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Pennsylvania Poised To Follow California's Car Pollution Rules

HARRISBURG, PA (AP) – Pennsylvania is poised to adopt pollution standards that would require new cars to be cleaner-burning a year from now – and put the state in lockstep with California’s efforts to impose even more stringent requirements by 2009.

Smog-reduction rules expected to be adopted for the 2008 model year would have little or no impact on the price of cars or the way they drive, state and industry officials say.

But more stringent greenhouse-gas reductions being sought by California on 2009 model-year cars would result in higher car prices, though advocates and opponents disagree about the amount. Automakers also say the greenhouse-gas standard, now the subject of litigation, would force them to make smaller cars with less horsepower.

Two state oversight boards are set to meet to decide whether Pennsylvania should follow California standards.

Approval appears likely. The administration of Gov. Ed Rendell strongly supports adopting California’s tougher pollution standards, while legislation that would prevent or delay such action has stalled in a House committee.

Rendell’s top environmental protection official, Kathleen A. McGinty, said Pennsylvania needs to cut vehicle pollution to help the majority of the state’s counties meet federal air quality standards.

The alternative is forcing expensive pollution cutbacks onto the state’s heavy industries and power plants or losing federal highway dollars, McGinty said. If Pennsylvania adopts California’s pollution standard, and California’s greenhouse-gas rule survives the legal challenge, new cars will get better mileage – offsetting any sticker-price increases, she said.

“The evidence points to customers realizing a savings,” McGinty said.

Nine other states, including New York and New Jersey, now follow the California standard. California is able to set its own rules – which states have the option of choosing over the federal government’s less stringent standards – because it began regulating vehicle pollution before the federal government.

At Feduke Ford in Vestal, NY, sales manager Peter McEvoy said customers have not noticed any difference since New York began enforcing the tougher smog standard that Pennsylvania is considering.

“In fact, we often sell vehicles to customers in Pennsylvania with the lower emissions equipment on it,” he said.

For now, California’s pollution standard means cars must produce less smog-forming nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, as well as less cancer-causing benzene.

California regulators are locked in a legal battle with automakers over the state’s efforts to enforce what would be the world’s most stringent rules on greenhouse-gas emissions from cars.

If the California Air Resources Board wins the case, 2009 model-year vehicles that are sold to residents of that state – as well as other states that follow California’s rules – would have to produce, on average, 22 percent less tailpipe exhaust.

Heat-trapping greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, are believed by most scientists to contribute to global warming. Reductions in exhaust would also have a side benefit, California regulators say: They would make cars more fuel-efficient.

But automakers and some industry analysts say such a greenhouse-gas standard would mean building smaller cars with smaller engines and more lightweight materials like plastic and aluminum.

“It wouldn’t be able to haul as much, it wouldn’t be able to two as much, it wouldn’t have the same passenger space, it wouldn’t have the same horsepower,” said Charles Territo, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which speaks for nine major foreign and domestic automakers, including Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp.

Territo said sticker prices could be forced up by $3,000. Car companies “would have a very difficult time selling that vehicle to customers,” he said.

In their lawsuit, automakers contend that California’s greenhouse-gas standard would not regulate pollution, but fuel economy – which is the sole responsibility of the federal government. The case is set to go to trial in January in federal court in Fresno, CA.

The California Air Resources Board argues that reducing gases that contribute to global warming will yield health benefits and that the requirement should only increase car costs by about $1,000. Only a handful of models currently meet the standard, including gas-electric hybrids.

Some Pennsylvania lawmakers have raised doubts about the wisdom of following standards set in California, and say the Rendell administration is overestimating any air-quality benefit.

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