Jennifer Symoun
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Jennifer Symoun and I will moderate today's seminar. Today's topic is Clean Air at Port Facilities. Please be advised that today's seminar is being recorded.
Before I go any further, I do want to let those of you who are calling into the teleconference for the audio know that you need to mute your computer speakers or else you will be hearing your audio over the computer as well.
Today we'll have two presenters, Trish Koman of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Bob Kanter of the Port of Long Beach.
Trish Koman is the Program Manager for the Clean Ports USA initiative at the US Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Transportation and Air Quality. As part of EPA's National Clean Diesel Campaign, Clean Ports USA is an initiative to reduce diesel air pollution from marine ports. Trish has worked for EPA for 19 years, including leadership and management positions in setting technology and public health-based regulations in EPA's offices in San Francisco, Research Triangle Park, and now the national lab in Ann Arbor, MI. Trish was the team leader for the establishment of the first fine particulate matter national ambient air quality standards in 1997. She played a key role in establishing EPA's on-highway heavy duty truck rule, non-road diesel rule, and category 3 marine vessel rule. Trish has also been involved in initiating the Clean School Bus USA program and the Diesel Emissions Reduction Program. Prior to joining EPA, Trish worked as a consultant in Washington, DC, and Menlo Park, California. Trish holds a masters degree in public policy and management from the University of California at Berkeley and completed her BA with distinction at the University of Virginia.
Robert G. Kanter, Ph.D., is the Managing Director of Environmental Affairs and Planning for the Port of Long Beach, California. He was appointed in March 2007. He oversees the Environmental Affairs and Planning Bureau, which includes three divisions: Environmental Planning, Master Planning and Transportation Planning. These divisions are involved in implementing the Green Port Policy and San Pedro Bay Ports' Clean Air Action Plan, for which he was one of the chief architects, as well as other environmental planning and regulatory compliance issues, land use and legislative issues, transportation planning and short- and long-range forecasting. Dr. Kanter also serves as the California ports' representative on federal, state and local advisory committees and has served as a member of numerous environmental committees. He received his master's degree and Ph.D. in biology, with a focus on marine environments, from the University of Southern California.
I'd now like to go over a few logistical details prior to starting the seminar. Today's seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the chat area. Please make sure you send your question to "Everyone" and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. Once we get through all of the questions that have been typed in, the Operator will give you instructions on how to ask a question over the phone. If you think of a question after the seminar, you can send it to the presenters directly, or I encourage you to use the Freight Planning LISTSERV. If you have not already joined the LISTSERV, the web address at which you can register is provided on the slide on your screen.
Finally, I would like to remind you that this session is being recorded. A file containing the audio and the visual portion of this seminar will be posted to the Talking Freight Web site within the next week. We encourage you to direct others in your office that may have not been able to attend this seminar to access the recorded seminar.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar are available for download from the file download box in the lower right corner of your screen. The presentations will also be available online within the next week. I will notify all attendees of the availability of the PowerPoints, the recording, and a transcript of this seminar.
One final note: Talking Freight seminars are now eligible for 1.5 certification maintenance credits for AICP members. In order to obtain credit for today's seminar, you must have logged in with your first and last name or if you are attending with a group of people you must type your first and last name into the chat box. I have included more detailed instructions in the file share box on how to obtain your credits after the seminar. Please also download the evaluation form from the file share box and submit this form to me after you have filled it out.
We're now going to go ahead and get started. Today's topic, for those of you who just joined us, is Clean Air at Port Facilities. Our first presenter will be Trish Koman of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
As a reminder, if you have questions during the presentation please type them into the chat box and they will be answered in the last 30 minutes of the seminar.
Patricia Koman
Thanks, Jennifer. I want to give a big thank you to those from the FHWA and happy Saint Patrick's Day. It's a great spring day here. I'm hoping that everybody is able to enjoy some spring weather.
Reducing harmful emissions from diesel emissions is a public health challenge for the country. There are about 20 million engines still out there. This pollution contributes to serious health affects such as cancer, heart and lung disease, sending people to the hospital, causing them to miss school and work. Pollution is linked to increased mortality. This map shows a figure from a health study. It shows worldwide cardiopulmonary mortality attributed to ship pollution. The darker circles indicate an increase in the effect. This is an important issue worldwide.
It's also an important challenge for the United States. More than 40 major ports are located in 62 counties across the country that are in nonattainment. This is a very significant number of people that are affected. These are areas that do not meet the public health standards.
Next slide, please. These charts show the overall emissions in 2009. There are significant challenges ahead, as you can see, not only from ports, but from diesel engines. They last a long time and the fleet turnover can be slow. Under the Clean Air Act, EPA relies on the fleet turnover to reduce emissions. A number of port-related sources contribute to the CO2 levels. What are these sources? I think most of you are familiar with them, including ocean going vessels, harbor craft, cargo handling equipment, trucks and trains.
EPA's campaign has been reducing emissions across a variety of industry for the past ten years. The Clean Air Act regulations reduce pollution from new engines and their fuel. We started a program to accelerate the adoption of these technologies into the existing fleet. In 2008, Congress appropriated money for DERA grants. The Energy Policy Act called out ports, rail yards for special attention. Clean Ports USA partners with ports and fleets to reduce emissions through the implementation of these strategies.
What sort of strategies are we talking about? In the Energy Policy Act Congress built this law on verified technologies and certified engines. This was to make sure that the promises of the manufacturers could be achieved. Some of the key technologies include exhaust controls, engine upgrade kits, using cleaner and alternative fuels, replacing vehicles, reducing idling, and also looking at hybrid technologies.
The DERA program has a number of features that I wanted to point out. It has a state program. The state program is a direct allocation to the state. Any state that wants to participate can. If they match their federal funding they get additional federal dollars. On the left-hand side are the three national competitions. We'll talk about these in detail a little bit.
Let's take a closer look at how ports can participate in this. Port authorities, state and local governments, nonprofits like universities and so forth can apply for these various programs. On the national funding assistance program eligible entities can apply for verified equipment grants. In the emerging technology area new and innovative technologies can be applied for. Also we're excited about the SmartWay clean diesel finance grants for rebates, buying down interest rates on loans, leasing programs and so forth that can stretch federal investments. That chart gives you a sense of what the funding levels can have for the various programs.
The federal role is more than just funding. I wanted to highlight here how Clean Ports USA works. We promote testing and technologies, we provide calculator tools, we develop a series of case studies and help as a clearinghouse to help ports talk to one another, we provide grants, and we also provide recognition for superior environmental performance. Here in the picture you can see our EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson who is seated second from the left there with the Governor of California and the Long Beach Mayor, announcing $26 million in grants in Southern California. We try to support local areas that step forward as leaders, such as the Port of Long Beach. You will hear from Bob Kanter in a few minutes.
DERA is for all types of heavy duty diesel engines, as I mentioned. How did the port authorities do in the competition that EPA held? In the first year they did very well. EPA was able to award ten grants for $5.4 million in that first year of funding. These projects put up a fair bit of their own money in matching resources. Let's take a closer look.
EPA awarded $850,000 to the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. This is a voluntary emissions reduction strategy they developed with a support of a variety of agencies and EPA. EPA is supporting a number of port authorities that are developing these clean air plans. We help as they put their plan together; we support their plans as they implement them over time.
Under DERA we have an Emerging Technology Program. I wanted to highlight one of the first grants here. EPA gave an award to California South Coast Air Quality Management District to install these selective catalytic reduction devices on heavy duty class 8 trucks. This program will reduce emissions and will tell us about the durability of this technology.
This is not just for trucks there are also a fair number of technologies on the marine side. EPA awarded 700,000 dollars to Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. You can see they're talking about very significant reductions. I think that you will hear a theme from me: the marine area has a lot of very cost-effective reductions on NOx and PM that can be achieved with additional fuel savings.
An area we're excited about is our SmartWay Finance program. It financed some of the technologies that can be used in that area. Here you see a picture of an anti-idling policy at one of the freight owners; Sharp Electronics is encouraging truck delivery trucks to make sure that they reduce idling and have cleaner trucks. In the first year we issued three national grants for about $1.1 million each. Because of the success of these programs, under the stimulus process $30 million was put towards these sorts of programs to stretch the federal investment, and to make the business case for cleaner trucks and other equipment.
In 2009 Congress appropriated to EPA under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act $300 million for the DERA program. President Obama signed this Act into law in February of 2009. As part of his $789 billion jobs bill, $300 million was put towards this DERA program. EPA received a lot of requests, over $2 billion in requests for this money, offering about the same in matching resources. 160 stimulus grants were awarded. It will make about 30,000 engines cleaner. Port authorities and marine projects competed well with about $60 million in awards going towards this sector. I listed a number of the different projects, and it's not all of them, but a good representation of things that are going on from the port community. I want to highlight just a few of them for you, as well.
First, I want to talk about eligible entities. I want to point out that port authorities are not the only eligible entities. State DOTs and others have come forward to apply for these grants. These are very important contributions; a lot of DOTs are working hand in hand with harbors in their area.
This example shows NESCAUM received two different grants, together it sums to almost $4.5 million for upgrades to 13 harbor craft vessels. Updating them can be very, very cost-effective. You can see the estimated annual reductions listed there. These are estimates because the projects are still ongoing. But I did want to just highlight the cost-effectiveness of these projects are very favorable. For those of you looking at CMAQ projects, I want to highlight there's a lot of low hanging fruit, if you will, in this area. We found that the marine operators seem to be willing to look at some of these repower strategies, they seem to work well for their business cases.
A number of ports are also stepping forward to do a variety of things, looking at their overall set of emissions for not only equipment that they own and operate, but also working with fleet partners. For example, Maryland Environmental Services received a grant, they're working with the Maryland Finance Center to repower, replace, or retrofit a number of pieces of equipment at the Port of Baltimore. The estimated reductions are very strong. I think it will be a very successful project.
The Great Lakes are also taking advantage of these programs. EPA awarded $1.2 million to the Great Lakes Commission. They provided an additional match of about $400,000. They will be repowering generating sets on two bulk carriers during the winter offseason. This will help to improve air quality for eight states, a good project to consider.
Port of Charleston is also moving forward. They were very successful in putting together a matching set of money from various fleet owners that are listed there. They will repowering container handling equipment, two tugs, a dredge, and also retrofitting cargo handling equipment.
We're also funding emerging technology programs. Pictured here is a Pittsburgh-based towboat. The estimated reductions are listed there.
EPA's programs are achieving results and helping communities to clean up their diesel engines. There are a lot of proven strategies being used at top ports. EPA is supporting additional projects. Cleaner fuels and technologies are being used nationwide. There's very broad stakeholder support for this. They're stepping forward to do things with the equipment that they own and operate, but also working with their clients and the vehicles that service their port to make them as clean as possible. Several ports are stepping forward to make sure their purchasing and construction practices are as clean as possible. EPA has a clearinghouse of construction specifications on its website, and a list of the different technologies and case studies listed there on our website.
I will just leave you with a couple of our places to find more information and my contact information. Thank you.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Trish. I do want to encourage anyone to post questions if you have any. I will turn it over to Dr. Robert Kanter now. I will bring up your presentation if you will give me a second. Okay, go ahead when ready.
Dr. Robert Kanter
Thank you very much for hosting this. I think this is a great opportunity to share knowledge and some experience. We have had a lot of support over the years with EPA, and we really want to thank them for their support, particularly in the advancement of new technologies. I will talk about that program in the context of our Clean Air Program here at the port. What I hope today to give you all a feel for is what we're doing out here at the Port of Long Beach. Much of the activity that we have undertaken we've done in collaboration with some efforts at the Port of Los Angeles, and I will talk about that. We really do have a lot of activities going on with one another. Some of it has been in the press, some of it has not. Today I will give you an overview. It would be nice to be able to focus on just one aspect, but we realized here in the Los Angeles area where we have extreme air quality problems that we as the port industry needed to do our fair share. Back in 2006 we convened a summit, we got our Boards and met with the air quality management district and local agencies and said "hey wait, let's collaborate, let's do something where we can plan for the whole region and really bring together our resources and make some progress and we're willing to make some major commitments as an industry." We formed a working group of the L.A. and Long Beach ports, local agencies and the federal EPA.
We began looking at a whole host of strategies. The reason was to start examining the fact that we wanted to minimize the harmful effects on air quality and the health of our citizens in the communities around the ports and the region. There were various emission reduction strategies being implemented at the time. We recognized that our growth was experiencing double-digit growth at that time and we needed to get our hands around it. We also wanted to set some assurances we would have project-specific standards that we would meet in the redevelopment of our port terminals and also the building of brand new terminals. We wanted to make sure we had standards we could achieve in terms of reducing impacts from the way we did goods movement. Also we have terminals that were saying as we move forward can you give us guidance on types of equipment we will need to purchase, and what alternatives are out there. They were depending on the port to give some good advice and guidance. We wanted to make sure we had certified and verified equipment that was verified for the ports that would work for their projects and operations. And finally, because all of our projects where redevelopment is occurring we have environmental documents involved, we wanted to ensure that we met the reductions in health impacts to enable the projects to be approved and go forward.
I mentioned that we wanted to build on existing projects, but we also as a regional contributor wanted to make sure to reduce our fair share. It was safe to say that the ports and the related sources, the vessels, the cargo handling equipment, the trucks, through different regulations were making various contributions to the reductions, but not our fair share. We also recognized that technologies were coming on to the marketplace daily, we wanted to make sure that we revisited our plan periodically and updated it to take advantage of the newest advancements.
These are our target pollutants. In our area NOx is a precursor to smog, we wanted to get our hands around reductions in NOx and SOx, as well. What we were directly feeding into our local plans and our State plan to come into attainment.
I think you saw this picture earlier; these are the sources that I will talk about in our various strategies.
We did an inventory over the two ports looking at the relative contributions in each of the pollutant areas. You can see the various contributions in percentages by these pie charts. I will not go into detail; you can get a good feel here. The big nut to crack is ocean going vessels because they contribute up to about 60% and our harbor craft, 11%. Rail and trucks also make significant contributions. We wanted to have strategies to get to each one of these.
We actually listed in our plan at the time known strategies for each of these categories of sources. When you see something like HDV we're talking about heavy duty vehicles and trucks in particular. That is what HDV is. OGV is ocean going vessels and likewise for cargo handling equipment, and rail.
Again, just to look at how we approached this. We wanted to have our region wide standards that we targeted. That was true for looking at doing our fair share. We looked at what we needed to do as if we put a big bubble over the two ports. Then within each specific project that came forward for approvals we would look at setting the standards for those. That gives us something to target. The source specific performance standards that we set were aimed at equipment, particularly as guidance for purchases, but also for us to assume when we moved forward in implementation. I will talk about strategies for implementation later on in the presentation.
Again, we are just talking about standards, particularly for a specific project. Any project that had residual impacts above this we had to get below this level and likewise for each of the other thresholds for priority pollutants.
This slide is looking at the strategies that we're employing here at the ports. These are all being implemented in one way, shape, or form throughout our port of operations now. We have incentivized this program, slow the vessels down, they consume less fuel, so that they put out less air pollution. We have some zones of impact. We have incentives tied to those, they pay the companies for slowing down over that distance, and we reap the air quality benefits. Those pollutants normally are carried on shore by winds that are prevalent here. Ship to shore electrification, which is the plugging in vessels while at berth. We're getting early benefits by plugging in as many vessels as we can. Low sulfur diesel fuels, incentives for the vessel operators to switch to cleaner burning refined product when within 20 nautical miles of port. That is backed up by a new regulation that will require the clean burning fuel in the auxiliaries. There's technology testing for some of these. Heavy duty trucks, have been all over the press, I'm sure you have seen all of controversy. The industry stepped up and began the purchase of 2007 EPA compliant trucks. It's paying big dividends. We believe that a little diversity will add stability. So we were supporting the use of LNG and in that regard we funded the purchase of trucks, but also helped to fund the installation of fueling stations, in and around the port complex, so that we could diversify the trucks, and also clean them up.
With regard to locomotives, we have a local switcher line. It's a local railroad, short haul that does our moving of containers into blocks of cars. And we work with the operator who has an agreement with the ports to upgrade their entire fleet. At the time they had 16. The Port of Long Beach and Los Angeles each contributed $5 million. The operator contributed $18 million. We also got some grant money. We helped them scrap their old fleet and upgrade. Also we set some standards for our local near dock rail facilities.
Cargo handling equipment has requirements to assist in turnover and replacement with cleaner equipment and to also to integrate cleaner fuels. We have some grant monies from EPA to look at hybrid yard equipment. We upgraded almost the entire fleet of power trains on our harbor craft. Each one of these sources had a strategy associated with it.
We also had an innovative program called the Technology Advancement Program. This program was funded by the two ports for five years, $15 million. That is to help facilitate the introduction of new technologies. We've had people all of the time coming up with a new invention they want to test in the duty cycle of the ports. We contribute some money to that effort. We also become a conduit to allow this to be tested on the terminals. The proponent of the technology is asked to contribute monetarily as well. We have scientific independent testing done. It helps bring some of this stuff to market.
How do we implement the strategies? We do this through a variety of mechanisms. The most leverage that we have here at the ports is through our lease agreements. Many of the leases are coming up for renewal. In every new lease we have the required technologies drawn from this suite of strategies in our Clean Air Action Plan. They become the basis for the covenants in the leases. Those leases go for 20 and 30 years. Moving forward these tenants will be using cleaner equipment, having vessels call that are cleaner, adhering to the clean trucks program, and having clean cargo handling equipment. We also have some reopeners in them that allow us to talk about technologies that might be coming into the market during the time that they have their lease. We also have tariff ability. When we did our clean truck program we passed the tariff that phased out over a number of years older dirtier trucks. We said trucks entering our port are going to have to meet these particular standards. That has helped us achieve the clean air so far. We have CEQA Mitigation. This provides some legal requirements we will use in the establishment of practices that will be needed on the various terminals that we are either redeveloping, or developing from scratch. Incentives, as mentioned before, we apply incentives for people to slow down vessels, for them to use cleaner fuels, we've used it in a variety of other ways to get them to transition to ultimately what we will require or hope will be voluntary. And finally there are voluntary measures on our part and on the part of our tenants.
Part of what we've done to be accountable is we've expanded our real-time monitoring; we have stations here in the port. We can compare and review t we're improving in real-time. You can view it on our website. We also have an annual emission inventory that we do. We report on the emissions coming from the port sources during their duty cycle. We actually benchmark this against what we set as our goals in our plan. We report that to the public, to our boards an on annual basis. We are accountable.
The reporting and comparing allows us to see how we're doing. I will talk briefly about our most recent data, comparing 2008 to our 2005 baseline. The inventory not only says what engines are out there, but how they're operating in order for us to calculate the emissions. If you look at vessel emissions you can see that we've got reductions in all of the criteria pollutants on the list. Most of this is attributable right now to the slowing down of the vessels and the switching to cleaner fuels. We did have a decrease in 2008 of some of the business, but that was only 3%. These numbers far exceed the decrease in some of the activity here at the port.
Our trucks have like results. This is only 2008, when our 2009 inventory comes out it will be even more impressive. In all of the criteria areas we saw significant reductions. We have a lower sulfur fuel required here in this area.
If you look at harbor craft, a slightly different picture here. Since we had increased activity of harbor craft due in part to a lot of construction activities and vessel movement, there was an increase. We will hopefully be getting our hands on reducing this going forward.
Yard equipment shows a similar picture to trucks and vessels. Significant decreases in all of the pollutants. The fuels have been a big factor. Most of this is attributable to our tenants putting in new equipment, revamping some of the equipment, and fuel changes. This is really a great showing so far. When we get up to this next level of tier III plus we should have even greater reductions.
A port-wide comparison of 2008 to 2005 shows we have overall reduction in the cited pollutants. These are great numbers. We're making some real strides towards our goal. We're quite proud of this. We expect the trend to continue. We have a lot of new things that came online in 2009. We'll be able to report on that in the upcoming year.
There's another way to look at the emissions, which is through the efficiency factor and the combination of our strategies. If you look at the reductions compared to 2005 you can see across the board significant reductions in emissions per box due in part to all of our activities related to strategies on each individual source, and increased efficiency such as larger vessels, more efficient vessels, cleaner vessels and the like. It's a good story to tell.
Our plan didn't specifically deal with greenhouse gases in 2006, but we did do an inventory. Already we're seeing some rewarding results just from our programs that are aimed at priority pollutants. We will be accelerating our efforts to reduce greenhouse gases in the strategies.
Our cargo volume decreased from 3% from 2005, but our emissions declined at a much greater rate. You know, it's a great story. We're really proud of the things that we have accomplished. I am also happy to say that a lot of ports around the states, as well as around the world, have been interested in the strategies and how we apply them, and have used us as a road map for how they can achieve similar reductions. With that, I thank you.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. We do have a number of questions typed in. We'll go ahead and get started with the Q&A session. Once we get through the submitted questions we will open up the phone lines for oral questions.
Dr. Kanter, I believe this one is for you. Trish, if you want to jump in as well, feel free. What analytical tools are used to quantify reductions? How is the work coordinated?
R. Kanter:
Okay. I will take a piece of that. The tools are models that are used have been developed with the regulatory agencies that were partners. And the duty cycle, based on mileage driven and the power train for the various trucks, are used in the calculations. Those are calculated estimating the miles traveled, we have records and the engine and the duty cycles. That's what our inventory is based on. We don't coordinate with any other agencies beyond those regulatory agencies that are here and partners in this effort. Again, the actual tools for the modeling were done at a high level. I'm not a technician in the model area, but our technology people developed those and came to agreement these were good tools to use for estimating the emissions reductions.
T. Koman:
This is Trish. If I could just jump in and add to what Dr. Kanter was saying. EPA was involved at the invitation of both the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles, in developing their initial emissions estimates in terms of reviewing methodologies. I think what they did was the state of art in terms of what they were trying to do, building a bottom up inventory. A lot of ports don't have the same experience to bring to it. Some of the smaller ports may be looking for simpler tools. We have a few tools. I will mention a few. One is on our EPA website, and it's a best practices document. This is called "Current Methodologies and Best Practices for Port Emissions Inventories." Those are for port authorities or others that are looking for all of the different sources categories from the big ships, to the trucks, to the rail. We have ways to low-cost estimate either scaling off of more detailed inventories, or ways to develop that look yourself. That's one resource for you, our best practices document.
Another tool that you can use is our diesel emission quantifier. The DEC is what it's been nicknamed. It's also on our Clean Diesel website. The DEC uses emission factors pulled from the MOBILE model and the NONROAD model. Another tool that our SmartWay program uses is the FLEET Model. It's used more from a fleet perspective, rather than from a geographic perspective. We have a FLEET tool for long haul trucks, but also recently developed a calculator that looks at dray truck operations. We have a number of different tools available to help look at the technologies and get a baseline. You can look at different technologies and see what would make sense, and what would meet your targets.
J. Symoun
Thank you. In relation to what Trish just spoke about, the best practices document, a question was for Dr. Kanter. In preparing your emissions inventory, did you use the EPA document Current Methodologies in Preparing Mobile Source Port-Related Emission Inventories'?
R. Kanter
I take it in reverse. EPA's emission inventory methodologies were ones that came out of our collaborative efforts. We have used, I would say analogous inventories. I am not sure we used their exact inventories methodology.
T. Koman
I would agree with that. Our best practices document was updated last April. Clearly we're looking for what various ports are doing, and trying to share information across ports. The southern California ports were one of the first to look at this. Very important work is done there.
J. Symoun
Okay. I will jump back to a question for Trish. Is DERA for nonattainment area ports also?
T. Koman
Absolutely. The program is for diesel emissions across the country. For our competition, however, priority is given to nonattainment areas, or areas that show a disproportionate air quality impact. I did highlight a number of areas in attainment that are still stepping forward because of their concerns of exposure to their community and want to do something about it.
J. Symoun
Okay. Trish, can the proposed federal rules that requires ships to use USLD when within the 200 mile off shore zone be addressed? This will have an increased cost influence of short-sea shipping; ships moving to Alaska and the Alaska cruise industry.
T. Koman
Sure. They're asking about our North American Emission Control Area. This is a very important topic because next week in London the International Maritime Organization will be meeting about this. Just to give you some background, since the presentation didn't cover this. It's basically a geographically defined area in North America around US and Canadian waters. In that area all ships have to meet certain requirements in terms of fuel and engine emission requirements. The US government together with Canada is applying for this status. The boundary would be from Southern California on up through parts of Alaska, Hawaii and on the East Coast, the Gulf Coast and up to the Canadian waters. Parts of Western Alaska are not in this, however. But we are looking at ways to examine that.
What exactly would happen under this? It's a very broad topic. Basically beginning in August of 2012 all ships operating in this area would be required to use complaint fuel or other alternatives that would achieve the SOx reductions. After 2016, they would be required to meet Tier III NOx limits. Those are all important pieces.
What are the costs and benefits? In terms of the benefits, they're pretty substantial. Many of the most serious nonattainment areas are affected by ships. For the Port of Long Beach and Los Angeles ocean going vessels were a very large chunk of the emissions affecting their port. They've been doing a lot with their vessel speed reduction plans and so forth, but there's still a fair bit of operational emissions that can be addressed. That's something for an international role. We're working to make that happen. In terms of benefits, it's expected to prevent 14,000 premature deaths per year in the United States. That has a monetized value of approximately $110 billion in the US by 2020. You see, these are very significant benefits. The overall cost is about $3.2 billion and the impacts of complying with the programs for international ships are expected to be relatively modest. For example, a ship operating in a route that includes about 170,000 miles would increase by about 3%. This cost would raise the cost of transporting a 20 foot equivalent container by about 18 dollars. I think that gives you a sense of that. There was also a question about Alaska. We did take a look at some of those in our regulatory impact analysis. As we were doing some of that analysis there's also consideration given for the Great Lakes vessels as well. Be happy to answer that in more detail offline. The Regulatory Impact Assessment is also available on our website if you want to read the report.
J. Symoun
Great. Thank you for that informative response. Dr. Kanter, is there a significant percentage of small business tenants in the Port of Long Beach? If so, are there programs to financially assist small businesses with compliance with clean diesel requirements?
R. Kanter
I have to divide it up. Who constitutes "small business"? When you talk about our tenants, I call them large businesses as they operate the terminals. They do get some financial assistance or incentives on various programs to help transition them into the projects. When we look at the small business entities I would include the truck drivers and independent owner operator truck driver as part of that group of people. And they, too, at least under our clean trucks program, had offered to them a significant amount of financial assistance to help them transition into new cleaner trucks. Certainly when we began the program there was a large proportion of independent owner operators that didn't have the financial with all to buy a new truck. The ports offered 80% subsidies to help them get into a new truck. That subsidy would help them get into the truck and buy it after the end of the seven year requirement for a nominal fee. They would actually own. Let's say you had a $100,000 truck for a new purchase. We would subsidize $80,000 of that. We were conscience of the fact there's a financial impact and some companies are better positioned to absorb that initial transition than others. We offered more help in those areas.
J. Symoun
Okay. Great, thank you. Next question is can you give more detail on how truck idling time was reduced so much- gate control, lower turn times, staging areas with electrical power, APUs, etc?
R. Kanter
A couple of major strategies here, first was the optimization of gate times, having the terminals operating more on a 24/7 type of regimen instead of 8:00-5:00 and using incentives for using the night gate and disincentives for using the gate during peak hours such as lunch time and rush hour. That provided significant improvement in turn times, also reduced congestion on the roadways. The second part was that we automated the process to RFID readers for processing of the clean trucks through our gates. That database and that automation really helped expedite the movement of trucks within the program. There are still challenges, as any operator would tell you, within some of the terminals. Those are being addressed on an as needed basis. I would think we still have a ways to go in those areas. There are a whole variety of other variables in the mix such as labor agreements that challenge that. In terms of things that the port could affect, the ones I just cited were instrumental.
J. Symoun
Thank you. Another question, for ships connects to shore power at the Port of Long Beach, is the electricity rate they are charged competitive with the cost of generating power on the ship? If so, how were you able to secure the competitive rate? If not, how were you able to convince the ships to plug in and incur the extra cost?
R. Kanter
That's an excellent question. Point one is the rates are not equivalent to generating power on the vessel. If a ship was generating power that would still be cheaper in terms of actual dollars. The cost of plugging in is more expensive. We have not been able to negotiate a much more favorable rate at this point in time for the provision of power. That being said, we are working with our major power provider here to come up with a rate that will be more competitive and help all parties involved. It's complex. It has a lot of regulatory challenges that we're working through. We view this as a very important component of our Clean Air Action Plan. Every new lease, every renewal will require that the vessels be plugged in or equivalent. It's usually a phasing in. We work with the terminal operators and their customers, the carriers, to bring in cold iron equipped vessels so they will be ready to plug in. It's a general feeling that the additional cost of electricity does pay significant benefits, as Patricia indicated earlier, in terms of health benefits for the region.
J. Symoun
Okay. Next question, are ship speeds monitored to ensure they are traveling slower and if so who monitors and how is this tracked?
R. Kanter
Yes, it is essential to have a way to do that. We have our marine exchange, which is like a control tower that oversees the vessel traffic coming in and out of the ports. They have the ability to track and record the speeds of the vessels as they approach our corridors for slowing down. What we actually do is contact the vessel masters and indicate to them they're entering into that area if they're not already aware of it. We track and report on the compliance of these vessels. Because for the Port of Long Beach we have an incentive program, we use the data and the records to generate our compliance information that allows us to pay them, if you will, the incentive that we're offering. We need to make sure that's documented. It is an important part of it. It does exist.
J. Symoun
The next question is: do the Class I railroads operating into the Ports of LA/Long Beach operate Tier II/III compliant locomotives on their trains into the ports or do your ports require the railroads to utilize Tier II/III compliant locomotives? Presumably your slide on rail emissions reductions reflects both Class I & the Port Harbor Belt railroad operations.
R. Kanter
Well, the class I has a mixture of tier II and some tier III in their overall national fleet. They have an agreement with our California Air Resources Board for bringing that power into use under an agreement, a memorandum of understanding that they've established for operating those. Therefore we at the ports benefit to the degree that they bring those in. We do not exert any control over the class I's; we do not have the ability to exert that control. Interstate commerce and other things preclude us from controlling that. We are working with our major line haul railroads to encourage them to bring even more compliant tier III and tier IV locomotive power into this region, because of our special needs here. On the other hand, with our switcher operation, they have a contractual agreement. Through that we were able to assist and require cleaner locomotives participate.
T. Koman
This is Trish, if I could just add. The question sort of refers to moving from one regulatory Tier to another. It's also the case that some of the switchers and long haul are moving to GenSet approaches. They're taking non-road engines and putting them in a series. They can run a bank of four when they need more power or run less when they need less power. A lot of the railroads are finding that's a tremendous fuel savings to them, and a benefit in terms of operations. That's something to keep in mind if you are thinking about the tier process. It's the case that some are going to the GenSet approach.
J. Symoun
Okay, thank you. The next question, what technology do you use to monitor vessel emissions on a real-time basis?
R. Kanter
For us we have real-time monitor stations here. But understand that does not really give you a total picture. You need a regional series of stations. It does provide some ground truth. The emission inventory where we report the annual emissions is generated through modeling. Again, the methodologies have been established in concert with the EPA, California Air Resources Board and our staff. Right now you could go to the website and see the air quality today. But that will not give you an overall picture for a year.
T. Koman
If this question is asking how to measure emissions on a ship, we've been using PEMs technologies. We've worked with Dr. Wayne Miller, at UC Riverside, and he's published a lot of work on these sorts of measurements. Those techniques do exist and are widely reported in the literature, as well.
J. Symoun
Okay. I will skip down to a question. This one makes sense to go first. By now you should have monitored data from 2005 and 2008. Did the reductions really materialize?
R. Kanter
Yeah. I showed those in my slides. They absolutely did materialize. We have the data to back it up. We have agreements, and buy-in from the agencies on that which show improvements across the board. We still have a ways to go. None of us are ready to say we've got the job done, but we're very, very, happy with the progress.
J. Symoun
Do you have an estimate regarding how much of the 2005-2008 emission reductions for the Port of Long Beach can be attributed to regulatory measures as opposed to special measures taken by the port?
R. Kanter
I really don't think I can separate that. Recognize that the regulatory measures that I refer to, for instance our cold iron rule or shore side electrification won't come fully into effect until 2014. I do believe that some of the emissions that reductions that we showed on the vessels, particularly in regard to of use of refined product helped to contribute to the reductions that we experienced here. What percent? I'm not sure I could quantify that.
J. Symoun
A number of recent TIGER grants provide for infrastructure improvements at and to ports. Do DOT and EPA confer on how to prioritize these investments, or on how to make EPA/DERA and DOT/TIGER/CMAQ investments about port complementary? From the DOT side, someone from the DOT will follow-up on that as I do not have someone on the line right now which can answer. I did want to put it out to Trish to see your thoughts.
T. Koman
I know that EPA and DOT coordinate on a number of things at very high policy levels. I can't speak directly to the TIGER grants. In terms of DERA, we want to work to coordinate on the CMAQ side. We had $2 billion of project requests; a number of those could be things that could be funded by CMAQ. Existing projects, partners ready to go, resources ready to match. You've seen a list here from the Port of Long Beach in terms of things they want to do and are continuing to make progresses towards. To meet the air quality goals and get the clean air which they deserve. It's important that we move some of these technologies forward faster than we have been. I think that coordinating and using the CMAQ process to use these technologies would be a great thing to be doing. I'm pleased we are able to have these conversations to make happen.
J. Symoun
Okay, thank you. Trish or Dr. Kanter, are there any questions that might have been sent directly to you that I may not have seen?
R. Kanter
I don't see any at this point.
J. Symoun
Okay. Trish, anything you noticed in the chat area that I missed?
T. Koman
No I do not see any.
J. Symoun
At this point please continue to type in. For the people on the phone we will give you an opportunity to ask a question.
Operator
If you would like to ask a question over the phone please press star 1, please record your name when prompted. If you need to withdraw please press star 2. Star 1 to ask a question.
J. Symoun
We'll wait a few seconds to see if any questions come in over the phone.
Operator
No questions yet.
J. Symoun
Okay. If there are no more questions we'll go ahead and end a little bit early then. If you do think of anything feel free to type it in. I want to thank our presenters today for lots of good information. Thank you for attending on this Saint Patrick's Day. I will send an email out once the recording is available, as well as the transcript and the presentations.
As a reminder, if you are an AICP member and would like to receive 1.5 Certification Maintenance credits for attending this seminar, please make sure you were signed in today with your first and last name or type your first and last name into the chat box if you are attending with a group of people. Please download the evaluation form and email it to me after you have completed it. Please also download the CM Credit instructions if you are unsure of how to obtain your credits for today's seminar.
The next seminar will be held on April 21 and will be about Non-Traditional Freight Data sources. If you haven't done so already, I encourage you to visit the Talking Freight Web Site and sign up for this seminar. The address is up on the slide on your screen. I also encourage you to join the Freight Planning LISTSERV if you have not already done so.
Enjoy the rest of your day!
