Clean Cities ozone air quality attainment and maintenance strategies that employ alternative fuel vehicles, with special emphasis on natural gas and propane

Air quality administrators across the nation are coming under greater pressure to find new strategies for further reducing automotive generated non-methane hydrocarbon (NMHC) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established stringent emission reduction requirements for ozone non-attainment areas that have driven the vehicle industry to engineer vehicles meeting dramatically tightened standards. This paper describes an interim method for including alternative-fueled vehicles (AFVs) in the mix of strategies to achieve local and regional improvements in ozone air quality. This method could be used until EPA can develop the Mobile series of emissions estimation models to include AFVs and until such time that detailed work on AFV emissions totals by air quality planners and emissions inventory builders is warranted. The paper first describes the challenges confronting almost every effort to include AFVs in targeted emissions reduction programs, but points out that within these challenges resides an opportunity. Next, it discusses some basic relationships in the formation of ambient ozone from precursor emissions. It then describes several of the salient provisions of EPA`s new voluntary emissions initiative, which is called the Voluntary Mobile Source Emissions Reduction Program (VMEP). Recent emissions test data comparing gaseous-fuel light-duty AFVs with their gasoline-fueled counterparts is examined to estimate percent emissions reductions achievable with CNG and LPG vehicles. Examples of calculated MOBILE5b emission rates that would be used for summer ozone season planning purposes by an individual Air Quality Control Region (AQCR) are provided. A method is suggested for employing these data to compute appropriate voluntary emission reduction credits where such (lighter) AFVs would be acquired. It also points out, but does not quantify, the substantial reduction credits potentially achievable by substituting gaseous-fueled for gasoline-fueled heavy-duty vehicles. Finally, it raises and expands on the relevance of AFVs and their deployment to some other provisions embedded in EPA`s current guidance for implementing 1-hour NAAQS--standards which currently remain in effect--as tools to provide immediate reductions in ozone, without waiting for promised future clean technologies.