Heavy-duty truck emissions

FINAL: JANUARY 18, 2001

The vast majority of U.S. citizens live in areas that already comply with EPA's ozone and particulate matter (PM) ambient air standards; yet, to address the pockets of noncompliance, EPA has lowered exhaust emission standards for heavy-duty highway engines and vehicles

to less than one-- tenth the current standards. In addition, because the sulfur levels in fuel may harm the new engine technologies required to meet the lower standard, this rule also requires reduced sulfur levels in diesel fuel from the current cap of 500 parts per million (ppm) to a cap of 15 ppm.

These nationwide restrictions on emissions and diesel sulfur will impose large costs on American citizens without corresponding benefit. Consumers throughout the nation will face higher prices for consumer goods and public transportation assuming EPA's requirements are even feasible. In fact, EPA had to assume that unproven emissions control technologies will develop rapidly and at low cost to make its rule even remotely feasible. Feasibility also depends critically on highly optimistic assumptions about the cost and investment behavior of the suppliers of highway diesel fuel.

President Clinton made a commitment, in a July 16, 1997, memorandum to EPA Administrator Carol Browner, that the costs of achieving ambient air standards would not exceed $10,000 per ton. Yet the costs of reducing diesel sulfur to the levels required by this rule would exceed $80,000 per ton.