The Fight Over Emissions From Heavy Trucks Moves To The Courts

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

Blame it on California. Its Air Resources Board (CARB) has been pushing to clean up emissions for diesel-powered heavy trucks for years. A significant amount of the goods that enter the United States from foreign countries every year arrive in ports in California. They cross the ocean in diesel-powered ships, are unloaded by diesel-powered cranes, are shunted around the receiving yards, then are hauled to inland transportation hubs by diesel-powered tractors before being distributed across the nation by other diesel-powered trucks. In addition, virtually all the trash-hauling trucks, cement mixers, dump trucks, school buses, and construction equipment in the Golden State are powered by diesel engines.

It is not a stretch to say the diesel engine is the workhorse of the American economy. But … the crud that pours out of the exhaust pipes of diesel trucks is poisonous to humans. Putting aside the carbon dioxide created when the fuel that makes them run is burned, diesels emit more nitrogen oxides and far more fine particulates that gasoline-powered trucks. If you are a regular reader of CleanTechnica, you already know those fine particulates are so small they pass directly into the human bloodstream in the lungs. They then get transported throughout the body and accumulate in our hearts, brains, livers, kidneys, and other organs. People who get cancer always want to know what caused it. It isn’t a stretch to imagine that treating the air we breathe as a sewer where the detritus from industrial activity gets dumped may be part of the problem.

CARB has enacted new rules that require the sale of more battery-powered heavy trucks. Several other states have adopted those rules as well, including New York. At first, heavy truck manufacturers pushed back against the rules, but in July 2023, they all signed on to what is known as the Clean Truck Partnership. The four principle members of the agreement are Daimler Truck North America, International Motors Inc. (formerly Navistar), PACCAR, and Volvo Group North America, as well as the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association. The four manufacturers are responsible for more than 99 percent of all heavy trucks (over 33,000 pounds) sold in America.

Heavy Trucks In New York

New York has adopted its own clean truck rules that closely follow the CARB model. In a December 2021 press release, the governor’s office said, “The new Advanced Clean Trucks rule finalized by the State Department of Environmental Conservation requires manufacturers of vehicles greater than 8,500 pounds to sell an increasing number of zero-emission vehicles in New York State. The regulation complements New York’s recently adopted legislation that established a goal for 100 percent of medium and heavy duty vehicles offered for sale or lease, or sold, or leased, for registration in the State be zero-emission by 2045, where feasible. The ACT regulation will also result in substantial reductions of particulates, nitrogen oxides, and toxic pollutant emissions in disadvantaged communities that have been disproportionally impacted by diesel truck pollution.”

That was then; this is now. The regulations begin to bite in earnest on January 1, 2025, and truck dealers in New York say they are not ready and won’t be for some time “Depending on the classification of the truck, somewhere between every one in every four to eight vehicles have to be zero-emission before you can get a waiver to sell the current diesel trucks,” Dan Penksa, vice president of Kenworth Northeast, told Channel 10 News in Rochester, NY.

“Dealers across the state will simply not survive the impact of the current ACT timeline,”added Kendra Hems, president of the Trucking Association of New York. “Not only does that affect the livelihood of hundreds of workers across the country, but it will significantly disrupt the supply chain. Without intervention, the ACT regulations will drive up costs and limit the trucking industry’s ability to deliver New Yorkers goods as efficiently and quickly as possible.”

Penksa says while his team is able to sell electric trucks, there currently isn’t a market for them because of the cost, range, and infrastructure issues. “In today’s world, [an electric] tractor trailer only goes about 200 miles with a full charge. Diesel tractors will go 600 miles a day.” He claims a truck carrying groceries from Rochester to Albany can make the round trip in 10 hours. In an electric truck, a driver can get to about Utica before it needs to recharge. “He’d have to sit there for six to eight hours to charge the battery, at that time, these guys only get 10 hours of service. So, then he has to sleep overnight there, drive it to Albany, unload his load, and then do it all over again on the way home.”

Hems points out that currently there isn’t a single charging station for battery-powered heavy-duty trucks anywhere on the New York Thruway. “If you can’t charge them, what are you going to do with them? You’re asking these people to buy these trucks, there’s no chargers out there, you can’t go more than 200 miles, so I’m not quite sure how the consumer is going to get their products,” Penksa says.

Those complaints are having an effect. “We obviously work to really push the industry in a direction where we need them to be but we’re also flexible and we build in flexibilities to these rules that we have to make sure that we’re hearing from industry and adapting,” says Sean Mahar, interim commissioner of the state’s department of environmental conservation. He says the state is looking at a three-year compliance timeline for the industry to adapt. “That’s where we will extend out that time frame to 2029 in order to provide that greater flexibility for engine manufacturers to come into compliance.”

By then, he hopes there will be a more robust charging infrastructure statewide, which may help companies get on board with the idea of buying zero-emission trucks. We would point out that hope is not a plan. In fact, it may be the opposite of a plan.

Nebraska AG Goes Full MAGA

In MAGA America, everything is negotiable. Don’t like a rule? Challenge it in court. Claim an illegal conspiracy to take away the God-given rights of red-blooded, true-blue, white Christian Americans. That’s what Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers is doing by claiming the four heavy truck manufacturers violated his state’s antitrust laws when they agreed to the Clean Truck Partnership.

“Unfortunately, it’s not just states and it’s not just the Biden administration,” Hilgers said on November 19, 2024, according to the Nebraska Examiner. “It is also companies, like these four defendants, who are working together to try to dictate national policies for Nebraskans and Americans. At the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is tear up this agreement and allow the free market and the nation’s elected representatives to determine the pace and scope of any change in our national logistics policy,” he said.

“This isn’t about cars,” Kent Grisham, the head of the Nebraska Trucking Association, said. “This is about a political agenda. This is about a movement that has developed a following and has backed companies into a corner that we simply cannot allow to be sustained.” He added some statistics to back up his claim. Charging a single Class 8 truck requires the same amount of electricity as the Empire State Building uses in an entire day, he said, but omitted to say that Nebraska currently has 27 data centers, any one of which uses far more electricity than a battery-powered truck, but facts don’t matter in MAGA America. Haitians are eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio. JD Vance said so and he is their guy, so it must be true.

No charging stations for Class 8 heavy trucks currently exist in Nebraska, Grisham said, and he’s unaware of any electric Class 8 truck moving through Nebraska, particularly as there are no charging stations along Interstate 80 or other major corridors. “We’re still at ground zero,” he said. Grisham estimated it would cost $624 billion to install charging stations nationwide and about $370 billion to improve the national distribution of electrical power. It would cost about $9 billion to improve Nebraska’s distribution network, and all because of scary electric trucks! Oh, the horror!

Those figures don’t include billions more in operational costs, the costs of the trucks or changes to labor, such as more frequent stops for recharging, Grisham said, and there remain major concerns over whether the nation can produce enough power for the new demand. He added the Nebraska Trucking Association isn’t against battery-powered vehicles, which can help reduce emissions, but there are technological advancements available for diesel engines that could make them run cleaner.

Then he trotted out the tired old shibboleth so popular among right-wing extremists. “We want an ‘everything’s on the table’ approach so that we can continue to make the great progress that we have in controlling emissions,” he said. The only thing he didn’t say from the MAGA approved talking points is that government should not be picking winners and losers in the marketplace. Expect that to be added to the compendium of complaints against battery-powered trucks in the very near future.

The Takeaway

It is fun to bash extremists and their willful ignorance, but there are some valid points among all the thunder and lightning. Charging infrastructure for heavy-duty electric trucks is non-existent in many parts of America. But, actually, no one is talking about transcontinental trips. The emphasis is on short-haul driving where the truck returns to the yard at the end of each day to charge overnight so that it is ready to work the following day. MAGA types can’t resist scaring the bejezus out of people, because it is a tactic that works so well.

The real issue is mandates. How effective are they and are there alternatives? In that regard, economic incentives usually are more effective than beating people over the head with mandates. The truth is that, just like gasoline, diesel fuel is heavily subsidized by a myriad of government policies so that the price at the pump is far below its true cost to society. Who pays for the the harm from fine particulates? You do. Who pays for the damage to human lungs caused by oxides of nitrogen? You do. Who pays for the cost associated with rising seas, more powerful storms, and wildfires associated with higher concentrations of carbon dioxide? You do. So why are those costs not included in the price of diesel at the pump?

We will leave you to ponder your answer to that question.