Amazon and Others Ordered To Slash Diesel Pollution From Warehouse Trucks (arstechnica.com) 49
Southern California has adopted a new air pollution rule aimed at slashing noxious emissions from warehouse trucks that move goods sold by Amazon and other e-commerce retailers. Ars Technica reports: Diesel pollution from heavy trucks causes everything from asthma to heart attacks, and even Parkinson's disease. Previously, such pollution tended to be concentrated around shipping ports and highways, but the growth of e-commerce has created a new source that is affecting neighborhoods farther inland. There are nearly 34,000 warehouses enclosing 1.17 billion square feet of space in the Los Angeles region alone. The rule, which was adopted late last week by a 9-4 vote of the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD), would cover around 3,300 warehouses that are larger than 100,000 square feet. The rule seeks to reduce the amount of diesel particulate matter and nitrogen oxides produced by trucks serving these facilities. The district covers more than 17 million people, or nearly half the state's population.
The way the South Coast AQMD is approaching warehouse-related pollution is novel. Rather than attempting to control traffic flow to and from the facilities, the regulator will require warehouse owners to take various steps to reduce pollution in the area. That could include buying electric or fuel-cell trucks, adding solar panels to the building roofs, or installing air filters at nearby homes, hospitals, and schools. Each of these measures is assigned a point value, and warehouse operators must achieve a certain total to offset the emissions from their truck traffic. If they cannot meet the goal through mitigation measures, they can pay a fee instead. South Coast AQMD is phasing in compliance depending on the size of the facility. Warehouses that are over 250,000 square feet must meet their goals by June 30, 2022. Warehouses over 150,000 square feet must comply by the same day the following year, and those over 100,000 square feet get until June 30, 2024. Amazon's typical warehouses, for example, range in size from 600,000 to 1 million square feet. [...] The new rule is expected to save 150 to 300 lives and prevent 2,500 to 5,800 asthma attacks between 2022 and 2031. Overall, the public health benefits could be as large as $2.7 billion over the same timeframe.
The way the South Coast AQMD is approaching warehouse-related pollution is novel. Rather than attempting to control traffic flow to and from the facilities, the regulator will require warehouse owners to take various steps to reduce pollution in the area. That could include buying electric or fuel-cell trucks, adding solar panels to the building roofs, or installing air filters at nearby homes, hospitals, and schools. Each of these measures is assigned a point value, and warehouse operators must achieve a certain total to offset the emissions from their truck traffic. If they cannot meet the goal through mitigation measures, they can pay a fee instead. South Coast AQMD is phasing in compliance depending on the size of the facility. Warehouses that are over 250,000 square feet must meet their goals by June 30, 2022. Warehouses over 150,000 square feet must comply by the same day the following year, and those over 100,000 square feet get until June 30, 2024. Amazon's typical warehouses, for example, range in size from 600,000 to 1 million square feet. [...] The new rule is expected to save 150 to 300 lives and prevent 2,500 to 5,800 asthma attacks between 2022 and 2031. Overall, the public health benefits could be as large as $2.7 billion over the same timeframe.
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Google is your friend. The evidence is out there. Or do you need me to cite proof that the internet exists first?
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Stupid is a hydra. The more heads you cut off, the more it grows.
Amazon Delivery Service Partner will pay the fee (Score:2)
Amazon Delivery Service Partner will pay the fee or be forced to buy new trucks not Amazon
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Private citizens need to stop sending toxic pollution onto taxpayer's property.
You have no constitutional right to dump toxic pollution on other people's property or on the commons. Take responsibility for the mess you choose to create.
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61AGJCSeXkL._SL1498_.jpg
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God forbid the government wants to make clean air an incentive.
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God forbid the government wants to make clean air an incentive.
Yea, but they are doing it without a real alternative in place. There are not yet enough available EV trucks and the amount of Li you need for their batteries is very high. The H2 infrastructure is just completely non-existent. So there is no realistic way most businesses can comply with this regulation. Meanwhile, the state is closing its last nuclear plant (further increasing power prices) and the environmental rules of the state make running a synthetic fuel plant a complete impossibility. So unless
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Do you think "real alternatives" just appear out of thin air? The point of these kinds of regulations is to provide a market for those alternatives, so that companies develop those alternatives.
In addition, there are options that are available right now. For example, the filters mentioned in the story already exist.
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You see, there, hidden in the ocean of words, the true reason: using the government's guns to extort more money from private citizens.
I'm sure that's it. Government regulators must get some inexplicable ego boost out of fining business owners, because it couldn't be that everyone else doesn't want to have to breathe the shit the warehouse owners are spewing into the air.
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You mean "stop hurting nearby residents with your pollution, or we will fine you"?
Yeah, that is so terrible. How dare the state protect its citizens!
It is about holding companies that damage the areas they do business in, responsible for it.
Paying an indulgence won't actually get you (Score:2)
into heaven.
Installing a solar panel on your roof won't remove diesel pollution from the air.
Requiring your suppliers to upgrade their trucks and/or use non diesel fuels might.
Exercising zoning rules to not allow warehouses upwind of residential neighborhoods might too.
But hey, why do any of the unsexy stuff when you can make it look like you're sticking it to the evil corporations instead?
Re: Paying an indulgence won't actually get you (Score:1)
But pawning it off on Amazon and declaring mission accomplished is just fine?
Quick fixes don't exist to problems that were built over decades.
You don't want diesel fumes in a year? Don't permit a warehouse today.
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Exercising zoning rules to not allow warehouses upwind of residential neighborhoods might too.
What's your plan to eminent domain all the existing warehouses and residences to fix that?
What's your plan to ensure no residential neighborhoods are ever built "downwind" of those warehouses?
What's your plan to ensure the wind always blows in one direction?
They will just pay the fee (Score:2)
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Re:They will just pay the fee (Score:4, Insightful)
Air Filtering, EV Semis (Score:3)
The two options that make the most sense are installing air filters and switching to electric trucks. There have been studies that show significant student performance increases from installing air filters in schools. But the long-term solution is to replace the diesel trucks with electric trucks. It's unfortunate that Tesla won't be able to produce enough semis to cover the mandate for the larger warehouses to come into compliance next year, but in several more years, that will be the obvious answer, even without this mandate.
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The filters aren’t enough. I did some work near a cluster of distribution centers in San Bernadino County, and while there were a number of major sources of pollution as well as natural factors that make any that does exist worse, it was especially bad in this area. The facility I was working with had large outside air filters, and they were getting clogged within a week at the PM2.5 level. They pulled a few tricks to increase filter area and allow for limited regeneration of the filters, but only
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It's disappointing how little progress has been made on electric trucks and busses in the West. China is way ahead, with massive battery packs and charging infrastructure. China started with commercial vehicles and then moved to consumer, we seem to have done it the other way around.
Given that it's Amazon they could use rail as well. Those distribution centres aren't going anywhere, they could have permanent rail links.
Next those "running coal" (Score:4, Informative)
Everywhere in USA and Canada I see these redneck removing every anti pollution from their pickup sending tons of smoke in the air.
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Even worse, they de-tune the engine to produce extra soot.
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They delete the DEF system because they are fragile and if any part of the system fails the vehicle either refuses to run or goes into a low-speed limp mode that's just barely enough to get to the next turnout. DEF is great when working, but not enough work went into making the systems reliable.
They delete the DPF system for similar reasons. Actually, DPF makes diesel soot more hazardous by reducing particulate size... by burning the soot. So it reduces soot but trades it for CO2. Meanwhile smaller soot par
Some people just don't have a clue (Score:2)
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Yes, but it's not as if these regulations are just being made up for the fun of it. What's happening right now is that companies are harming their neighbors, so everyone who lives near these places, and on the routes to and from these places, pays a price. It make a lot more sense to make the people getting the benefits from those businesses pay the price rather than random bystanders.
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OTOH, without the regulations, even people who don't buy from the companies (or can't afford to) end up paying through poor health and higher medical bills. There is even evidence that the pollution damages their children's academic performance and so helps perpetuate the poverty.
But at least you save five cents on your toilet paper.
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That's the point.
This adds the cost of the currently-unpriced externality to the product. Now the company has an incentive to reduce that externality, because consumers see the price of it.
Southern California (Score:2)
So now we have not only federal emission regulations and California State regulations, we now have distinct Southern California regulations?
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California has long had different compliance zones. It can be a pain, but as long as you are familiar with each of them it is no big deal. They get most of their power when you can be considered a “gross polluter.”
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California's various air quality management districts have existed for decades and regulate the various air basins (where air "sits" without wind). Some, like the South Coast AQMD are extremely active and have lots of regulations, others are less stringent.
The key point, though, is that the process has worked. In that time, smog alerts have almost completely disappeared. The air has actually gotten much, much cleaner even while the population has increased.
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CA split its air quality management into several districts decades ago. Each region has its own unique problems, so it makes sense to regulate them differently.
LA is in a basin surrounded by mountains, with wind almost always coming from the ocean into that basin. That results in a lot of pollution just sitting in the air for a long time, because it can't get over the mountains and be blown away.
This is a different problem than air pollution in San Francisco, or in the agricultural areas of the state.
Just
This needs to be done with care (Score:2)
Warehouse Trucks (Score:2)
Are we talking about vehicles that operate primarily in and around warehouses? As opposed to long haul on highway trucks? Because if it's the former, we've had solutions for decades: LPG and CNG. Nobody in their right mind operates trucks inside a warehouse running on diesel or petrol.
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It is likely around 30-40% trucks from LA/Long Beach Harbor to the Inland Empire, 30-40% between local distribution centers or the airport, and 20-30% long haul for the Semis. Then you have all the local delivery vehicles, which they are working on electrification, but it will take a decade. No idea what percentage of emissions are delivery vehicles vs semis.
Next week: Amazon moves warehouses to Las Vegas (Score:1)
And the politicians driving them out will somehow be shocked.
points (Score:1)
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
https://www.propublica.org/art... [propublica.org]