This is a perfect demonstration of how short-sighted US environmental regulation is hurting the environment, limiting consumer choice, and contributing to energy insecurity.

Clean diesel vehicles could impact fuel demand in the US very quickly - the vehicles are currently available, and for vehicle mile driven, use 30-40% less fuel. Yes, they have a nitrogen problem, but the environmental benefits of selling 1M vehicles in 2008 with 30-40% less fuel consumption are ignored.

Also, not lining up with Japanese and European standards is wasteful and causes unnecessary engineering and product development. Together with not lining up with Japanese and European safety standards, it is a protectionist regime that 1)lowers buyer choice by making it uneconomic to bring innovative vehicles to the US market, and 2) leads US manufacturers to make stupid decisions in vehicle development, meaning no export market for the output from US factories.

Net result: higher fuel consumption, more money paid to unstable states worldwide, higher expenses for high mileage vehicles in development, manufacturing and service, less consumer choice, and dying US manufacturers. Truly sad.

Even though I disagree with a lot of US policies, I think here it is the Europeans who are causing problems by not lining up with US regulations. I believe CARB regs came out way before Europe started cleaning up their dirty diesels (Just go take a tour of some European cities, look at the black buildings, and breathe the foul air. Then you'll know their that CARB did it right.)

Yes, diesels are often quoted as being 30% more efficient, and that may be if you look at MPG or l/100km type measurements. However, that doesn’t take into account the ~15% fuel density difference. If you look at CO2 emissions (relevant for global warming and new European regulations), that diesel advantage shrinks quite a bit.

Clean Diesels canNOT affect US carbon emissions very quickly. Fuel savings of new technologies take time before they make much difference, since the current gas guzzlers will stay on the road for over 10 years to come. Let's do some simple math here:
- Assume 10 year car lifetime (actually it's more)
- Assume diesels make up 20 % of all new cars sold starting next year (no way in Heck!)
It would take 3 years to achieve even a 1 % reduction in CO2 for the entire fleet of US cars!

Here's the quickest way to CO2 reduction. Reeducate the 90% of drivers who drive like idiots (incentivized by a big gas tax). Programs for truck and train operators have achieved very significant fuel savings for commercial operators that way. It's no problem getting EPA mileages in most cars, and if everyone just did that, we'd have a 10% CO2 reduction instantly.

Jeezus, yet another fool who apparently truly believes CARB can do no wrong. I'm tired of these idiotic anecdotes of how horrible Euro cities are because of diesels.

I was recently in Vienna, a city VERY heavily populated with diesels. There was NO problem, no significant bother of any sort. It's not a matter of "some can smell it some cant." My nose is quite sensitive, and I'm very familiar with the smells of both gas and diesel engine operation. Frankly, I can be just as disgusted at either, and I don't like certain American urbanities with lots of older gas-powered stinkers making me choke.

The energy density difference between diesel/gas is about 10%, not 15 - get your facts straight, or dont exaggerate. 10% more energy per gallon, but using around 25-40% less gallons.

Your CO2-impact math doesnt make sense either. If Diesels were to sell in large portions of new-car sales, it may very well have a fast and significant impact. It's simply a matter of the man-hours of driving that the public does, and what portion of the US driving public is driving diesels. Either way, whatever amount of time it will take, the sooner we start building up, the better. It could very well have a good levelling effect right now. Of course, these days China has or will have a bigger impact on global supply/demand/pricing.

People are going to drive how they are going to drive, unless you enforce punishments to stop them. Might as well give them an inherently more efficient engine to do it with.

Finally, people complain that T2B5 diesels arent "as clean" as gas cars. That's mindless hogwash - they will be as clean and cleaner than very many of the gas vehicles made within the last 5 years. Certainly, they can offer huge reductions in VOCs compared to gassers, specifically CO and HCs, especially evaportive emissions, all of which are very substantial components of our air quality problems.

Thus, there is little reason to start selling diesels as soon as possible. I dont know that Euro 5 or 6 is "good enough" but I see no problem making reasonable compromises on emissions based on the fact that gas and diesel tech have different strengths/weaknesses. For example, trading diesel's slightly greater NOx and soot for much better economy.

Yes, I support clean diesel and hybrids and whatever else can get our carbon burning activities down. Just because it doesn't make a huge difference right away doesnt' mean we shouldn't do it. I was simply pointing out the fallacy of those believing that diesel (or hybrids or ethanol or biodiesel or whatever) can immediately solve our problems.

As for my math, you'll notice that I made VERY optimistic assumptions, and so the factors you mention are already factored in.

But, you are totally wrong on the energy density question. It is in fact 15 % energy density difference, not 10. Lots of websites show this to be 15%. For example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel#_note-2

diesel's 15% higher volumetric energy density results in 15% higher greenhouse gas emissions per liter compared to gasoline,[3]

[3] Emission Facts: Average Carbon Dioxide Emissions Resulting from Gasoline and Diesel Fuel. US Environmental Protection Agency (2005).

And yes, CARB can do wrong (and has) -for example, they should make the HC emissions regulations much tougher, since gasoline vehicles are bad with that. But the bottom line is that they are the trend setters in regulating smog emissions (and have tried to regulate CO2, but the US isn't letting them).
Sure, the European are way ahead on CO2 and should be given credit for that.

O.K.-

Here in green California (and the 5 other me-too states) I can buy a 10mpg Hummer H1 or 12mpg Hummer H2 because they are "clean," yet I cannot purchase a 49mpg VW TDI because it is uses diesel fuel and is, therefor, "dirty."

Somewhere the fact that the TDI delivers 4 to 5 times better fuel efficiency matters not?!

Reminds me of the rolling black-outs we had here a few years back. "Powerplants are bad- let's pass a 10-year moratorium on new powerplant construction in California." Never mind that electrical demand continued to grow... you know the rest of that story!

I understand the green extreme's good intentions, but they're awfully short-sighted.

DieselHybrid: way off topic here, but I'm curious. Were those rolling black-outs because of a shortage of generating capacity or Enron playing with the grid, or both?

'Here in green California (and the 5 other me-too states) I can buy a 10mpg Hummer H1 or 12mpg Hummer H2 because they are "clean," yet I cannot purchase a 49mpg VW TDI because it is uses diesel fuel and is, therefor, "dirty."'

CARB has been trying for some time to regulate CO2, which would fix this, but the feds won't let them.

The energy density difference between diesel/gas is about 10%, not 15 - get your facts straight, or dont exaggerate.

It's actually between 11.0% and 12.9%, depending on whether you're using higher or lower heating values. The CO2 emissions coefficient for diesel is 14.4% higher for diesel compared to gasoline.

The rest of your argument is just the same old Team Diesel line -- no need to respond to it.

Here in green California (and the 5 other me-too states) I can buy a 10mpg Hummer H1 or 12mpg Hummer H2 because they are "clean," yet I cannot purchase a 49mpg VW TDI because it is uses diesel fuel and is, therefor, "dirty."'

No such thing as a 49 mpg VW TDI.

Thanks for pointing out the number - 11% volume-specific energy density difference sounds right. Regardless, even if effective CO2 emission per gallon is 15% greater(carbon content vs energy content), it's still easily outweighed by the thermal efficiency advantage. Plus, it's not all about C02 - energy efficiency still matters at the pump.

"No such thing as a 49 mpg VW TDI"

Youre either not serious, careless, or just woefully ignorant. There are many VW diesel vehicles with mixed and highway mileages well above 49USMPG. US-spec VWs have been achieving over 50mpg highway for years.

"Team Diesel line"

I'm just sane, and choose to consider ALL aspects of a technology, unlike the pompous, short-sighted, hypochondriacal, fawns of the CARB priests.

"Trend setters" ?? CARB?? Hardly. Bureaucrats who are running out of a job description, and compromising on various other emissions cleanup opportunities while flaunting increasingly irrelevant reductions of already tiny emissions quantities, particularly of NOx. And their challenge was solving California's smog issues, which arent necessarily identical to other geographical regions of the planet. Their continued neglect of the imbalance of VOC vs NOx emission control is hard demonstrable evidence that actually improving air quality isnt their top priority.

CARB is more a political entity today than antything, and it's attempts to limit CO2 ought to be viewed with skepticism and scrutiny. I'm tired of the bloody fools who consider them some kind of crusading environmental savior. They have tended to represent the extreme-environmentalist position, which is largely irrational and dangerous. The CO2 control attempts are a perfect example. Their, and any, schemes for regulating CO2 are invariably fraught with serious problems and consensually unacceptable compromises.

"No such thing as a 49 mpg VW TDI."

Oh really?

49 mpg US = 4.8 L/100 km. Several VW TDI models over the years have had Transport Canada ratings in that range. Some a bit more, some a bit less.

The one in my driveway uses 5.2 - 5.5 L/100 km in the real world with my driving patterns and my lead foot. And that's on commercially-available biodiesel, which has a bit less energy content than standard diesel fuel.

Youre either not serious, careless, or just woefully ignorant. There are many VW diesel vehicles with mixed and highway mileages well above 49USMPG. US-spec VWs have been achieving over 50mpg highway for years.

Really? Please go to fueleconomy.gov and prove that. You'll come up empty.

I'm just sane, and choose to consider ALL aspects of a technology, unlike the pompous, short-sighted, hypochondriacal, fawns of the CARB priests.

Well, that's a measured, sane comment.

Oh really?

Yes, really.

49 mpg US = 4.8 L/100 km. Several VW TDI models over the years have had Transport Canada ratings in that range. Some a bit more, some a bit less.

I'm using the current EPA combined fuel economy ratings. Not Canadian highway fuel economy.

The one in my driveway uses 5.2 - 5.5 L/100 km in the real world with my driving patterns and my lead foot. And that's on commercially-available biodiesel, which has a bit less energy content than standard diesel fuel.

Then you must not do much urban driving and/or drive very well. In the real world, these vehicles tend to average around 40 mpg for all people.

Jack,

Good policy is not made in a vacuum.

I care about CO2, which diesels produce less of per mile driven. I also care about vehicle choice, which the CARB idiots dramatically reduced with their irrational prioritization of nitrogen. Talk about the tail wagging the dog! Finally, I care about energy security and energy policy, both of which say that lowering consumption of petroleum products is the greatest good.

The CARB purists have lowered consumers' range of choices, driven the lowest Co2 products out of the US market, and protected the US automakers into a coma from which they may never recover, while driving more dollars into Saudi and Iranian pockets, out of the pockets of working Americans.

In the process, they have held up valuable innovation and diminished their credibility, which hurts us pragmatic environmentalists.

Imagine if ten years ago the decision had been to push for Euro level diesel, beginning with accelerating desulfurization. Our fleet would now already be producing 2-3% less greenhouse gases, on track to reducing greenhouse gases by 5-7% overall. Isn't that the goal? Not only that, working Americans would be paying less for gasoline, and there would be less support for the current military complex based on controlling access to oil and "protecting" us from terrorists funded almost exclusively with oil money.

We could have made much better policy choices under Clinton. Once Bush proved untrustworthy, the die was cast and we were stuck, because nobody would trust those dissembling bastards in a process of relaxing standards. So here we are.

I don't care what mileage a TDI gets. Until the toxic particulates are dealt with, I don't want one driving in front of me. Maybe if the diesel zealots had to breath their own exhaust, they would deal with the fact that CARB exists and most people are better off for it.

Diesel Particulate Filters and the required UltraLowSulpherDfuel have barely been out for a year. Cetane ratings need to start moving toward 50, which modern diesels and EGRs prefer and will make T2B5like specs easier to achieve(and make Gs challenge possible). If our new unelected international neonannies at CARB need bigger fish to fry, they could go after off-road and marine much more aggressively.
George, when you make it back to the rock, look around and see what DID NOT make it there without diesel.

dollared-
Complete agreement with both your posts. Would add...We could have have made much better policy choices even under Carter...(the Iranians threw a wrench there also). Once Reagan(Hannitys #1 American)was elected, the die was cast.

MB is offering BLUETEC in Europe long before regulations force it to simply to keep the German ueber-greens off its back while it ramps up clean diesel exports to the US.

Expect BLUETEC to be an expensive option that most European customers will choose not to buy just yet unless there is a government subsidy. In terms of absolute NOx reductions, getting an old Euro 1,2 or 3 diesel off the road is far more effective that going over and above Euro 5.

go to beijing and you´ll cry for carb

We need an appropriate mix between gasoline and diesel vehicles in order to make the most out of petroleum refining. We'll be better off in the post petroleum era with cleaner fuels such as electricity, methane, hydrogen, etc...

joe blow,

Welcome to the recognition that CARBite bureaucracy is a malevolent orgainization as presently constituted, desperately seeking job justification through new and and other perverse nonsense.

Like any other governmental bureacracy, it has been taken over by the wholly unrealistic true-beleivers. In this case, idiots who are concerned to force a Hydrogen FCV, fleet upon us. All they can see is the transportaion end; not the hydrogen generation which more than wipes out any theoretical improvment with our present energy sources.

But CARB is older than most such beureacracies; the others are becoming just as sclerotic and pointless. Give them time; and then fear the consequences.

The only reason diesels have lower VOCs is that diesel fuel is molecularly heavier. PZEV standards force the removal most of the VOC diesel advantage and then some.

Unlike you I am open-minded. I welcome clean diesels; I would welcome a tougher "ZEV ICE" standard that can readily be achieved by the manufacturers, as they attest. American emission controllers have not allowed a diesel fleet for LDVs. Arguing about it is now academic. The T2B5 diesels start arriving in showrooms in a few months. There is no need to argue about it anymore.

And I include "CO2" regulation in that CARB nonsense. Any scientist who reads the Science papers of the 70s and 80s has to have some concern about a possible phenomenon called Global Warming. Any scientist who reads the Scientific papers of the late '90s and 2000s, would close the book on the supposed problem, just as the Science community and the IPCC is beginning to do.

Alas, Politicians, like generals prepare to fight the last war. So they are the last to get the message. Politicallly oriented Science repoting still boasts of GW concerns. Once again they are a day late and a dollar short.

CARB politicians should not be wasting its time with CO2 regulation; it has nothing to do with pollution and emsision of toxic substances.

CO2 is a necessary trace gas for the Flora of the planet. Else North Ameica would not be the world wide sink for atmsopheric CO2 that it is measured to be. This is because the North American reforestation eats out not only our anthropogenic CO2 contribution but also some of the rest of the world's as well.

the North American reforestation eats out not only our anthropogenic CO2 contribution but also some of the rest of the world's as well.

Here on planet Earth...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png

Jack,

This proves nothing. Look at the CO2 levels of the air exiting North America and compare it to the air blowing in.

Besides modern Science increasingly attributes CO2 levels to the variable solubility of CO2 in the Oceans. Anthropogenic sources contribute but 1-2% of the natural atmospheric Carbon flux and the atmosphere holds only 8-9% (generously) of the carbon in Earth's carbon sinks. The movement of CO2 between these sinks varies by 40% or so every year. A 1 or 2% delta of an 9% contribution, get lost in the flux measurements between the sinks which Science does not yet understand thoroughly.

If you read any current Science papers, as opposed to Pop Science stuff, you would know that ice core measurements to establish "normal" CO2 are now thoroughly in scientific question. Did you know that the Earth's atmosphere had over 440 PPM in 1815? And no the world did not die in a universal global warming heat wave. It froze. And 300 ppm in 1880 and lots of other readings in response to natural heating and cooling since 1810 when modern scientific measurements started being kept. The average CO2 level in the 1800s seems to be about 340 ppm, not the 290 ppm that ice cores show, but it varied all over the place.

BTW that 440 ppm reading was an aberration due to the masive Mt. Tambora eruption; despite the high CO2, SOx compounds produced "The Year with No Summer", that killed several millions in the following famine. Fresh analysis of the over 90,000 measurements of the constituents of the atmosphere by some 600+ scientific teams establish these readings.

This scientific data was discredited by a Scientist in the 1950s after a cursory look, and nobody challenged him. And nobody bothered to look at the old data in a comprehensive fashion until the last few years,either. Among the scientific teams to measure and track the atmosphere were at least FOUR Nobel Science Prize winners during that period.

The chair of the organization Dr. Zbigniew Zaworowski, that became the IPCC, has said that all the ice core data needs a major review in light of new findings. Much Science predicated on it is, or may be, erroneous. He ought to know since he is a world authority on ice cores.

By the way that Mauna Loa data was re-analyzed in light of the old observations that in addition to known daily and yearly change in the atmospheric CO2 flux, there was also a very small lunar monthly change. When the Mauna Loa data was examined, damn if it didn't show up in the data as well, and was just never noticed. This alone puts paid to the notion that these early measurements were not accurate.

How do you make Bluetec work in the U.S.? Chck through the complete production and supply chain for Adblu spec urea solution. The economics and carbon footpriint for this system is not going to work here (I don't think it works in Europe either.) Look at the big picture. NOX needs to be reduced through a different technology.

This proves nothing. Look at the CO2 levels of the air exiting North America and compare it to the air blowing in.

Hahahaha!! I didn't know that North America was a box with two windows, with CO2 meters on each end.

You're a funny man.

It's all beside the point, since you said that North America sequesters all the world's anthropogenic CO2 emissions, yet global CO2 levels keep rising over time.

Funny, funny man. Very entertaining.