FEATURE Former chief scientist in one federal agency, and now a Washington, D.C.-based consultant on materials and energy, seriously questions how much we as a nation can afford to be . . . raise the total penalty to something between 750,000 and 1,500,000 barrels per day. The Achilles heel of all these regulations is the one for NO, for which there is no demonstrated need or-supporting evidence to say that it should b e removed to the levels now on the books. The American public has so far failed to grasp the principal problem of a permanent change in their way of life and certainly have been unable to adjust to the petroleum supply levels of 1973-74. Times have changed since the passage of the first environmental laws when no one dared vote against any law with the word environment in it and when it was assumed that our affluent life would be able to achieve the goals of zero risk to the health of the American public at any cost. The thundering vote which passed the Alaska Pipeline. Bill 380 to 4 shows that public sentiment can change drastically in a very short time especially when it affects the gasoline tanks of 100 million American drivers. Assessing the petroleum situation
Earl T. Hayes
Consultant, Silver Spring, Md. 20901 For want of a nail the shoe was lost is a well-known story leading up to how a battle was lost. It could well be that we have a similar situation coming to resolution this year which might do irreparable damage to the whole environmental movement and gains of the past seven or eight years. The particular nail is the automobile emission standards which bid fair to be the most expensive experiment of all history. The cost could be as high as $20 billion a year and the fuel penalty translates to the loss of several hundred thousand jobs in a gasoline starved economy. There is no clear cut evidence as to why America should be called upon to pay such a price. In the few years that have passed since the passage of this act there has been a radical change in the U.S. energy demand and supply picture. The price of petroleum has more than tripled and the whole economic structure of the country is facing drastic change in view of soaring petroleum prices. The fuel penalty incurred in reaching the present standards is now known to be at least 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day and attaining the 1976 standards will
The U.S. is in a bind now and forever as regards petroleum. With a 16th of the world's population we consume over a third of its total energy. However, we possess only 5% of the world's petroleum reserves, and the Arabs and Middle Eastern nations have at least 53%. We are heavily dependent on a liquid and gaseous hydrocarbon economy since 44% of our total energy use is in the form of petroleum and 34% in natural gas. We are particularly vulnerable in petroleum because 25% of the national total energy is used for transportation, and there are simply no nearterm .alternatives for replacing the internal combustion engine which i s used in more than 100 million automobiles in America today. We have not been a prudent or forward planning nation in almost any sense when it came to determining what the automobile population ought to be in terms of a national resource economy. The insatiable petroleum appetite of the last 10 years, and the probable course for the next 6-10 years is shown (Table 1 ) . Since 1920 the use of petroleum has compounded at a rate of 4% a year gradually growing to 6% in the last two years. What this means is that our demands for petroleum were growing each year at a rate of a million barrels per day. Also. since we passed the peak of production that we could ever hope to attain from this country's oil fields and those of Alaska and the Continental Shelf some years ago, all this increase had to come by way of imports. We have the situation then that whereas'our imports were about 20% of our petroleum requirements 6-10 years ago, they have risen to 6.7 million barrels per day or 38% of our total use. In terms of dollars the effect o f the tightening of the noose by the Arabs on October 20, 1973, pulled the rug out from under all known economics. In the years just passed the average price of oil ranged from $3.00-$3.50 a barrel. Even last year, after prices started to rise, we had an oil import bill of Only about 59 billion, However, in the year 1974 alone, just to buy us last year's imported oil will cost $18-25 billion. The alternatives are quite clear. I f we continue to Import oil at the increasing rate of the last three years our oil import deficit will rise to more than $30 billion in 1976 and $40 billion in 1980. It is obvious, therefore, that there will be no growth in oil imports and that we are faced with a steady state economy, otherwise known as a zero gain of the gross national product. Valume 8, Number 9. September 1974
807
T h e legal requirements In the 1960's it became apparent that with the car population growing each year something had to be done about the tail pipe products of the internal combustion engine. Three gases-HC (hydrocarbons), CO (carbon monoxide), and NOx (nitrogen oxides)-were identified as requiring control for reasons of health and air quality. A digest of these is shown in Table 2. The original standards were set by arbitrary decision at 90-97% of pre-1968 values and have no positive chemical or physiological basis for the lower limits. They are so much tougher than the heretofore stringent California standards that the term "overkill" has been used. I n a floor speech June 18, 1973, Sen. William Brock ( R Tenn.) said ". , .but a s former EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus has stated, it has become apparent that the data on which some of these decisions were made are either out of date, or were inaccurate in the first place." He continued, " I t is now obvious that it is not necessary to reduce automobile emissions of nitrogen oxide to
a level of 0.4 gram per mile in order to have a safe and healthful atmosphere. The figure is probably too low by a factor of three or four. Yet, by setting that figure in 1970, Congress has had an almost unimaginable effect on American industry. The result of that single figure has been that oil companies have found it necessary to divert a substantial portion of their production to no-lead gasoline, which requires an approximately 7% greater consumption of energy o n their part. At the same time, this figure has severely restricted the options of the automobile makers in the kinds of antipollution devices they might use on their cars. I t excluded, for example, the promising stratified charge engines, as well as thermal reactor systems. And now millions of dollars later, we are told the figure wasn't even right in the first place." Along the same line Rowe in The Wall Street J o u r n a l of September 28, 1973, reported, "It's now almost a total certainty that Congress erred in setting the stringent auto emission standards of the 1970 Clean Air Act. And unless it amends the law this session, consumers will have to pay for the mistake for more than a decade." There's no need for this, as testimony before the House subcommittee on public health and environment has revealed. Perhaps the only completely independent and objective source that has studied the issue told the panel that the federal emission standards are tougher than necessary. Representing the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Motor Vehicle Emissions, Prof. Arthur Stern of the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health testified, "An emission limit for CO approximately three times as high as that promulgated by EPA for 1975 vehicles would give assurance of not exceeding the eight808
Environmental Science & Technology
hour air quality standard of 9 ppm CO more than once a year.. . . Present federal emission requirements of 0.41 gpm HC and 0.4 gpm NO, seem more restrictive than need be by a factor of about three , , , These conclusions suggest that the 90% reduction of CO and NO, specified in Sec. 202 of the Clean Air Act may be more than is required to meet the present national air quality standards for CO, NO,, and oxidant." There was fairly rapid progress from '1968 to 1973 in lowering the pollutants by making various changes in the engine carburetion, compression ratio, and other modifications but other approaches are needed to meet the future lower standards. This takes the form of a platinum catalyst in the exhaust system to convert the pollutants to less noxious forms. Here we come to the crux of the whole automobile emission problem (aside from the indefensible low standards). Lead fouls up the catalyst rapidly and must be removed from gasoline. This is a real contradiction because lead in the form of a chemical additive has been the greatest conservation measure ever de-
vised for giving increased engine performance to the American automobile over the last 5 0 years. There is another reason for taking the lead out and that is the unsubstantiated fear that the fine particles discharged by the cars will eventually produce a health hazard. Over the long term this removal remains a desirable goal. Rapid technology development by reputable firms has developed filters in the last three years that can be installed on all cars both new and old. Even now an 80% recovery of the lead appears feasible and this can certainly be improved. There is the bonus that the leaded filters would be available for saving lead by recycling. True enough, they would cost $20-40 for a life installation but would not incur an energy penalty. The lead filter developmeht appears to be far ahead of the catalytic converter development. I n short, modern American technology has solved the lead problem in a much more satisfactory manner than EPA proposals or present regulations, both from the standpoint of technology and conservation.
The costs I t must be remembered that the 450,000-600,000 barrels of oil per day fuel penalty has only brought us to January 1974. Going on to meet the statutory standards of 1976 will result in an additional fuel penalty of the same magnitude. In the late 1970's then we have low estimates of the loss of 700,000-850,000 barrels of oil per day by EPA and high estimates of over 1,000,000 barrels per day by the Bureau of Mines and 1,750,000 by industry. In a letter to S c i e n c e February 15, 1974, Naumann gives the following estimate of these costs, "If we assume that 10 million cars are sold each year, the total cost for these devices (in 1975) will be $3.14 billion per
year. Replacement of catalytic converters every 50.000 miles requires an amortized cost of $40 per year for each car. The total annual cost will thus be $4 billion. The fuel consumption of cars manufactured in 1973 i s already 30% higher than that of 1970 models and we are nowhere near meeting the 1976 emission standards. Even if we assume that these standards can be met with no further sacrifice in economy, the cost of the 30% increase in fuel consumption i s more than $12 billion at current prices. Thus, we can estimate that the implementation of the 1976 automotive emission standards will cost approximately $20 billion per year." The real price of this fuel penalty is its effect on the Gross National Product and unemployment. The National Petroleum Council in a report of November 15, 1973. estimated that a loss of 2 million barrels a day of petroleum imports would cut the GNP $48 billion and raise unemployment by roughly a million people. The low estimates of fuel penalty for emission controls could mean the loss of 100,000-250,000 jobs. the high estimates are several
..
step in solving the energy problem is to inform society of the cost of environmental and ecological programs and allow the people to choose. i f people want the end products of such programs they will have to pay the cost in higher energy prices. Without adequate information, society will not be able to decide which programs are worth the cost and which are not. . . Such a system seems preferable to allowing a bureaucrat to decide for them." At this time there appears to be no change in the EPA objective to enforce the statutory standards in 1977. This position is holding in spite of the fact that numerous people have questioned the validity of the data on which the standards were based, that the assumptions made on the future car population are now known to be in serious error, that we are approaching a no-growth economy, that the cost of imported oil has risen from $7 billion to $18-25 billion between 1973 and 1974, and that the total cost of attaining the statutory standards i s of the order of $20 billion a year with the accompanying unemployment of perhaps hundreds of thousands of people. We were
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TABLE 1 TABLE 2
Petroleum statistics (Millions of gallons per day) 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1973 1976 1980 D
8.8 9.6 10.6 11.3 11.2 10.7 .10.2
11.P
2.3 2.6
2.8 3.4
4.8
6.P 6.7 6.7
Automobile emission standards HC
11.2
12.4 13.8 15.1 16.4 17.3 16.9 18.5
Nogrowth inirnports. ~lnCiUde5Aia5kaoil
hundred thousand. This latter would be in the range of a $20-35 billion drop in !he GNP.
The benefits There is no clear cut case that the 1973 auto emission levels need to be decreased. In a March 29, 1973, floor speech Sen. Philip Hart (D-Mich.) originally a strong supporter of the Clear Air Act, called for its re-examination and stated that little time was given to cost-benefit questions when the laws were passed. He said, "There is no sound scientific evidence that the '75-'76 standards will do anything to improve health. I f it can credibly be said four years from now that we have caused the expenditure of billions to no purpose or to questionable purpose, the clean air cause wiii be dealt a blow from which it wiii be difficult to recover." Likewise, no direct evidence has ever been presented for taking lead out of gasoline. This was well stated by Dr. William A. Vogiey, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior, in a December 7, 1973, letter to Mr. Alvin L. Alm. Assistant Administrator for Planning and Management, EPA. "In the final analysis, these draft regulations continue to threaten a substantial impact on our Nation's limited oil resources. Considering that the conclusions relative to the health issue are largely judgmental and somewhat subjective and the health effect of airborne lead is a controversial question that is unlikely to be resolved satisfactorily one way or the other by available scientific evidence, we cannot agree that any impact on our inadequate fuel supply is justified. Analysis of these impacts and reasonable alternatives to the limiting of lead remain the same as stated in our previous review." The confrontation
No one has ever really told the American public what these costs are all about. Phillip Gramm writing in The Wall Street Journal November 30. 1973, said, "Another
Pre 1968' 1973 1975 (original) 1975 (interim) 1976 (original) 1976 (interim) 1971
CO NO, (grams per mile)
8.6 3 0.41 1.5 0.41 0.41 0.41
87.5 28 3.4 15 3.4 3.4 3.4
3.5
3.1 3.1 3.1 0.4 2.0 0.4
* Nostandards
never that rich as a nation and in the developing priority batfle in social. productivity, and environmental gains, a more realistic assessment of the true benefits will have to be made. Up to now, the general public has been in good agreement with all the environmental causes. Clean water and sulfur dioxide removal efforts have no specific emotional effect, but when 100 million motorists are further curtailed in their driving they will rebel. An hysterical outburst could demand complete repeal of the Clean Air Act or at least the auto emission controls section. Remember two things: The American public only has an attention span of a few years and witness the overwhelming vote on the Alaska Pipeline Bill. i n this new bail game we are not a rich enough nation to pay $20 billion a year and have several hundred thousand out of work for future health standards which have no solid basis in fact. Unless there is a rapid meeting of the minds on what this all costs and the American public is given a voice in the selection of auto emission standards, we will witness a tearing down of present laws. Total repeal would be disastrous, for no matter what the new way of life that we must adjust to in the coming years, the quality of that life will be just as important as today.
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Earl T. Hayes is a consultant on rnaterials a n d energy. Until recently he was chief scientist of the Bureau of M n e s 11 Ihe 1 S DriJartmrnr 01 rhe lnrer!or where he soeni rnosi 01 t i s i)foless C'na career. Dr haves I S d fcgrsrered ,xolessio!ral o i g fleer ana nas oeen conccrnea w m plarrri ng. eL diudi n g aria orrscrsng r e s e x c h ;Irogran-s in rne itre;, 01 energy minins me,u. clrg) ano r r nera ~ w p ~ , Volume 8. Number 9, September 1974
809
