Clearing the air
Land Transport has announced:
Proposed changes to the requirements for vehicle exhaust emissions have been released for public comment, including a proposal to introduce a visible smoke check for exhausts as part of regular vehicle inspections.
[snip]
Director of Land Transport Wayne Donnelly said the proposed new [WOF] check would only affect a small number of vehicles, but bringing those vehicles up to standard or removing them from the road would benefit all New Zealanders by reducing air pollution.
“Less than two percent of vehicles are likely to fail this check, but they will be gross polluters – most likely poorly maintained and with severely worn or damaged engines. These vehicles are a significant source of air pollution, which in turn can cause serious health problems.�
A frogblog reader asks:
Given we are looking at a five-second visible smoke test, how do you reckon Director of Land Transport Wayne Donnelly thinks it will only affect ‘less than two percent’ of vehicles. How can they measure that in advance?
Of course, there are ways to properly measure emissions at point of WOF (which make the testing decision easier to give and to take) so why are we not using those and instead falling back on a wishy-washy visible smoke test?
Also, the overview points out quite alarmingly that only 300 infringement notices were issued in 2004. I could find 300 separate vehicles in Christchurch in one day, that’s a joke!
Lastly, the overview is leading on the positive and obvious correlation between visible smoke and pollution, but is silent on the wider low-level problem of pollution that is not necessarily visible, and since by implication that doubt hangs over the 98% of vehicles not failing the visible emissions test, that’s a big part of the problem being missed, which leaves a rather egg-like smell about the whole affair.
This issue is mind-numbingly frustrating
The Greens agree. RNZ reports:
The Green Party says the 10 second test doesn’t go far enough to reduce harmful gases and the party wants exhaust gases analysed more throroughly.
Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons says the real killer is in the fine particles. She says a gas analyser is needed and while it would cost more, it would help save lives.
Last June she said:
“…the Government has wimped out on the most effective way to reduce deaths from air pollution in future. It has known for a long time that imported vehicles older than seven years are significantly dirtier than those less than seven. Yet the best it can do is ‘look into’ controls for vehicles entering the country, and assess their social impact.
“People do not have a right to kill others from air pollution just to get cheap vehicles. While it’s true that not everyone can afford newer vehicles, there is no shortage of cheap old cars in New Zealand already without bringing in more. We should be adding to the fleet at the top end, not the bottom end.”
The Greens have consistently advocated emission standards and testing. MoT looked at a simple exhaust test last year and found it unreliable (baselined against more complex and accurate testing). Our Transport policy contains detailed material on how to do it properly.
The number of premature deaths from air pollution is similar to that from car crashes, to which can be added the several hundred million dollars-a-year in human health effects.
Incidentally this reflects New Zealand’s relatively moderate level of overall air pollution and relatively high level of crashes - in most countries air pollution kills two to three times as many people as the ‘road toll’!
The Greens have pointed out that, given these health costs, it would make sense for the testing machines to be partially subsidised. Setting up proper testing is expensive and seems to be the main practical barrier to emissions testing.
If you want to have your say on vehicle emissions testing, visit Land Transport’s consultation page.
January 19th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
It’s a tradeoff thing.
We could bring in emission testing to global best practice tomorrow.
This would have a very limited effect on the BMW driver in Remuera - her car already meets the highest emission standards. For the Nissan van driver in Huntly, it probably means either very expensive repairs or getting a new car - likely to be unaffordable. So they can no longer get to work (given the lack of public transport) and are left unemployed. Not good.
I think there needs to be a gradual process. Commercial vehicles should be made to conform asap. New cars coming in should be expected to have catalysts. We could possibly also look at requiring emission standards on anything over 1600cc - that way smaller cars (which produce less volume of pollution anyway) will be still affordable until we get to an all-catalyst vehicle fleet at some point in the future.
January 19th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
I agree that it is a trade-off; its just that it is mostly low income people who suffer ill health from vehicle emissions as well so the environmental justice arguments are more complex than rich drivers versus poor drivers. In the US at least air quality can be shown to have a big impact on house prices!
Getting the dirtiest 20% off the road will reduce emission loadings by about 80% - they ought to be the first target. The main issue is that their owners get sufficient warning.
January 19th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
One problem with the visible emission test is that the emission is not necessarily ’smoke’ - particularly on cold mornings.
I cycle from Lower Hutt to Wellington (and back) regularly and the only time I notice vehicle emissions is the morning bottleneck at Petone - if we want to reduce car emission hotspots then we’ve got to fix the roads.
Even with the excellent public transport from Wellington to Lower/Upper Hutt it just isn’t convenient for everyone.
January 19th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
The problem is that “the dirtiest 20%” are likely to belong to those who can least afford to do anything about it. All vehicles coming in to the country these days are likely to be compliant with overseas emission controls, thoigh clearly that is the one area where a “best practice” measurement regime could be adopted, which would be not disproportionately expensive.
If nothing were done then over time the overall level of emissions will improve, as the oldest cards drop out of use, and newer are introduced.
This does appear to be a “big cities” problem, and it could be argued that its not the cars but car use that is the problem, and perhaps road charging based on emissions ought to be considered…?
January 19th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
I am sceptical, as someone who grew up poor, that relative poverty is a good reason to tolerate pollution. I am also sceptical that a cleaner car is much more expensive than a polluting car. And as I said before, the people sufferring the most from pollution are also poor.
Its also not just a big city problem - there are serious air quality problems almost anywhere cars congregate for a period because our fleet is so dirty. So many small towns main streets have periods of very poor air quality and these often coincide with the times of highest pedestrian use.
That said, I agree the problem is car use and the social justice concerns only arise because of car dependence. Reducing the need for a car also reduces the consequences of cleaning up car emissions.
January 19th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
The people who would be affected most by this policy would be low income people who own older cars and can less afford to have them replaced.
I think the emmission standards should be set on all new cars\imported second hand from a particular date and over time as people can afford it the older cars will be phased out.
Also this would allow classic car collecters to continue to have there cars which would most likely never meet the standards but to have to be regisetered and warranted when they are driven on the road.
January 19th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
Most emission testing regimes exempt classic cars. The Greens policy does this as well.
Giving people a few months notice that their car is too polluting will be sufficient for most people. Such an approach is considerably more generous than is currently allowed for rust etc. Yet we do not hear cries of injustice about this.
I am not sure why a car with an unsafe chassis ought to come off the road immediately but one with unsafe emissions ought to be allowed to carry on driving indefinitely.
January 19th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
If they can have clean air standards in California and have even the poorest people on the roads meet them, they can have them here. The excuse that it hits the poor hardest isn’t realistic. The cars available new or used today are not generally gross polluters, they meet standards across the rest of the world.
As Miss Clavell says
“Something iz not right. ”
There are a variety of ways to defuse the problem of cost of repair/replacement for a vehicle that is intractable and an owner who is in poverty… there is no way to defuse the problem of having such vehicles vomiting crap into our lungs.
respectfully
BJ
January 19th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Michael Ellis - there is a problem with “fixing the roads” - the first is that in general congestion will occur somewhere unless the volume of traffic is reduced - eg the congestion at Ngauranga merge is now worse because the traffic lights at the top of the gorge were removed and a $24m interchange built.
The second is that reducing congestion by increasing road capacity tends to lead to more vehicles - and this effect outweighs any reduction in emissions per car. Emissions per car are also very dependent on driving style - and our “stop-start” urban driving does nothing to help.
As cities require speeds of around 30-40km/hr not the open road speeds for which engines are designed the best that can be done is to encourage as many people as possible to leave their cars behind for more trips, and ensure those that do drive, to do so more slowly and calmly
January 19th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
As jgg seems to points out, any perceived injustice on fixing this problem is indicative of a lack of appreciation of the damage the pollution does.
There are many cars, buses and delivery vehicles we can all see every day clearly excessively polluting. Given this is expected tobe around the 2% tail of the normal distribution, there will be very many more that are polluting beyond modern acceptable levels - it just might not be visible.
Many of the owners or drivers of those vehicles are often seen showing equal disregard for others, tossing fast-food wrappers out of the window, blasting music out of loud stereos or exhaust out of non-mufflers and, yakking away on mobile phones. We all make choices, and many will choose to ignore the pollution their vehicle emits until the government remind them they have no right to do that, and take the vehicle off the road until it is compliant.
To my mind, the sooner we are forced to get over this childishness and fix the problem, the better for all of us.
It’s also not a big city problem; New Zealand as a whole gets away with polluting far more than its fair share simply because there are so few of us here. That doesn’t make it acceptable, and that attitude doesn’t do most of us justice either.
I do agree that getting the dirtiest 20% off the road will possibly banish 80% of the pollution, I don’t agree that a 5 second visible smoke test will necessarily achieve that.
Classic vehicles will be exempted as ‘historic’ vehicles, though I don’t see the definition. Also, two stroke vehicles (get the ear plugs out) seem be exempted.
January 19th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
It’s not so much that decent emissions standards would be unfair to poor people that politicians are concerned about, as that people with dodgy old cars also vote. A 5-second smoke test enables politicians to advertise themselves as doing something about the problem, while at the same time alienating a relatively small number of potential voters.
A lot of our Jap imports were presumably well controlled for emissions before they arrived in this country and the importers got to work stripping stuff like catalytic converters off them. That situation may have improved since I left the country, but the stripped-down ones of earlier years are presumably still on the roads, not blowing smoke.
January 19th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
jgg - what makes a classic car?
Who gets to draw up the list of exempt classic cars?
I had a old 1979 Toyato Corolla which to some people would not be a classic, but I would consider that it would.
So if you don’t meet the emmissions standard you just claim you car is a classic car.
January 20th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
Devil’s in the details as always. Agree with the basic policy thrust, but… the only sensible way to test for emissions (particularly for diesels) is to do so while the motor is producing significant and typical power. At idle or light load, emissions are likely to be much reduced. To confirm, follow an aged, underpowered diesel onto an on-ramp. So to test under a typical load, we’re talking rolling dynos. And the testing regime cost just tripled.
January 20th, 2006 at 11:09 pm
…if catalytic converters were required (as in most countries serious about the issue) then this wouldn’t be a problem.
January 21st, 2006 at 9:08 am
Spare a thought for the poor mugs IN the cars …
Ever wondered about that new car smell ? It turns out the plastic components of the dashboard, seats and other interior components include extremely toxic phthalates and fire retardants that offgas.
Lovely. Read more here, here and here.
It’s yet another reason to get over our addiction to these toxic climate changing machines
January 21st, 2006 at 9:14 am
And some more facts to make you think about our car addiction.
Percent of surface area in the city of Los Angeles dedicated in some way to the automobile (roads, parking garages, etc.) = 70 percent
vs Percent of surface area in Los Angeles devoted to parks and open space = 5 percent
Number of people killed in Amtrak passenger train accidents in the United States since 1971 = fewer than 100
Number of people killed every year in automobile accidents in the United States = more than 40,000
Number of deaths in the United States due to airline accidents in 1997 = 8,014
Number of pedestrians and cyclists killed in the United States by motor vehicles in 1997 (the equivalent of a commercial airline crash with no survivors every two weeks) = 6,100
Number of people displaced each year in the United States by new highway construction = 100,000
Number of Croatians displaced by war in 1997 = 100,000
Cost of fuel in the United States to drive 24,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) in Honda’s 2000 Insight, which gets 28 kilometers/liter (65 miles per gallon) = $415
Cost of driving that same distance in Land Rover’s 2000 Range Rover, which gets 6 km/l (15 mpg) = $1,800 *
Total vehicle kilometers traveled by automobiles in Japan, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Canada, and the United Kingdom combined in 1997 = 2.6 trillion
Total vehicle kilometers traveled by automobiles in just the United States in 1997 = 2.4 trillion
http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/mag/2000/135/mos/
* I bet these prices have increased since 2000.
January 21st, 2006 at 3:57 pm
The point is to do SOMETHING rather than the NOTHING that is currently done, and even the visible smoke test will handle that. First steps are always tough.
The rolling dyno’s are common now in CA. Not hard to find one and not hard to get tested. Testing is cheap too.
The system works in CA and if it works THERE it can work here. I do remember that I was absolutely stunned when I visited Wellington for the first time and realized that the air was no cleaner than the air over Santa Monica Boulevard, even though it was moving a hell of a lot faster. Every other vehicle seemed to be a diesel spewing black death into the air.
This can be fixed. No talking anymore, just do it.
respectfully
BJ
January 23rd, 2006 at 9:41 am
JGG - I lived in Porirua until 3 years ago. There was a major improvement in congestion until Ngauranga when the lights were removed at Newlands and no worse from Ngauranga to Aotea Quay than when I first started work in Wellington almost 20 years ago. In the evenings things were 100% better - no congestion from Ngauranga to home. 10 years after the removal of the lights there are still no bottle necks to Porirua once you get away from Wellington.
The logic behind building more roads means more cars is faulty. It’s the other way around - the removal of tariffs has made modern, efficient cars more affordable - what I spent $5000 on when I was 18 would be $500 now. What was $15,000 then is $5000 now.
What is the most convenient travel mode for me would be bus based public transport - there is a bus stop 5 metres from my front gate. But I won’t use it as the service is surly, driving is dangerous and the fellow passengers undesirable. The next most convenient is the car, then the train. Biking comes last (because of all the effort involved, it’s no quicker and it costs me more than public transport). Despite this, I use my bike three times a week and the train twice. I probably car to work once a month, usually because of after work commitments.
January 23rd, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Michael won’t take a bus :
1. Service is surly. Answer : kiss my *rse.
2. Driving is dangerous. Answer : how many passengers killed on Wellington buses in the last ten years? How many car drivers?
3. Fellow-passengers are undesirable. Answer : see 1.
But seriously. It’s true, nobody really likes to take the bus. Noise, vibration, sudden acceleration or stops. And the people : the aged, the poor, the infirm : they make us feel uncomfortable. And the young and vigorous : they are clearly having more fun than us.
Upgrading the bus experience is a key part of getting punters out of their cars. Everybody prefers trams to buses, even when they are demonstrably less efficient or even slower. But, in my experience, bendy trolley buses in a dedicated lane are very nearly as pleasant as a tram.
I can’t work out how the bike is more expensive than train or bus… do you burn through a lot of tyres and brake pads?
January 24th, 2006 at 12:10 am
Christchurch area (through “Environment Canterbury”, our Regional Council) has invested heavily and is expanding and improving a comprehensive, modern, regular, inexpensive (and partly free) bus system.
With a rechargeable “Metro” smart card: $1.90 two hours unlimited travel, $3.80 one day unlimited travel, $19 one calendar week unlimited travel.)
see: http://www. metroinfo.org.nz
We also have the alternative of biking … facilities for which are being improved steadily.
I very seldom use a car now!
eredwen
January 24th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
Michael - Second point first: the logic behind more roads means more cars is simple economics: - make something less costly and more people will use it. People have been commenting on it for 70-odd years and the empirical relationships were thoroughly evaluated in the 1990s. Cars are also cheaper of course and this is another factor driving traffic growth; but the failure of road building to relieve congestion is well documented.
Bottlenecks in general occur where traffic merges and where motorways etc terminate (which they must do somewhere) or before they start.
When the traffic lights at the top of the gorge were removed, there was a measured increase in delays at the Ngauranga merge, and a more significant increase in queues at the Terrace Tunnel. However, the disruption of the lights was removed. The perception (and for some, the reality) that there were fewer delays probably encouraged people to drive, at least until other congestion delays worsened downstream. That is how it works.
If you are interested in this, I’d point to a short note on an old web site called the Origins of Traffic Growth - I just wish whoever wrote it had got around to finishing it! See http://www.cbc.org.nz/Resources/whycars.shtml
January 26th, 2006 at 11:47 am
The biggest health issue is PM10 - which is about diesel vehicles. The premature deaths from emissions have this as the single biggest factor, and the research was done 4 years ago. One major thing has changed since then - diesel has gotten cleaner. At the time the NIWA report was carried out, diesel had a maximum of 1500 ppm of sulphur, as of last year, this was reduced to 500 ppm, a two-thirds cut. This will be reduced once more to 50 ppm - this effectively should mean a 90% cut in the health effects of diesel vehicles. Benzene levels in petrol are also being cut.
Visible smoke from exhausts is unpleasant, but has very limited long term effects. You can’t smell particulates, but they lodge in your lungs.
If you really want to address emissions, the next step IS to regulate exhausts and require vehicles at WOF time to be tuned to operate as efficiently as that make and model can. Beyond that, it is congestion pricing. Supplying more public transport in itself does not work - more often than not it encourages cyclists and pedestrians to move to a more polluting mode, and encourages people to take trips they would not otherwise take.
January 26th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
More people die from vehicle emissions than car crashes? Yeah right. Name one. I can name about 26 people who this year have had their lives drastically cut short by crashes. I find it almost offensive to compare the premature death of a five year old killed by a drunk driver with the one hour “premature” death of someone suffering from congestive lung failure.
The NiWA study was just a whole lot of assumptions from similar overseas studies chucked onto NZ with little testing and if you read it, huge research gaps and caveats. Even a couple of the lead reviewers said it was tentative and not to be relied on. They did a review in Chch of their local data and halved the figure, and that is the city with the worst air quality in NZ. That shows how sensitive the study is to minor changes in parameters which tells me it is not accurate. Also the NIWA study said more people would die in Wellington than Chch from vehicle pollution, which, based on climate and measured pollution levels seems to be counter intuitive.
AS for cost of petrol, Jeanette has been saying for nearly a year that $100 oil is just around the corner, well how many corners have we passed since then?
January 26th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
The context of this debate arse about face.
If we are to successfully mitigate harm from mobile source emmissions we first must establish what it is we are trying to fix.
While there is a cost & benefits scenario that is valid for all classes of transport a comprehensive anlysis of emmissions shows that exhaust testing is fraught with injustice, error and expendature that may, from the research that I have done on this suggests what is being proposed will produce no substantial gain in health outcomes, envirnmental benefits or desired end goal state.
In the bigger picture, health costs contingent from combustion of geo-oil is subsidised by the low cost of geo-oil. Mutliple analysises have been done on this and found that the health cost borne by all of a barrel of ‘tranport’ oil is twice the price of a barrel of oil. Climate change represents only a small proprtion of this health cost.
Leading contributor to health cost is particulate emmisions. Leading particulate contributor by a factor of 10:1 is the sub 2.5micron (invisables). These do not come from small effciient diesel or petrol sources, these come from the heavy(er) vehicle fleet where the risk is related to (and proprortional to) traffic efficiency and population density. Particulate emmissions corrspond to health costs in a linear zero-zero origin relationship. There is no ‘horizon line’ at which risk is lower as suggested in WHO health guidelines.
The average age of the fleet in this class of vehicles is much greater than 12 years for the petrol fleet. it also represents a massive investment in infrastructure to upgrade this fleet (alone that would bust the bank!).
Hydrogen cell and electric will not fix this fleet, nor will public transport (other than to reduce congestion)
What IS required NOW is to move to improve the fuel quality, to reduce particulate emmissions, and to develop a ‘clan air’ strategy that will foster wide use of renewables. This is not impossible nor unaffordable. It requires a change in mindset for sure, but again well within the parameters and capablity of New Zealand to do so.
I have presented to GREENS parliamentary staff and candidates the possible and probable ’solution’ required. It is cellulosic conversion to biodiesel and to blend this as B20 (20%) with fossil fuel for ALL fleet vehicles serving city precincts, and to foster B100 for ANY vehicle that spends near 100% of its service life in the innre city where population is at its most dense.
Becuase of the linear relationship we can calculate with considerable accuracy what health cost would be displaced… but we have a higher repsonsibility than to just protect ‘joe bloe’. We are obligated to protect those at greatest risk (ottawa charter).
Why are we not confronting this issue head on?
I suggest that when we put resource consent mechanisms in place we lost the best expertise out of the ministry of health and relied on the ministry of transport to take care of business.
I have documented the relationship between health and particulate emmissions on my website at http;//mildgreens.com
If we tackle this problem head on, it will pay for itself in negated harms. This is a win - win solution.
Of course, climate change is a winner too….
Now, before I get to emotiopnaly involved and cuss and swear that no bastard took any notice of this… having been repeatedly told this cannot be done (or it would be) - everything I proposed to the prime ministers climate change inquiry has come to pass. Including economic (sic) conversion of lignocellulose to biodiesel. (I was told this was impossible) It is now being done, conversion of dead trees to high specification - low emmission diesel… just as I said it could be.
While I am reluctant to go into detail, hell there is commercial relaity’s here too. The solution is not techncical, it is ‘commitment’ and that friends, and fellow air breathers has been grossly neglected.
We are behind the eightball. Doing nothing will be blood on the hands of those naysayers who wax philosophicaly that the ‘road toll’ numbers are a necessary expense to maintain economic efficiency.
Professor Woodward, in answer to my question posited at the “Road to Cleaner Air” [in 2001] conference in Wellington indicated that particulate morbidity could be ‘double the road toll’… but crucially it attracted ZERO research dollars.
We spend more deciding where we are going to put a zebra crossing….
/Blair Anderson
January 26th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Blair
You are right about determining what it is to be fixed, Unfortunately all that effort on mobile sources actually ignores that the vast majority of PM comes from non mobile, mainly domestic sources. Green policy promotes an increase in this pollution through encouraging the use of burning wood to heat homes.
You are wrong about research there is amajor project underway by HAPINZ. The first element was released in September.
The isue for cellulosic fuels is the technology and cost, not commitment. It’s not impossible, just hard and expensive. Youl would have to gather all those small parcels of waste, bring it together to digest and produce fuel then redistribute to customers, unless you use a system of on site mini refineries at wood plants and at logging locations providing fuel for those locations.
It won;t resolve emissions issues because there will still be some. Bio diesel tends to increase NOx emissions which are a problem in Auckland and be less fuel efficient too.
NZ Fuel specs are changing so you are a bit behind the times - sulphur will be eliminated long before your woody bio diesel becomes available in any quantity so there will be no significant PM advantage. You might be better looking at CNG or hybrids for trucks and buses in cities.
January 26th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
dear iNSIDER,
Gawd, lordy be… We are not testing houses!
It is erroneous to compare chickens with sausages, and pretend they cluck.
Houses do not emmit to the airshed heavy metal + organo-cyclics that condense on the activated carbon. Houses do not produce the short and long term ‘health’ problem that diesel does. Home heating is a seasonal issue whereas diesel (related emmisions) is 24/7/365 and highly concentrated arround arterial routes, inclines, intersections and builtup areas. Diesel registrations are through the roof whereas housing stock is getting cleaner by the day. (we could do more I know)
I am aware of the research, I am also aware that both the ARC and Canterbury studies vindicated my research conclusions I reported 6 years ago. Almost exactly. However, neither research projects suggested a solutions orientated approach, nor did it put a social cost (estimate) to morbidity. We have a ’saw’ that 400 people are dying because thats how many die on the roads. I agree insofar as how many die on the roads has a correspondence to congestion, which inturn has a correspondence to morbidity from diesel…
Cellulosic conversion to fuel grade diiesel is not technology contrained, nor is it cost prohibitive. Infact it is highly scalable and relocatable. Rather than ‘not impossibe’… it is every bit possible, indeed, if you follow the issue as I do, it is being done in third world countries like Uganda - what is the contraint in New Zealand? That someone else has to do it first? Let someone else become the centre of excellence? We pay someone else for the intellectual property right? That it can only be done by the big four? I see possibilities, whereas you (and others) only see limits.
Your right on the button with mini-refineries. (I prefer micro-refineries) however get used to the idea that they dont JUST produce biodiesel. The economics are in the multi-use applications of other products that can be extracted like char (home heating) bio-fibre and bio-plastics. It is in creating new markets for these resources that biodiesel will become cost economic. Currently the focus has been on converting waste streams… which is good in its own right, but even tallow resourced bio-diesel has its limits. (especialy coldstart & filter/coagulation) and will only do 5% of NZ requirement at best.
Your right too about there will be some emmissions.. hey! I didnt say I was here to save the world. NOx can be mitigated. SOx has been Aucklands principle visable ‘brown’ problem - however that brown shows us just how slow the airshed moves! The big brown is full of invisable PAH and PM2.5 until sunshine photoconverts it into visables.
Sulphur wont be eliminated unless your burning biodiesel (zero sulphur). Euro spec engines cannot run on our dirty fuel so we cant use those yet. Until we achieve 50ppm. We are currently 500ppm. Big Oil has a monopoly on clean fuel… tell me they are going to sell it cheap for our good health. Yea Right!
The infrastructural investment for CNG/LPG hybrids etc. is a contraint. Biodiesel can be used NOW. its not ever going to be perfect… but its a start. We have to build the infratructure and the way to do that is… incentivise and put BigOil on a level playing field.
Take a look at Christchurch’s Sister City Seattle… and Puget Sound. Biodiesel is already cheaper at the pump than BigOil diesel. Why.. because commitment made the difference. The entire US Naval base there is biofuel’d, the ferry’s too. Its about commitment, not money! Move over naysayers… For New Zealand, this is about survival/security in a post peak-oil world. We are at the end of a very long and risky pipe-line!.
Did Washington State do this because they thought it was a pretty good idea? No way!
It was economic! Quite simply, there was both the commercial imperative (ROI) AND a social dividend.
Yes, they have CNG and hybrid… and subsidised corn ethanol that takes 125% more energy to make than you get out it but at least for them they have options.
We dont.
And we getting sicker, waiting.
Researchers found that every 10-microgram increase in fine particulates per cubic meter of air increases the risk of death by cardiopulmonary disease by 6% and ups the risk of lung cancer death by 8%.” (Journal of the American Medical Association Mar 6 2002)
80% of cancer from airpborne sources is attributed to particulates from mobile source diesel.
see http://www.mildgreens.com/biosafe/efactor.jpg
And we wanna test all the good cars… yeah, right!
January 26th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
Insider
“Jeanette has been saying for nearly a year that $100 oil is just around the corner”
Pay attention to what the industry experts are saying. Based on oil production projects underway right now, with lead times of anything up to 5 years, the crunch between supply and demand will come by 2008. Given civilisation’s 10,000 year history and the fact they haven’t made anymore oil for millions of years, I’d say this sounds like “just around the corner”.
Take a listen to http://radionz.co.nz/audio/national/ntn/oil_reserves to get some current commentary.
January 26th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
By the way, the PM10 emissions from LPG are significantly higher than diesel - it is clean in every other dimension, but not in that critical one, and LPG road users are the least taxed in the country (ignoring CNG which is virtually extinct).
and in Nelson, Christchurch, Timaru and Napier at winter time, I believe there are significant increases in asthma due to the use of solid fuel burning home heating. Over 85% of Christchurch air pollutants are due to this source, none of these cities have serious congestion.
However, I am sure the Greens would agree this needs to be done holistically, but promoting burning wood as a home heating fuel outside rural areas is very backward looking.
January 27th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Using wood to heat houses makes more sense if you pelletize the wood first. The efficiency then rivals any other fuel you can use and emissions go down nicely…
Better however, would be to insulate and double-glaze, supplement solar heating with electrical heat-pumps in regions where they don’t suffer too much in efficiency and only in the coldest regions, burn anything at all for heat.
Insulation and double glazing being the most difficult things to find in this whole damned country. .. while wood-burners are a dime a dozen and freezing your butt off is the only other option on offer.
Not that this has ANYTHING to do with vehicle emissions - we have a bit of drift in the thread.
The vehicle problem is I think, largely in the particulate and diesel realm as noted above. This is harder and more expensive to address due to the long LONG service life of the big diesels. In the cities it is addressable in part by the use of the electric trolley-buses. If we get really REALLY serious, we’ll work out some means of permitting some inner-city trucks to use the electrical systems as well.
… and we’ll build wind turbines all over the landscape to supplement the hydro…
respectfully
BJ
January 27th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
BJ
Yay, for the clarification that energy issues are about home-heating, AND diesel/petrol/lpg transport fuels vs electric trams/rail, which brings in the wind-power scenario.
You really can’t discuss one edge of this triangle without bringing inthe other factors, and it IS about lifestyle integration with global fuel and energy source reserves.
What about utilising solar wind energy, for more than just satellite energy sources? (please explain that for them, BJ, you’ve got moreof the relevant physics than I have…..)
February 3rd, 2006 at 11:31 am
Katie/BJ
“we’ll build wind turbines all over the landscape”
Arrggh! The environment court will be busy!
Distributed Wind Electricity is not carbon neutral… infrastructural C-costs are substantial and are currently subsidised by cheap oil. Wind energy cannot be bottled, stored and moved. Turning into hydrogen is another myth. Possible yes, economic, no. It about as realistic as turning it into sausages.
The solution will include wind for sure… it is a complementary technology. I would like to see progress on an economic home sized solution mass manufactured to go into a home sized ‘thermal’ co-gen conversion unit as we have with the christchurch based multifuel sterling engine. Of course, solar silicon and solar thermal compliment these technologies.
It is now simply a question of mass manufacture.
However… the carbon deficit created by transportation is still the number one problem. The more we progress something along the lines of the above the greater the differential and need to progress beyond dinosaur fuels.
Technology is leading the way with direct conversion of biofuels with reformed glycerin, a byproduct of vegetable oils and sugar to hydrogen cell electricity already both technicaly feasable and now under trial. This is better than fermented ethanol, currently an energy deficit production cycle.
Frankly, the skyline beyond Palmerston North looks novel but only at ugly’s expense!
February 3rd, 2006 at 4:11 pm
Unless I am greatly mistaken every kilowatt provided by wind in Wellington is at least 1.2 kilowatts that doesn’t have to come from a hydro generator somewhere and 1.4 kw of stored hydro that doesn’t have to be released. In other words, it IS stored… in that it prevents the use of other stored forms. So your statement about the storage of wind being impossible is not supportable unless it is the ONLY form of electricity being provided.
Infrastructural carbon costs exist for everything… tell me how ELSE to get electricity and I’ll bite. You can use Solar, Wind or Hydro on current form, you can burn wood/farm-waste and fire up a heat engine. Everything else has problems or is still “in development”.
There are two efficient means of distributing energy, pipes with flammable gas flowing through them and electrical power lines. Which is more robust in an earthquake zone?
The Stirling Cycle engine co-generator is exquisitely INefficient as an electricity generator and only useful at all if the heat is simultaneously required, otherwise the infrastructure costs of building thermal storage and electrical storage is likely to be worse than the transmission lines….
Big wind turbines are more efficient and provide a denser electrical input to the grid. Moreover, they can be built in places where you can’t grow a crop. The electrical grid is the backbone of a nation. Infrastructure costs as in building steel transmission towers and stringing aluminium (copper is getting too expensive) high voltage lines?
The biofuel solutions will come, but your information on fermented ethanol being an energy deficit cycle is dated. All chemical transactions however require plants to be grown to capture the sun at the front end. The technology complements wind turbines and solar cells, it does not supplant it. Wind Turbines are available TODAY, not subject to questions of technical feasibility. Electric trains are available TODAY, not subject to questions of technical feasibility.
It would be nice it we do manage to come up with more efficient autonomous vehicles, capable of wandering around independent of rails and electric grids. Biofuels will work in that mix when the conversions are worked out and the vehicle manufacturers and energy companies are forced by the market or their governments (note carefully that WE have no vehicle manufacturers) to provide engines that can handle the fuels and standards for those fuels (Some of the standards exist…) and refining operations to produce those fuels.
None of that is within the reach of NZ. None of that is guaranteed to be done and made available to NZ in a timely fashion, look at how few hybrids are available even now. So we have to plan to manage on the things we CAN do - the things that don’t need more technical feasibility studies.
I can’t imagine how anyone could find a wind turbine ugly.
BJ