{"id":397,"date":"2008-02-20T16:02:53","date_gmt":"2008-02-20T21:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2008\/02\/20\/diesels-still-not-very-green\/"},"modified":"2013-11-21T12:18:56","modified_gmt":"2013-11-21T17:18:56","slug":"diesels-still-not-very-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2008\/02\/20\/diesels-still-not-very-green\/","title":{"rendered":"Diesels: Still Not Very Green"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.<\/i><\/p>\n

John DeCicco<\/p>\n

John DeCicco, Ph.D.<\/a> is Senior Fellow, Automotive Strategies at Environmental Defense.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The American Council for Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) just announced its eleventh annual ratings for the greenest and "meanest" vehicles<\/a>. Natural gas and hybrid vehicles do best – no surprise there. But the meanest (dirtiest) list is dominated by diesels, despite their higher fuel efficiency, because they spew out high levels of nitrogen oxide and particulate matter.<\/p>\n

I spoke about this with our resident car expert John DeCicco<\/a>, who was the original creator of ACEEE’s Green Book<\/i> when he worked for that organization. "I do have my morbid moments", John said, "but no need to give up hope yet!"<\/p>\n

More from John below\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

CAFE standards aren’t enough to make diesel ready for prime time in the car market:<\/b><\/p>\n

Despite recently higher CAFE standards, automakers aren’t under pressure to dramatically cut CO2<\/sub> emissions from their vehicles. The CAFE-implied 29 percent cut in CO2<\/sub> per mile isn’t dramatic compared to what’s needed to protect the climate. Automakers will meet the standards mostly by tweaking gasoline engines and rebalancing the mix toward more small cars and crossovers, with fewer Hummeresque SUVs. As they start selling limited numbers of light-duty diesels, the NOx-averaging structure of tailpipe standards will enable them to get by without a significant investment in diesel clean-up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A mandatory national cap on greenhouse gas pollution would prompt the investments needed for truly clean diesels:<\/b><\/p>\n

CAFE standards won’t help, but a mandatory carbon cap<\/a> can. A carbon cap will lock in an expectation, backed by legal requirements, for deep CO2<\/sub> reductions from all sectors, including automobiles. Even though the climate bill may not specify tighter vehicle emissions targets initially, it will make them inevitable in a way that the energy bill and its CAFE fight did not. Automakers think: "What, me worry? It might take another 32 years for politicians to nail us again on another modest round of CAFE tightening."<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Diesel engines offer an efficiency advantage that a carbon cap could help realize:<\/b><\/p>\n

It was a diesel hybrid design that the Clinton-Gore supercar program<\/a> used to demonstrate the feasibility of 67 percent cuts in CO2<\/sub> emissions per mile – a tripling of fuel economy. By comparison, the new CAFE standards require a 40 percent increase. But automakers can’t fully exploit the diesel’s advantages and deploy diesel engines in high volume unless they robustly clean up their emissions. A mandatory carbon cap will increase the odds that automakers make the necessary investments.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this dynamic isn’t unique to diesels:<\/b><\/p>\n

All promising low-CO2<\/sub> vehicle options will be favored by a mandatory carbon cap, from advanced direct-injection gasoline engines with near-diesel efficiency to exotics such as plug-ins and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. But if a clean diesel hybrid – an existing technology that just requires a sustained engineering investment – can substantially reduce tailpipe emissions over the next 20-30 years, automakers are likely to exploit it to the max. And that would be a good thing for everyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense. John DeCicco, Ph.D. is Senior Fellow, Automotive Strategies at Environmental Defense. The American Council for Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) just announced its eleventh annual ratings for the greenest and "meanest" vehicles. Natural gas and hybrid vehicles do best – no surprise …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4020],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cars"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDiesels: Still Not Very Green - Climate 411<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/climate411\/2008\/02\/20\/diesels-still-not-very-green\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Diesels: Still Not Very Green - Climate 411\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense. 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