Revved-up emissions rules hit resistance

Nearly 170,000 new cars and trucks hit the road in Minnesota each year, and how to control what comes out of their tailpipes has sparked a bitter struggle at the Legislature.

A bill to sharply limit pollution from new vehicles starting with 2012 models has been hailed as a potent measure against climate change. But it will probably raise the price of new cars $1,000 or more, and opponents of the bill, including the state's auto dealers, say it threatens the state's ethanol industry.

Under the proposal, Minnesota would join a dozen other states that have adopted California vehicle-emissions standards, which would cut more than twice as much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as federal requirements.

Rep. Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park and author of the Minnesota bill, said the measure would save Minnesotans money, improve their health and help to meet newly revised federal air-quality standards for smog.

"These are the vehicles consumers want," Hortman said. "We want more fuel economy and we want less pollution, and we're not getting those choices right now."

But Scott Lambert, executive vice president of the Minnesota Auto Dealers Association, said that adopting the California greenhouse-gas standards is a "radical proposal" driven by environmental extremists.

"The bill is the start of an attempt by the environmental movement to take Minnesotans out of their trucks," he said.

The question of cleaner cars landed in the Legislature's lap after the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group recommended that the state follow California's lead to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in Minnesota. The standard requires auto manufacturers to phase in new and emerging technologies to reduce greenhouse gases from noncommercial cars and light-duty trucks by 30 percent between 2009 and 2016.

To date, the federal government has blocked California from enacting its tougher limits, but all three major presidential candidates say they would allow the limits to go forward.

Tom Cackette, chief deputy executive officer of the California Air Resources Board, estimated that the changes will add about $1,000 to the cost of a new passenger car or truck. "Offsetting that higher cost is substantially improved fuel economy," he said. "In fact, the savings in fuel is enough to pay back that $1,000 initial cost in three years at today's gasoline prices."

All hybrid-fuel cars on the market already meet the California greenhouse-gas standards, said J. Drake Hamilton, science policy director for Fresh Energy, a St. Paul-based advocacy group.

The rule does not dictate which technologies automakers should use in new cars, but that their emissions must be lower. Cackette said the change would not affect vehicles' size, performance, utility or availability in California.

Last year Congress passed an energy bill that requires automakers to increase the average fuel efficiency of their cars to 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

'Too far, too fast'

Auto manufacturers say that those changes provide enough challenges to meet, and that the California model is the wrong public policy choice. "You're looking at implementing a program that goes too far, too fast," said Laura Dooley, manager of state government affairs at the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, speaking last week to a panel of Minnesota lawmakers.

Lambert said that following California would also mean that manufacturers would restrict their shipments to Minnesota of less fuel-efficient vehicles: heavy trucks, sport utility vehicles and even some flexible-fueled cars and trucks that can burn E-85, a gasoline made of 85 percent ethanol.

"Like a stalk of corn caught in a drought, Minnesota's ethanol industry would dry up and blow away," he said.

Those criticisms have convinced ethanol producers and corn growers to oppose the bill, but Jim Erkel, program director at the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, said the auto industry's claims are false.

"These guys are mixing and matching their arguments in a way that's designed to bamboozle everybody," Erkel said. "Part of their effort is to make it so confusing that they can talk ethanol producers into opposing something that probably is going to benefit them greatly."

Erkel said California has more than 300,000 flexible-fuel vehicles on the road and is developing an E-85 system to fuel them. California also consumes more than a billion gallons of ethanol annually, he said, and will nearly double that in the next two years as gas stations switch from 5.7 percent ethanol blends now sold in the state to 10 percent blends.

The bill to adopt California's standard has been debated and passed by several House and Senate committees, and is expected to receive additional hearings later this week.

Tom Meersman • 612-673-7388