with asthma and other respiratory problems.

“Mr. Kilbourne raised my awareness of how we can affect a student,” said Walterscheid. “Talking to him brought to the forefront the issues that we needed to address and made the decision to apply for retrofit funding with the TCEQ that much easier.” <!–nextpage–>

“The school buses we run are the only mode of transportation for many students whose parents both work,” says Walterschied. “So, some parents don’t have a choice of whether or not to put their children on the bus. We are here to serve and we have the duty to improve the situation that students have to be in.”

A handful of organizations fund the effort of retrofitting school buses to make the drive to and from school healthier for children. The TCEQ is the primary organization that heads up bus retrofitting in Texas. The Texas Parent Teachers Association, through its Supplemental Environment Program, helps fund retrofitting, as well, but at a lesser extent.

The Texas Emissions Reduction Plan (TERP) has set aside money for retrofitting expenses, but the organization is primarily focused on funding replacement of school buses, which can cost up to $85,000 apiece.

“It’s ideal for school districts to ask for and get as many new buses as they can,” says Hazel Barbour, program manager for Clean School Bus Program of Central Texas, which is run through a partnership with Clean Air Force and the Capital Area Council of Governments. Barbour’s program assists several Texas counties, including Travis, Williamson, Hayes, Caldwell, Bastrop, and others. As part of her role with the Clean School Bus Program she assists districts in filling out the necessary forms to apply for retrofitting grants and getting the necessary bids for the work to be done.

Retrofitting work is bid on and performed by contractors approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board, which together ensure that retrofitters meet certain standards.

Four retrofitting options have been approved for funding through the TCEQ. These include:

• Diesel particulate filters, which can cost from $6,500 to $8,250, are ceramic devices that collect particulate matter in the exhaust system and require a high temperature to break down the matter in the exhaust system. These filters must be used in conjunction with ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel. The combination of particulate filters and ULSD fuel can reduce emissions of particulates, organic compounds, and carbon monoxide in the exhaust gases by 60 to 90 percent. They work best on engines built after 1994.

• Closed crankcase filtration systems, allow a diesel engine’s crankcase to be closed and use an air filter to trap blow-by aerosols consisting mainly of oil droplets with some carbon and traces of “wear debris” and all particles that are smaller than 10 micrometers in diameter. These particles are considered “inhalable”, because they are small enough to pass into the lower airways. Blow-by gas emissions can be as much as 25 percent of the total emissions from a diesel engine. The filtration efficiency of crankcase filters averages between 80 and 97 percent, but the crankcase filter must be changed at every lube oil change or every 500 hours of operation. Crankcase filters are inexpensive and are best used in conjunction with some type of filtration system in the exhaust stream. These systems may be more effective at reducing children’s in-cabin exposures to pollutants than control systems fitted into the exhaust systems alone. The devices are reimbursed at $800 per bus.

• Diesel oxidation catalysts, which cost from $600 to $1,500, chemically break down pollutants in the exhaust stream to reduce particulate matter in emissions. Diesel oxidation catalysts can reduce emissions of particulates by 20 to 40 percent, hydrocarbons by 50 percent and carbon monoxide by 40 percent and can be used with regular diesel fuel.

• Partial flow-through filters comprise a fitting on tailpipes that uses a two-stage filter to accumulate and reduce particulate matter emissions by 70 to 75 percent. This type of retrofit can also reduce total vehicle emissions by up to 80 percent when paired with a closed crankcase filtration system. It is designed to be maintenance-free and can be used with ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) fuel. This type of retrofit costs $5,000 to $6,000.

Costs for retrofitting can be daunting for school districts without the help. However, emissions from school buses drop by as much as 90% when engines and exhaust systems are retrofitted. <!–nextpage–>

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency maintains a list of vendors who sell retrofit devices. Companies the likes of Caterpillar, Clean Diesel Technologies, and PUREM North America supply school districts with diesel particulate filters, for example.

In Texas, about $8 million worth of grant money is available for the 2008 application period, according to TCEQ officials. Districts have through November 14 to apply and until March 31, 2009 to complete retrofits. School districts can make as many grant requests as they like up to $250,000 per grant request. For more info see the TCEQ FAQ.

Walterscheid’s Lake Travis Independent School District applied for $99,700 in ‘08 grant money to retrofit 20 of its buses with partial flow-through filters. When this next retrofitting is completed, Lake Travis will boast 29 retrofitted buses district-wide that will exceed state and federal requirements for environmental standards.

“When this grant funding was announced, there was hesitance with the technology,” said Walterscheid. “We had concerns that the engine wouldn’t get hot enough to burn diesel particulates, so we’ve put those (retrofitted) buses on our longer routes.”

BREATHING DIESEL FUMES

A study conducted jointly by the Environmental Defense, The Clean Air Task Force, and The Conroe Independent School District at The Woodlands, north of Houston, in Texas shines some light on the real culprits of the diesel exhaust systems.

Published in March 2007, Measuring Pollution Levels Inside Texas School Buses points to the bus’s tailpipe and open crankcase as the primary sources of air pollution. (See also this page on the study’s findings.)

The bus’s crankcase is located a few feet from the bus’s front door and vents to the air. When the door opens and closes, exhaust re-enters the vehicle during the course of a daily route.

“Several studies show that air pollution levels inside the school buses can be up to five times greater than levels outside the bus,” the report states.

Children, particularly those with asthma or respiratory problems, are at a greater risk because they breathe more rapidly than adults, they inhale more pollutants per pound of body weight, and their bodies aren’t equipped with a strong defense system. Even if for short periods of time, exposure to diesel exhaust pollution is linked to dizziness, coughing, chronic bronchitis, and increased incidence and severity of asthma attacks.

According to The Burden of Asthma in Texas report, published in May 2007 by the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Asthma Coalition of Texas, “asthma remains one of the most prevalent chronic diseases and growing health concerns in Texas and is one of the most frequent reasons for hospital admissions among children.”

Reports estimate that some 390,000 to as many as 600,000 children in Texas have asthma. (For more info, see this Burden of Asthma in Texas report.)

Multiply that across the nation, and it is easy to understand why there’s a growing trend across the U.S. to retrofit buses to clean up emissions and also to use alternative, cleaner-burning forms of fuel.

Many U.S. schools have transitioned to other forms of less-polluting fuels for their bus fleets. Compressed natural gas (CNG) is used widely in Europe and South America and in the US, this fossil fuel substitute for gasoline and diesel is becoming more widely available, particularly in California, where it’s used to power city and county bus fleets, and now school buses.

Biodiesel, mostly a plant-based fuel, also is growing in popularity. According to the July-August 2007 issue of The Futurist magazine, biodiesel should experience explosive growth within the next 10 years because it can be used in diesel engines without any modifications to the engine: “More than 80% of all commercial trucks and city buses run on diesel gas. This suggests a huge potential market for biodiesel in the U.S.”

The Clark County school district in Nevada has been making inroads into clean-burning buses for several years. The fifth-largest school district in the nation., it serves the cities of Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Boulder City, and Mesquite, and is believed to have the largest fleet of school buses fueled by biodiesel.

The district fuels its buses with recycled cooking oil, sourced from area restaurants. And since Las Vegas is a popular tourist town that never sleeps, the area generates six gallons of oil per resident each year – twice the national average. This clean fleet of school buses saves the environment from untold carbon emissions, according to the Las Vegas Regional Clean Cities Coalition, leaving only a whiff of fumes whose worst offense would be to cause hunger pangs.

Yes, the buses in Clark County smell like french fries.

(Clark County Buses, above. Photo Credit: Catherine Colbert.)

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Residents of the Dallas/Fort Worth metro area will again get a chance to trade in their pollution-emitting old clunker for a newer, less polluting car with the help of state money.

The North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) reports that it has about $12 million for the second year of the AirCheckTexas Drive a Clean Machine campaign, which began taking applications in mid-August. “On-road emissions are the biggest cause of air pollution in the North Texas region,” says NCTCOG spokesperson Lara Kohl. “That’s the whole point of our program — to get those cars off the road that are causing the majority of pollution.”

North Texas residents with cars 10 years or older and who meet the net income requirements can get $3,000 toward repairs to make their cars more air-friendly or to replace their car with one that meets the new, higher clean air standards. The qualifications depend on the size and income of the family. A family of four with $63,600 annual income, for example, would qualify for the $3,000. Those who buy a hybrid vehicle can get $3,500 toward the purchase.

AirCheckTexas was considered a big success in 2007-2008, when interested car owners packed waiting lists for the state assistance. In fiscal 2008 the program issued 11,500 replacement vouchers and 1,500 repair vouchers.

NCTCOG is a voluntary association of North Texas municipalities started in 1966 to plan for common needs.

Jeff Jacoby of the nonprofit Texas Campaign for the Environment says the NCTCOG has done “a solid job” with the AirCheck program but he wishes the Texas legislature would do much more to improve the area’s air quality.

The Environmental Protection Agency has flagged the D/FW area as a “non attainment” zone because it suffers repeated high ozone days during the summer, when heat and car emissions combine to generate ground-level ozone, causing unhealthy air conditions. The TCTCOG tracks ozone alert days in the area (21 days have exceeded safe levels for more than 8 hours each day in 2008) and offers a guide to the alert system, explaining for instance that during “orange alerts” kids and those with respiratory issues should limit outdoor activities.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

A study released today by researchers at UCLA holds more bad news for those concerned with the effects of auto emissions: Nanoparticles (those on the scale of a virus or molecule), which are so small they can’t be filtered by existing technology, may not simply harm our lungs — they may actually “inactivate” the so-called “good” cholesterol in our bodies, promoting hardening of the arteries and leading to heart attack and stroke.

Dr. Jesus Araujo, first author of the study, tells GreenRightNow that these particles are produced not only by cars but “come from any place where there is partial combustion of organic fuels or compounds: industry, ships, forest fires, etc.” In the absence of effective filters, he says, the only protection is “limiting the degree of exposure to nanoparticles. For example, avoiding outdoor exercise or strenuous physical activity in places and at times where there are high levels of air particulate pollutants.”

Researchers studying mice found that these particles, which are “coated in chemicals sensitive to free radicals,” worked against HDL cholesterol’s ability to reduce vascular inflammation, increasing development of artherosclerotic plaque (see photo of the red-stained plaque caused by ultra fine particles, left). Their study found harmful cardiovascular impact over a period as short as five weeks, much shorter than the five or six months of some earlier studies, but Dr. Araujo says, “it is very likely that exposure for a few hours or a few days” could lead to “changes in the protective qualities of HDL cholesterol.”

“Other epidemiological studies,” he notes, “have shown that exposure to high levels of pollution [such as those encountered in heavy traffic] can lead to heart attacks within hours of the exposure” — even in people with no pre-existing heart disease.

Unsurprisingly, the researchers hope their findings will be noted by the Environmental Protection Agency, which “currently regulates fine particles, which are the next size up, at 2.5 micrometers, but doesn’t monitor particles in the nano or ultra fine range.”

The study is printed online at Circulation Research where you can see an abstract or pdf.

Copyright © 2007 | Distributed by Noofangle Media