LOS ANGELES _ The nation's largest port complex approved a sweeping plan Thursday to slash air pollution by encouraging the phase-out of diesel trucks in favor of natural gas and, ultimately, zero-emission trucks and cargo-handling equipment over the next two decades.
The Clean Air Action Plan, unanimously adopted at a joint meeting of Los Angeles and Long Beach harbor commissioners, provides a framework for transforming the massive hub for freight-moving trucks, trains and ships to cleaner technologies through 2035. But it leaves many details undetermined, including who will pay for up to $14 billion in cleaner trucks and equipment and which industries will benefit.
The plan is the most significant and expensive environmental initiative yet by the ports, which have sought to distinguish themselves from competitors over the last decade by pioneering air quality improvements, some of which have been replicated by other seaports and enshrined by California regulators.
Despite dramatic reductions in diesel emissions under the port's 2006 clean-air plan, the Angeles-Long Beach port complex remains the largest single source of air pollution in Southern California, with progress tapering off in recent years.
State and local air quality regulators say attacking the ports' overwhelmingly diesel-fueled operations is crucial to cleaning the nation's worst smog to meet federal health standards, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and easing asthma, lung cancer and other pollution-triggered health problems from harbor-area communities to the Inland Empire region.
Also to be seen are the economic impacts of transforming the ports, which handle about 40 percent of U.S. imports, and support hundreds of thousands of jobs across Southern California. Though the volume of shipping containers moving through the complex has tripled since the mid-1990s, the ports face increasing competition from East and Gulf Coast ports, which have less stringent environmental mandates.
By adopting the plan, the ports are expecting businesses and taxpayers to foot the bill for improvements in air quality and public health. They are also sending a signal to manufacturers there will be demand for cleaner trucks and freight-moving equipment, and ultimately, models with no tailpipe emissions.
Another question is how quickly the ports' strategies will reduce emissions and whether they will satisfy the demands of state and local regulators, who are increasingly targeting port pollution for reductions they say are crucial to reduce health risks and clean smog in time to meet federal deadlines.
While the plan outlines goals to switch to zero-emission cargo-handling equipment by 2030 and trucks by 2035 and slash greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050, it lacks new targets for reducing smog-forming emissions.
Key to the plan is a new Clean Trucks Program that aims to phase out oldest, dirtiest diesel trucks, transition to cleaner natural gas models, and ultimately switch to electric and other zero-emissions models.
Starting mid-2018, new big rigs entering the ports' registry must have engines of model year 2014 or newer, which must meet more stringent emissions standards.
In 2020, trucks will have to meet a stricter, near-zero-emissions standard, or be charged a fee to enter port terminals.
Starting in 2023, trucks must meet or exceed the near-zero emissions standard to enter the registry.
By 2035, only zero-emission vehicles will be exempt from those charges.
Before casting their votes, harbor commissioners heard from environmentalists, community groups and local elected officials, some holding their asthma inhalers, who expressed disappointment with the plan. They said it does not go far enough to mandate the cleanest technologies and to ease the pollution-triggered illnesses residents in the shadow of the ports have long suffered.
Urging accelerated deployment of thousands of cleaner, near-zero emissions trucks was the natural gas industry, which in the short-term is expected to reap the benefits of incentives to encourage the deployment of such "near-zero" technologies.
Commissioners also heard from representatives of Tesla Motors Inc. and other manufacturers who said heavy-duty electric trucks would be commercially viable sooner than expected. State air regulators urged them to seek to ramp up commercialization of zero-emission trucks quickly and to push for cleaner ships and locomotives.
Some environmental groups criticized the plan as a huge windfall to the natural gas industry and said it lacks clear milestones to force the adoption of zero-emission trucks.
"It's not a path to zero-emission trucks, it's a natural gas plan," Morgan Wyenn, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, "And it's a very expensive distraction from where we need to go."
Port officials defended the plan as striking a balance between near-term reductions in air pollution and zero emissions goals, and economic and health concerns. They portrayed it as "technology neutral" plan that doesn't mandate natural gas or any fuel in particular, but leaves it to industry to decide how to comply.
Business groups, cargo-moving industries and truckers have criticized the plan's estimated price tag of $8 billion to $14 billion, which they say could cause more shippers to divert cargo to ports that don't have such environmental constraints.
John McLaurin, president of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, told commissioners he remains concerned about that cost "and its potential negative impacts on port competitiveness and the 1 in 9 jobs in the Southern California region that are reliant on the ports."
The projected cost of the plan dwarfs the nearly $2 billion in public and private funds it took to implement the 2006 clean-air plan. That has stoked fears among truckers that they will be made to shoulder the cost of expensive, and perhaps less reliable natural gas-fueled rigs, then battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell models.
The plan includes assurances that "it should not fall solely on the drivers to fund the transition to a new truck fleet to serve the Ports." But labor and community groups said it lacks sufficient safeguards for drivers.
In opening remarks, Mayor Eric Garcetti suggested that expected advances in technology will create a market for electric vehicles that will eventually reach a "tipping point," even without firm benchmarks by the ports.
"We will get to zero emissions, make no mistake," said Garcetti, who drives an electric vehicle. "That technology is moving more quickly than we know. What we don't want to do is tip our hat one way or the other and mandate a huge redo of an industry just to flip it again."
Garcetti urged regulators to secure the funds needed to make that transition and expressed confidence in officials "to hold our feet to the fire and to implement this the right way."
