We Have Toxic Winter Air Again On The Utah Wasatch Front. What Are We Doing About It? – CleanTechnica

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In winter on the Utah Wasatch Front, on average we have 5 days, particularly in Salt Lake County, when the air is unsafe to breathe. There are another 18 days, on average, when the air is only “bad” to breathe. You will find naysayers like our President Elect who will question whether global warming is real, and even if it is (and even if it’s dangerous), is it really caused by humans burning fossil fuels? However, even the most delusional skeptics have to grant that the toxic air that is a danger to human health, particularly on multiple winter days on the Utah Wasatch Front, the Colorado Front Range, and in Metropolitan Los Angeles, is caused by burning fossil fuels — and in particular by motor vehicles.

What Are We Doing In Utah To Mitigate The Problem?

Salt Lake County has invested in 42.5 miles of electric streetcar/light rail (TRAX) tracks with 50 stations. TRAX runs extremely efficiently on steel rails with electric propulsion and energy capture upon deceleration. The Utah Transit Authority (UTA) has also invested in 80 miles of FrontRunner/Heavy Rail tracks with 16 stations, as seen in the image below. FrontRunner is diesel-powered, but on steel rails, and it is much more efficient than the 100 or so motor vehicles that each train replaces.

The FrontRunner route runs 80 miles from Ogden in the north through Salt Lake City to Provo in the south. The TRAX main line runs from Draper in the south to Salt Lake Central in downtown Salt Lake City. The Red Line runs from the Day Break Master Planned Community in the southwest to the University of Utah football stadium and medical center in the northeast. The Green Line runs from West Valley in the southwest through Salt Lake Central, where it connects with FrontRunner and continues west to Salt Lake International Airport. There, you can fly nonstop to Paris or Amsterdam, among many other destinations.

Another primary focus of UTA to reduce pollution is to convert the UTA bus fleet to electric buses. The first delivery of UTA electric buses was in 2020. Now in 2024, there are 34 all-electric buses which are part of the 406-bus fleet that UTA operates in Utah.

Unfortunately, a big part of the pollution on the Wasatch Front comes from vehicle pollution on the streets and highways, such as Interstate I-15.

Northern Utah is bounded on the east by the Wasatch Mountain Range and on the west by Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake. This funnels the greater part of northern Utah traffic into the Interstate I-15 North/South corridor. I-15 has been quite recently widened into 12 lanes all the way from Ogden in the north to Spanish Fork in the south, a total of 88 miles. I-15 runs full or nearly full 12 hours a day, 6 days per week. Since its recent widening, traffic jams are quite rare, but with the booming northern Utah population, traffic jams will become more frequent and there is no prospect of further I-15 widening. While the FrontRunner commuter rail runs for 80 miles of this distance, the bulk of northern Utah north/south traffic runs on I-15. So, the only viable solution to reduce air pollution in northern Utah is to electrify the vehicle fleet.

The inner two of the 12 I-15 lanes are reserved for HOVs (High Occupancy Vehicles) with two or more occupants by the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT). In order to incentivize pollution reduction, UDOT has issued 6,650 permits which allow hybrid and electric vehicles to use the HOV lanes with only one occupant. Back in 2014 when I purchased my first Nissan Leaf, I was able to purchase one of these passes, and I’ve maintained it through the four EVs that I have owned. Unfortunately, the 6,650 permits were fully subscribed already in 2015 and the only way to get one now is by lottery when one of the original permits becomes available. Unfortunately, the EV HOV incentive program is scheduled to expire by the summer of 2025. The photo below shows three EVs, including my Tesla, on I-15. Also, in the upper lefthand corner is a photo of the Clean Pass HOV Lane Electronic Identifier that is attached to the center of my windshield.

There are about 80,000 battery-electric vehicles registered in Utah now, but that is still only a few percent of the total vehicle fleet. However, I frequently see two or more EVs on I-15 at the same time now, as shown in the image above. We are used to hearing of new car sales of over 90% in Norway, 80% in Sweden, and 50% in China for cars with a plug. I was surprised to read that we had reached 19.6% in the 3^rd quarter of 2024 for US cars with some degree of electrification. US battery-electric vehicle new car sales are still only 7.4% of the total. However, if nearly all the plug-in hybrids, which are 8.8% of new car sales, are fully recharged each night, we are talking about 16.2% of new car sales going to cars which will be burning very little fossil fuel.

Also, Amazon has about 20,000 electric delivery vans on US streets at present, with a goal of 100,000 by 2030. In my neighborhood in Lindon, Utah, all Amazon deliveries are now made with electric vans. Furthermore, the USPS has started to deliver with electric postal vans. If the number of personal vehicles and commercial fleet vehicles continue to be electrified, perhaps there is some chance of substantially reducing the number of days with deadly air on the Wasatch Front in the foreseeable future.

Nearly half of Utah’s electrical power is still generated using coal, but none of it is generated on the Wasatch Front, where it would contribute to poor air quality. In fact, the only electric power generation of the northern Utah Wasatch Front is from fossil gas in Lindon, Utah, at the plant shown in the image below. While it doesn’t solve the CO2 emission problem, it doesn’t contribute to poor winter air quality in northern Utah.

Other Progress On Clean Energy In Northern Utah

There are currently numerous rooftop solar installations in northern Utah, but there is very little progress with renewable grid-scale electricity generation. One installation is the small 8-turbine wind farm at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon. The wind farm takes advantage of the diurnal winds blowing up and down the canyon, and it generates 42 GWh per year.

There is also a small solar panel array on the Jordan River in South Jordan, Utah, as shown in the image below.

Otherwise, the only significant renewable grid-scale energy generation in Utah is in central Utah in Milford, near Beaver. There are both substantial wind and solar farms in that location. However, this installation is minute compared to those in California, Texas, Wyoming, and even Iowa and southern Minnesota.

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