BOARD MEETING
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
AIR RESOURCES BOARD
CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
1001 I STREET
COASTAL HEARING ROOM
SECOND FLOOR
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28, 2001
9:00 A.M.
JAMES F. PETERS, CSR, RPR
CERTIFIED SHORTHAND REPORTER
LICENSE NUMBER 10063
JANET NICOL, CSR
CERTIFIED SHORTHAND REPORTING
LICENSE NUMBER 9764
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APPEARANCES
BOARD MEMBERS
Dr. Allan Lloyd, Chairperson
Mrs. Barbara Riordan
Dr. William Burke
Mr. Joseph Calhoun
Ms. Dorene D'Adamo
Professor Hugh Friedman
Dr. William Friedman
Mr. Matthew McKinnon
Supervisor Ron Roberts
STAFF
Mr. Mike Kenny, Executive Officer
Mr. Tom Cackette, Deputy Executive Officer
Mr. Mike Scheible, Deputy Executive Officer
Ms. Lynn Terry, Deputy Executive Office
Mr. Michael Benjamin, Manager, Emission Inventory Systems
Section
Analisa Bevan, Manager, ZEV Implementation Section
Mr. Richard Bode, Chief, Health and Exposure Assessment
Branch
Mr. Richard Corey, Chief, Research Division
Mr. Bart Croes, Chief, Research Division
Mr. Bob Cross, Chief, Mobile Source Control Division
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APPEARANCES CONTINUED
STAFF CONTINUED
Ms. Victoria Davis, Staff Counsel
Ms. Deborah Drechsler, Ph.D, Research Division
Ms. Krista Eley, Mobile Source Control Division
Ms. Diane Johnston, Senior Staff Counsel, Office of Legal
Affairs
Mr. Jack Kitowski, Chief, On-Roads Control Branch
Ms. Leslie Krinsk, Senior Staff Counsel
Ms. Eileen McCauley, Manager, Atmospheric Processes
Research Section
Mr. Bart Ostro, Office of Environmental Health Hazard
Assessment
Ms. Gayle Sweigert, Mobile Source Control Division
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INDEX
Page
Proceedings 1
Roll Call 1
Item 01-5-1 3
Executive Officer Kenny 4
Staff Presentation 8
Mr. Rich Bell 52
Mr. Bob Cassidy 69
Mr. Michael Wolterman 82
Mr. Tom Austin 95
Mr. Greg Hanssen 115
Mr. Craig Toepfer 127
Mr. David Packard 135
Mr. Thomas Dowling 141
Mr. Michael Coates 144
Mr. Tim Hastrup 145
Mr. Steve Heckeroth 148
Mr. Ken Smith 151
Mr. David Burch 154
Mr. Ted Holcombe 159
Mr. Mickey Oros 160
Mr. Hans-Henning Judek 163
Mr. Dale Foster 164
Mr. Alec Brooks 173
Board Discussion 191
Vote 203
Item 01-5-6 206
Vote 204
Item 01-5-2 205
Executive Officer Kenny 206
Dr. Deborah Drechsler 207
Dr. Daniel Greenbaum 226
Questions and Answers 246
Mr. Brian Lamb 253
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INDEX CONTINUED
Page
Item 01-5-3 260
Executive Officer Kenny 261
Mr. Jim Pederson 262
Board Discussion 280
Item 01-5-5 289
Executive Officer Kenny 289
Ms. Theresa Najita 290
Ms. Kati Buehler 294
Mr. Joe Carranko 296
Mr. Jerry Maltby 309
Mr. Chris Churchill 320
Mr. Kurt Rasmussen 322
Mr. Jerry Murdock 325
Item 01-5-4 335
Executive Officer Kenny 336
Mr. Bruce Oulrey 337
Ms. Barbara Lee 340
Mr. Wayne Morgan 348
Adjournment 355
Reporter's Certificates 356,
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1 PROCEEDINGS
2 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Good morning. The June 28th,
3 2001 public meeting of the Air Resources Board will now
4 come to order. As you'll notice, I guess we've get some
5 change of positions today, so it will take us a little
6 while to get used to that.
7 Superviser DeSaulnier, would you lead us in the
8 pledge of allegiance.
9 BOARD MEMBER DeSAULNIER: I'd be happy to, Mr.
10 Chairman.
11 (Thereupon the Pledge of Allegiance was led
12 by Supervisor DeSaulnier.)
13 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Will the Clerk of the Board,
14 please call the roll.
15 CLERK OF THE BOARD KAVAN: Dr. Burke?
16 BOARD MEMBER BURKE: Present.
17 CLERK OF THE BOARD KAVAN: Mr. Calhoun?
18 Ms. D'Adamo?
19 Supervisor DeSaulnier?
20 BOARD MEMBER DeSAULNIER: Present.
21 CLERK OF THE BOARD KAVAN: Professor Friedman?
22 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: Here.
23 CLERK OF THE BOARD KAVAN: Dr. Friedman?
24 BOARD MEMBER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN: Here.
25 CLERK OF THE BOARD KAVAN: Mr. McKinnon?
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1 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: Here.
2 CLERK OF THE BOARD KAVAN: Supervisor Patrick?
3 Mrs. Riordan?
4 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Here.
5 CLERK OF THE BOARD KAVAN: Supervisor Roberts?
6 Chairman Lloyd?
7 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Here.
8 We are going to have a change in the agenda. The
9 first item we will consider will be the standardization of
10 the charges. Before that, I'd just -- my colleagues here,
11 hopefully Bill is going to hand out a paper on diesel
12 emissions that Tom and I prepared with enormous assistance
13 from our very talented staff. And we gave that yesterday.
14 It has a critical review of the Air and Waste Management
15 Association in Orlando.
16 I think you'll find this useful, as some of the
17 key issues, and also a good place where you can get a lot
18 of information readily.
19 But as you'll notice from the acknowledgements
20 there, we have outstanding contributions from the staff,
21 literally without whose help, it never would have been
22 finished.
23 It's on, but it isn't coming across very much.
24 Is that any better?
25 I don't know whether there are any other board
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1 members who want to say anything before we start?
2 With that then we'll commence with the first item
3 on the agenda, which is 01-5-1, Public Hearing to Consider
4 Amendments to the California Zero Emission Vehicle
5 Regulations Regarding The Treatment Of Majority-Owned
6 Small or Intermediate Volume Manufactures and
7 Infrastructure Standardization.
8 We turn to consideration of the issues related to
9 the success of the Zero Emission Vehicle Program. As a
10 Board, we voted unanimously last September and again this
11 January to affirm the ZEV Program and its importance to
12 California's long-term air quality efforts.
13 I am personally very committed to the success of
14 the program, and know that this reflects the commitment of
15 all the Board Members. Welcome, Didi. Progress in
16 attaining critical public health, global climate change,
17 and energy diversity goals will be greatly enhanced
18 through the use of ZEV technologies, and this is basically
19 a family of technologies.
20 Can you hear it?
21 I can't control the volume.
22 Thank you. I'll swallow it.
23 (Laughter.)
24 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Few programs that this board
25 has considered have the ability to provide such
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1 far-reaching and long-term benefits for California. Last
2 January this board approved changes to the ZEV, to the
3 Zero Emission Vehicle Regulation that reduced the number
4 of ZEVs required for the near term, while increasing the
5 number of ZEVs and advanced technology vehicles required
6 in the long term.
7 We took this action so that the long-term success
8 of the ZEV Program could be assured, by providing
9 additional time to address some of the near-term
10 implementation challenges facing the ZEV Program.
11 The Board directed staff to develop
12 recommendations and begin working on a number of issues.
13 Today, we will be considering staff proposals on two of
14 these issues. We directed staff to investigate joint
15 ownership issues associated with the treatment of small
16 and intermediate volume manufacturers and standardization
17 of infrastructure for battery electric vehicles.
18 These two issues are important, because they have
19 the potential to directly impact the success of the ZEV
20 Program and public acceptance.
21 Mr. Kenny, will you lease begin the staff
22 presentation on this.
23 EXECUTIVE OFFICER KENNY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman
24 and Members of the Board.
25 As Dr. Lloyd mentioned there, the issues included
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1 in the Board item for your consideration. First is the
2 staff proposal that would result in a change in the way
3 that production volumes and associated ZEV requirements
4 are calculated for auto manufacturers that are majority
5 owned by another manufacturer.
6 Small volume manufacturers are not subject to ZEV
7 requirements. And intermediate volume manufacturers can
8 satisfy their entire ZEV requirement with partial ZEVs.
9 However, there have been a number of mergers and
10 consolidations in the industry over the last few years
11 that have made it increasingly more difficult to classify
12 manufacturers as small, intermediate or large volume, and
13 thus determine their ZEV production requirements.
14 The staff proposal that you will consider today
15 clarifies these relationships and ensures fair and
16 equitable treatment for all manufacturers.
17 The second issue that will be discussed today is
18 staff's proposal to standardize the charging
19 infrastructure for battery electric vehicles. A concern
20 has been expressed with the current situation and its
21 impact on the success of the ZEV Program. And this is
22 something that actually staff shares as a significant
23 concern.
24 Right now, we have slightly over 2,000 electric
25 vehicles on the road, but the manufacturers who have
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1 leased these vehicles have used four different connectors
2 after plugs in tandem with two different power transfer
3 techniques. The situation has not caused serious problems
4 to date due to the small number of vehicles and the fact
5 that most of the vehicles were placed with fleets.
6 Fleets are not as dependent upon access to public
7 charging as the retail consumer is. However, we expect to
8 see two changes over the next decade. The number of
9 battery electric vehicles will dramatically increase and
10 we will gradually move from a predominantly fleet based
11 market to a wider consumer market.
12 As a result the changes as approved by this Board
13 in January, staff estimates that the number of EVs will
14 increase to 4,000 by 2003 and increase from 4,000 between
15 the years 2003 and 2010.
16 The lack of charging standardization represents a
17 major implementation barrier with such a large number of
18 vehicles on the horizon. Staff is concerned that
19 consumers will be very hesitant to embrace EV technology
20 and lease or purchase large numbers of EVs with different
21 charging technologies prevalent in the marketplace.
22 Achieving standardization involves some difficult
23 decisions for a government agency. Both charging systems,
24 the conductive and the inductive, have undergone
25 considerable technological development. Both have been
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1 developed into commercial products that have provided EV
2 drivers with the ability to safely and reliably charge
3 their vehicles.
4 If one is not familiar with the charging
5 technologies, displays of the charging equipment have been
6 brought by the industry representatives for viewing.
7 We would have preferred for the market to have
8 moved towards a single standard or for the industry to
9 select one standard through a consensus process. However,
10 little progress has been achieved over the last four
11 years. The industry is evenly divided. Each is committed
12 to the charging technology it is using and has invested
13 in. There is no process to independently select the
14 charging system. This leaves the difficult decision to
15 ARB or some other government agency.
16 Staff believes that this Board is the most
17 appropriate agency the make this decision, since we are
18 charged with ensuring the success of the ZEV Program.
19 Staff's proposal incorporates significant input that was
20 provided during the public process, which included a
21 public workshop as well as several stakeholder meetings.
22 Today staff will present their assessment and
23 recommendations on the need for standardization,
24 evaluation of charging systems and proposed regulations to
25 achieve standardization.
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1 Krista Eley and Gayle Sweigert of the Mobile
2 Source Control Division will now make the staff
3 presentation.
4 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST ELEY: Thank you, Mr.
5 Kenny.
6 As you noted, there are two parts to the ZEV item
7 we are presenting to the first part of the majority owned
8 small or intermediate volume manufacturers. Gayle
9 Sweigert will be presenting the second part, electric
10 vehicle infrastructure standardization.
11 (Thereupon an overhead presentation was
12 presented as follows.)
13 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST ELEY: This part of the
14 item, majority owned small or intermediate volume
15 manufacturers addresses auto manufacturers that partially
16 or wholly own other auto manufacturers.
17 --o0o--
18 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST ELEY: In the last three
19 or four years there's been a large amount of consolidation
20 among manufacturers. As a result, it has become difficult
21 to determine whether companies should be considered
22 individual companies for the zero emission vehicle
23 requirements.
24 As such, staff believes there is a need to
25 clarify a manufacturer's volume status and ensure that all
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1 manufacturers are treated equitably.
2 --o0o--
3 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST ELEY: On this slide are
4 a few examples of auto companies that have consolidated in
5 recent years, Mercedes Benz and Chrysler merged to form
6 DaimlerChrysler. Ford wholly owns Jaguar, Land Rover and
7 Volvo, and partially owns Mazda.
8 General Motors wholly owns Saab and partially
9 owns' Suzuki and Subaru. Volkswagen wholly owns
10 Rolls-Royce and Lamborghini.
11 --o0o--
12 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST ELEY: I'd like to
13 briefly provide you with some background information on
14 the vehicle volume classifications for purposes of ZEV
15 requirements. A large volume manufacturer is defined as a
16 manufacturer with California annual sales of greater than
17 $60,000.
18 These large volume manufacturers must meet at
19 least 20 percent of the ZEV requirement with pure ZEVs and
20 may meet the remaining eight percent of the ZEV
21 requirement with 20 percent advanced technology partial
22 ZEVs or ATP ZEVs, and 60 percent partial ZEVs or PZEVs.
23 An Intermediate volume manufacturer is defined as
24 a manufacturer with California annual sales greater than
25 $4,500 and less that $60,000. These intermediate
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1 manufacturers may meet the ZEV requirement entirely with
2 partial ZEVs.
3 A small volume manufacturer or an independent low
4 volume manufacturer is exempt from all ZEV requirements.
5 The reason for providing less rigorous requirements for
6 small and intermediate volume manufacturers is that
7 smaller companies do not have the resources to develop new
8 technology as quickly as larger companies. Those
9 manufacturers often wait for new technology to trickle
10 down from the large manufacturers.
11 In addition, the smaller companies often have
12 fewer vehicle models, which makes it more difficult to
13 comply with the requirements.
14 --o0o--
15 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST ELEY: Our current
16 approach to determine a manufacturer's vehicle volume
17 status is based on the principle of "Operationally
18 Independent." This term "Operationally Independent" is
19 not defined in is ZEV regulations, resulting in a
20 principle that the somewhat uncertain, difficult to apply
21 and subject to individual interpretation.
22 Staff must interpret each new ownership
23 arrangement on a case-by-case basis. For example, the
24 current vagueness of the term operationally independent
25 has even caused some question as to whether Chrysler and
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1 Mercedes Benz could be considered operationally
2 independent following their 1998 merger into one company.
3 To ARB staff, this would be an obvious
4 circumvention of the term, since neither company, Daimler
5 Benz AG or Chrysler Corporation exists separately today.
6 Nonetheless, this example demonstrates the need
7 for clarity to ensure predictable and equitable treatment
8 among the vehicle manufacturers.
9 --o0o--
10 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST ELEY: The proposal we
11 are presenting today to define manufacturer volume and
12 multiple ownership situations is based on percent
13 ownership regardless of how operations are structured.
14 Where one company owns greater than 50 percent of another
15 company, their vehicle volumes would be combined and used
16 to determine the ZEV requirements.
17 To incorporate this into the ZEV regulations,
18 staff is proposing to modify the definitions of small and
19 intermediate volume manufacturers. The proposed
20 definitions would take effect in 2006 to provide auto
21 makers four years of lead time to allow adjustment of
22 market plans.
23 --o0o--
24 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST ELEY: Here's an example
25 of how the proposal will affect a fictitious company
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1 before and after the regulation. This example assumes
2 that manufacturers will fulfill their credits with 20
3 percent pure ZEVs, 20 percent ATP ZEVs and 60 percent
4 PZEVs.
5 Before the Regulation, we have Company A, a large
6 manufacturer and company B an intermediate volume
7 manufacturer, recently purchased by Company A. After the
8 regulatory change is in place for the combined company,
9 there's an eight percent increase of both pure ZEVs and
10 ATP ZEVs, a six percent decrease of PZEVs.
11 --o0o--
12 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST ELEY: The actual
13 proposal results in an increase of ZEVs required,
14 approximately 160, and an increase in ATP ZEVs required,
15 approximately 950 and a decrease in the number of partial
16 ZEVs required, approximately 4,400 per year.
17 Under current ownership arrangements, there are
18 two auto companies that are affected by this proposal,
19 Ford and Volkswagen. The cost to Ford to implement this
20 change is 2.6 million for the first year in 2006. The
21 cost to Volkswagen is less than $100,000.
22 Any future merger and acquisitions would also be
23 impacted by this clarification. In addition, an emissions
24 impact analysis was performed by staff. Due to the small
25 increase in ZEVs and advanced technology PZEVs, there is a
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1 minimal emissions benefit.
2 --o0o--
3 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST ELEY: ARB staff
4 considered three alternatives to the proposal being
5 presented today.
6 The first alternative considered was to keep the
7 principle of applying the term operationally independent.
8 However, as mentioned earlier, much uncertainty has been
9 created about applying this undefined term, creating a
10 burden each time staff interprets a new ownership
11 arrangement on a case-by-case basis.
12 In addition, some manufacturers not involved in
13 multiple ownership situations have commented that the
14 current method has resulted in inequity and
15 competitiveness issues among manufacturers.
16 The second alternative considered was to use an
17 existing provision of the US EPA Regulation used to
18 aggregate the sales volumes. This provision aggregates
19 vehicle volumes when a company owns ten percent or greater
20 after another company.
21 This alternative was explored at the March 2000
22 workshop. In general, the auto manufacturers expressed
23 that applying the ten percent aggregation was considered
24 too restrictive for this regulation.
25 The third alternative considered was to develop
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1 the definition for operationally independent, and include
2 it in the regulation. Interested vehicle manufacturers
3 provide proposed definitions. One manufacturer's proposed
4 definition of operationally independent consisted of
5 separate legal entities, self-sustaining capital
6 structure, and a separate board of directors.
7 Staff was unable to define all of the
8 manufacturer's definitions into a single, clear and
9 enforceable definition. The manufacturers themselves
10 could not reach any consensus with this approach.
11 Staff's final recommendation at the suggestion of
12 several auto makers was to use the 50 percent ownership
13 criteria, which is the proposed regulation change being
14 presented today.
15 I would like to close with a staff recommendation
16 that the Board adopt the proposal as presented today. The
17 proposal simplifies the determination of the manufacturer
18 volume status to ensure predictable and equitable
19 treatment of all our manufacturers.
20 I'll now turn the presentation over to Gayle
21 Sweigert who will be presenting the next part of this
22 item, electric vehicle infrastructure standardization.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Yes. If it's okay with you,
24 Mike, we'd like to maybe stop at this point and ask
25 questions.
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1 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: All right.
2 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Yes, Dr. Friedman.
3 BOARD MEMBER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN: I just had one
4 question, and it's probably just my business. This 50
5 percent proposal presumes that two companies get together.
6 What if three companies get together of 35, 30 and, you
7 know, different other percentages? Isn't that sort of a
8 backdoor way to avoid -- are you encouraging some
9 additional mergers of less than 50 percent ownership by
10 this approach?
11 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: We're not trying to
12 really encourage or discourage. What we're trying to do
13 is simply reflect, kind of, the reality that we actually
14 currently see in the marketplace.
15 BOARD MEMBER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN: I understand
16 that. But out in the world if this 50 percent proposal is
17 the going concern, is there not a side door to this so
18 that people don't get to 50 percent, yet they do mergers
19 and so forth and they avoid the arithmetic that we want to
20 apply?
21 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: Actually, Dr.
22 Friedman, that could happen. I mean, actually there is at
23 least a factual scenario in which a company owns, for
24 example, 49 percent of another company, and so therefore
25 there would not be an obligation to count that company in
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1 its ZEV calculations.
2 What we were trying to do is essentially reflect
3 that there are companies that own other companies almost
4 outright.
5 BOARD MEMBER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN: I understand
6 that.
7 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: But what you're saying
8 is correct. I mean it is possible to essentially own less
9 than 50 percent and therefore not calculate it in.
10 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Professor Friedman.
11 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: First of all, I
12 haven't seen the language of the resolution for some
13 reason, but the summary says greater than 50 percent, so
14 you can own 50 percent, which clearly is control, and not
15 be subject to the aggregation, not be subject to the
16 rules.
17 But it would be easy enough, as you point out, to
18 simply take one percent, even if you were over 50, if you
19 had 51 percent, and take the one percent, if you're 60,
20 take ten, to bring yourself down to 50, no greater than
21 50, which takes you out of this, and put it in some other
22 entity.
23 Again, I don't know the language, but I think it
24 has to be crafted very carefully if that's the attitude
25 and the spirit -- if that's our goal. But I'm not sure
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1 that we're achieving a kind of fairness and equity that we
2 are seeking, because there's some fairly large
3 manufacturers who don't have the sales in California, but
4 have large sales, and larger than Jaguar or some of these
5 subsidiaries of other companies, that would be caught in
6 this web, on the theory that there is control.
7 But I suspect that the reality is that they
8 almost compete with each other, some of these subsidiaries
9 and divisions within the family that we're trying to
10 capture. So I have some reservations about this.
11 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: I think you're
12 actually correct about the fact that they are competing
13 with one another for market. At the same time, what we
14 were trying to reflect is that certain companies actually
15 own all of other companies, in effect. And so
16 consequently what they do is they have the ability to
17 really control that company, I mean, completely.
18 To the extent that we don't include them as part
19 of the ZEV calculations, we really are essentially
20 ignoring, kind of, one of the facts of life that exists
21 out there, which is companies that are completely
22 controlled and operationally controlled by another.
23 And what we were trying to do is essentially
24 reflect those numbers in the overall ZEV requirement.
25 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: I understand, but I
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1 think you can have companies with operational control of
2 others that would easily avoid --
3 EXECUTIVE OFFICER KENNY: I think you can avoid
4 this if you choose to do so. I just don't think
5 manufacturers will choose to take the path of avoidance,
6 because the consequences are actually not that
7 significant. I mean, we look at the numbers of vehicles
8 that we're talking about adding as a result of this
9 combination, and, yes, there is some increase, but there
10 is also some decrease associated with it.
11 And then at the same time, you know, if companies
12 are owned by other companies, I'm sure there are many
13 other factors that essentially play into that ownership
14 control, and those are the things that companies are going
15 to have to weigh and balance among itself, and decide
16 whether it wants to maybe sell a portion of this company
17 to avoid this particular requirement.
18 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: A factual
19 operational control test, though difficult and requiring
20 an ad hoc case-by-case determination, I think, would, in
21 my own view, would probably be more functionally effective
22 and efficient than a bright line test of 50 percent,
23 which, in a given case, could easily be skirted.
24 I mean, if I were running a company that was
25 acquiring another one of these smaller manufacturers, I'd
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1 say let's not acquire more than 50 percent, we can void
2 this, if it's close. If all we want is control, we can
3 get working control for a lot less.
4 EXECUTIVE OFFICER KENNY: I think your point is
5 probably valid, when we look at the kinds of facts that
6 we're confronted with right now. I mean, as the slide
7 showed, I mean, this probably really most impacts Ford,
8 and it probably has very little impact on the other
9 companies that we're talking about.
10 And the impact there with Ford is essentially one
11 in which they own other companies essentially at the
12 hundred percent level, and that's essentially why they're
13 brought into this. And the other companies don't own
14 other subsidiaries, you know, at above the 50 percent
15 level.
16 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: What was wrong with
17 the operational control?
18 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: Just --
19 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: Other than it's not
20 a standard you can apply a yardstick to.
21 EXECUTIVE OFFICER KENNY: I think it's not a
22 bright line. What we have to do each time is essentially
23 engage in an interpretation that this particular factual
24 scenario fits within the operational control. And what we
25 were trying to do was provide something that was kind of
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1 more sort of --
2 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: I think Jack, could
3 you comment.
4 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: What I
5 wanted to expound on was Mr. Kenny's point that there are
6 other factors, many other factors, which go into an
7 acquisition of another company, and those factors very
8 often lead the larger company to wholly buy from other
9 companies.
10 So most of the situations we have dealt with and
11 we see are a very large company purchasing a hundred
12 percent of the smaller company. And that is the situation
13 where we're still, even at one hundred percent ownership,
14 you know, debating the issue of whether they're
15 operationally independent or not.
16 Manufacturers argue that even when they own one
17 hundred percent of another company, that that other
18 company is still independent. There are some situations,
19 there is a situation, General Motors owning, I believe, 40
20 percent of another company.
21 They would not be affected by the requirement
22 here. So there is a tradeoff in where you draw that
23 bright line. We had originally proposed drawing that
24 bright line at a ten percent level, which is consistent
25 with some of the requirements the US EPA has and other
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1 aggregate requirements.
2 And it just seemed too restrictive for this
3 requirement. The 50 percent was where we decided to draw
4 the line, and it will preclude some versus others.
5 But we believe most of the mergers will happen
6 apart from the consideration of the ZEV mandate. There
7 will be other factors that will overwhelm how much of the
8 new entity that they purchase. And in most cases, it
9 would be one hundred percent.
10 SENIOR STAFF COUNSEL JENNINGS: I think one other
11 factor that might be relevant is that -- Tom Jennings of
12 the legal staff. One other factor that might be relevant
13 is that General Motors owns one hundred percent of Saab.
14 So in a way the relationship is the same as Ford's
15 relationship to Volvo, but General Motors has always
16 treated Saab as part of that company and aggregated the
17 volume the way we're proposing it be done in the other
18 situations.
19 So, in that sense, there are other companies
20 affected, but they're already going the way we're
21 proposing to it be.
22 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS: I
23 guess the last piece, I'm Bob Cross with ARB, is that
24 companies like DaimlerChrysler, for example, we're trying
25 to argue that they were operationally independent. And I
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1 think that that's the case that in our mind we want the
2 bright line to be on the side of saying hey, these guys
3 are in.
4 So I think that the percentage of requirement
5 makes certain of things like Daimler Chrysler are in, and
6 provides a little bit of latitude both ways for situations
7 where you have big companies like GM acquiring small
8 companies like Saab, for example.
9 And on those I think it's less critical than in
10 the situations like DaimlerChrysler.
11 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: Thank you.
12 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I had a question on the -- I
13 guess we've got Ford to address that, I know when you
14 mention the 2.6 million before, that was staff's estimate
15 not Ford's estimate. So I presume that we will -- Ford
16 will testify what that number should be.
17 Any more questions from the Board?
18 Then we will continue with staff presentation.
19 (Thereupon an overhead presentation was
20 presented as follows.)
21 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: Thank you.
22 Next, I will discuss staff's recommendation for the
23 standardization of charging systems for battery electric
24 vehicles. First, I will begin by describing the current
25 situation and the need for standardization.
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1 I will briefly discuss the process that staff
2 used to evaluate charging technologies followed by staff's
3 findings on the merits of each charging system. I will
4 conclude the staff presentation with a brief discussion of
5 the proposed regulatory approach.
6 --o0o--
7 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: I will now
8 begin with a discussion of the need for standardization.
9 Currently, we have slightly over 2,000 EVs on the
10 road and approximately 3,000 charging stations to support
11 these vehicles at fleet facilities, residences and public
12 sites. Over 1,000 stations comprise California's public
13 charging network.
14 --o0o--
15 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: There are
16 three basic systems in use, the inductive, the on-board
17 conductive, and the off-board conductive.
18 To further complicate the situation, there are
19 multiple connector types or plugs in use. The inductive
20 system began with the large cattle connector and is now
21 moving to a small paddle connector. The industry is in
22 the middle of this transition, which is not expected to be
23 complete until 2003. As a result, there's limited
24 availability for some inductively charged vehicles.
25 While the conductive systems have used a variety
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1 of different connectors over the last few years,
2 considerable progress has been made of moving towards the
3 Avcon connector as the industry standard. As a practical
4 matter the Avcon connector is used in virtually all
5 conductive public charging installations in California.
6 --o0o--
7 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: The following
8 shows a typical situation, the current diversity of
9 charging technologies and connector types, public and
10 fleet installations need to install multiple systems to
11 accommodate most EVs on the road.
12 --o0o--
13 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: As a result
14 of the modifications to the ZEV requirements adopted by
15 the Board in January, the number of EVs in California will
16 substantially increase over the next decade.
17 In concert with this increase, marketing efforts
18 will need to shift from fleets to retail customers. The
19 current situation has a potential to be a barrier to
20 market expansion. Staff is concerned that the lack of a
21 standard charging system contributes to public perception
22 that the EV market is not yet mature.
23 Consumers could be more apprehensive about
24 embracing EV technology for fear that they may be buying
25 the equivalent of a Beta Video Cassette recorder. The
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1 lack of standardization not only decreases the access and
2 net capacity of the public charging network, but also
3 results in higher costs. Because these technologies must
4 continue to be supportive, public and private sponsors
5 must maintain higher costs to maintain and expand
6 California's public charging network.
7 And finally, the issue of stranded resources.
8 One charging technology will eventually need to be chosen.
9 Each technology continues to have the proponents that are
10 investing considerable resources into the development and
11 commercialization of product. The longer a decision is
12 delayed, the higher the stranded or sunken investments
13 become.
14 --o0o--
15 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: This slide
16 shows the expected number of ZEVs over the next decade.
17 As you can see, the number of ZEVs will be increasing
18 substantially. It is expected that the majority of these
19 vehicles will be battery electric vehicles through the
20 next seven to ten years.
21 As you can see, an excess of 20,000 vehicles are
22 expected between 2003 and 2006 and up to 100,000 by the
23 year 2010.
24 --o0o--
25 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: There are
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1 many benefits to standardization, especially for the
2 consumer. Standardization will increase access. Every EV
3 will fit every charging station, analogous to a gasoline
4 station in which every vehicle can use any gasoline pump.
5 This will greatly enhance consumer confidence and support
6 market expansion.
7 Standardization assures further technology
8 improvements by focusing resources into one technology.
9 This will also make it easier to service and maintain
10 equipment because it costs more to support multiple
11 technologies.
12 Overall, staff believes that standardization will
13 reduce cost for consumer fleet operators and public
14 infrastructure sponsors.
15 --o0o--
16 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: ARB had hoped
17 that market forces for the industry would select the
18 charging system. Unfortunately, little progress has been
19 made in the industry in moving towards standardization.
20 Four years ago ARB considered developing a
21 similar proposal for standardization, but was asked to
22 wait and let the market decide. Now, four years later,
23 the industry remains evenly divided and committed to their
24 selective technologies, and there is no independent,
25 nonregulatory selection process available.
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1 Also, no commitment has been provided by the auto
2 manufacturers to resolve the issue in the next few years.
3 The lack of commitment to resolve the issue combined with
4 our responsibilities for the successful implementation of
5 the ZEV Program leaves the difficult decision to ARB.
6 --o0o--
7 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: The following
8 slide shows the impact of not standardizing charging
9 systems either through regulations or market forces. The
10 graph illustrates the number of EVs that staff estimates
11 would be on the road by 2006 and 2010 by the four auto
12 makers who currently use a different charging system than
13 the one staff is recommending as a standard.
14 The number of EVs with nonstandard charging
15 systems could rapidly increase. If standardization does
16 not occur by 2006, over 10,000 EVs would be on the road
17 without a standard charging system. If the decision is
18 not reached until 2010, then there could be five times as
19 many vehicles with the nonstandard charging system.
20 These are some of the reasons why we're making
21 this proposal today.
22 --o0o--
23 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: Next, I will
24 briefly describe the process that ARB used for evaluating
25 the charging technologies. To begin, I would like to
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1 describe the function of a charger. A charger is an
2 electrical device that converts alternating current
3 supplied by the electricity grid to direct current to the
4 vehicle battery for the purposes of charging the vehicle
5 battery.
6 --o0o--
7 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: There are
8 several important issues that need to be considered when
9 evaluating a charging system. One of these is the charger
10 location. Chargers can be located either on the vehicle
11 or off the vehicle as a separate piece of equipment.
12 The primary benefit of an on-board charger is
13 that the charger goes where the vehicle goes, which
14 reduces the total number of chargers that must be
15 purchased.
16 This is an important consideration, because we
17 anticipate that at least 1.5 charging stations per vehicle
18 will be needed to provide sufficient public, workplace and
19 residential charging support for vehicles.
20 The disadvantage of the on-board system is that
21 it can result in added weight on the vehicle that can
22 reduce vehicle range.
23 Another consideration is the connector or plug
24 used. This is the device that the consumer will use on a
25 daily basis to connect their car to the charging station.
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1 The connector must be easy to use so that it will be
2 accepted by the consumer. The connector choice is
3 influenced by the type of charging system selected.
4 Finally, there are three different types of
5 charging. The most common of these is referred to as
6 Level 2. It uses dedicated equipment that is permanently
7 affixed to a 220 outlet. This is the charging that is
8 used on a daily basis at residences, fleet facilities and
9 public sites.
10 Other types of charging include level 1 for
11 convenience, which uses the standard 110 volt outlet
12 connection. Smaller vehicles use this on a routine basis.
13 Also, it can be a backup for a full performance vehicle,
14 when Level 2 charging is not available.
15 Finally, there is high power or fast charging
16 which can utilize either an on-board or off-board charger.
17 --o0o--
18 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: There are two
19 basic charging systems, conductive and inductive.
20 Conductive systems are further differentiated by whether
21 they use an on-board or an off-board charger. On-board
22 conductive charging extends power to the charger, which is
23 located on the vehicle. Connecting to the electricity
24 grid only requires simple equipment, consisting of a
25 ground fault circuit interrupt or GFCI.
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1 On-board conductive charging is used in Honda and
2 Ford EVs, as well as with most industrial EVs and electric
3 buses. An alternate method of conductive charging uses an
4 off-board charger.
5 In this case, the vehicle is equipped with a
6 charger port, and a charger has to be installed at each
7 facility whether the EV needs to be recharged. The only
8 manufacturer who utilizes this system is DaimlerChrysler.
9 Finally, inductive charging is a method of
10 transferring power from the charger to the battery
11 mechanically rather than by direct electric contact.
12 Inductive charging is based on the energy transfer in a
13 two-part transformer.
14 --o0o--
15 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: The next step
16 in staff's evaluation process was to identify the
17 selection criteria so that each charging system could be
18 objectively passed.
19 The second step was to collect data pertinent to
20 each charging system. Next staff evaluated each system
21 and completed a preliminary analysis prior to the public
22 workshop which was held in February.
23 --o0o--
24 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: Staff
25 subsequently incorporated comments received during the
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1 public workshop and stakeholder process into the selection
2 criteria. The selection criteria were grouped into three
3 broad categories, cost and market, consumer concerns and
4 future technology evolution. Fifteen specific criteria
5 were considered, and each were given a high, medium or low
6 priority. Eight of the 15 criteria were considered high
7 priority.
8 High priority was assigned to those criteria that
9 provide the greatest contribution to facilitating the use
10 of electric vehicles, enhancing consumer acceptance and
11 supporting market expansion.
12 Next I will summarize the staff's findings or the
13 results of the technical evaluation conducted on the
14 different charging technologies.
15 --o0o--
16 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: The following
17 criteria were included under cost and market. One of the
18 most important criteria is the assessment of the current
19 and future system costs.
20 System costs refer to the total costs for the
21 charging system, including all of the equipment located on
22 the vehicle, as well as off the vehicle.
23 The second consideration was open technology
24 market competition. This includes an evaluation, if there
25 are any licensing fees, patents or other market barriers
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1 that would prevent additional manufacturers or auto
2 manufacturers from manufacturing or using the charging
3 system.
4 Finally, other considerations include
5 infrastructure costs. These are the equipment costs that
6 the consumer or public infrastructure provider must pay
7 for the off-board charging station.
8 --o0o--
9 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: This slide
10 compares the current system costs for all three charging
11 systems. Note that this is the cost for the manufacturers
12 to produce the system. The actual cost numbers are not
13 shown to protect the confidentiality of the data. The
14 off-board conductive system has the highest costs,
15 approximately $8,000. And the on-board conductive system
16 has a system cost in the range of $1,900. The extremely
17 high costs of the off-board conductive system used by
18 DaimlerChrysler, and the fact that the system cost is not
19 likely to be competitive in the near future are the
20 reasons for its removal from most of the other analyses
21 shown later.
22 --o0o--
23 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: This slide
24 illustrates the current list or retail price for different
25 conductive and inductive off-board equipment. This is the
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1 equipment that the consumer must purchase in order to be
2 able to charge their vehicle. For the conductive system,
3 this is the wall box. And for the inductive system, this
4 represents the price of the charger.
5 Conductive wall boxes retail between $350 and
6 $1,900 depending on the model and type of features
7 desired. Inductive chargers are priced between $2,000 and
8 $6,000. As this slide illustrates, the off-board
9 equipment prices on average is much lower for conductive
10 than inductive.
11 --o0o--
12 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: I would like
13 to summarize staff findings regarding costs. I want to
14 emphasize that these are estimates based on information
15 provided by different manufacturers. And all estimates
16 have a certain level of uncertainty associated with them.
17 As discussed earlier, on-board conductive systems
18 currently have the lowest system cost. Another benefit of
19 the on-board conductive system is its ability to reduce
20 costs for smaller city vehicles both now and in the
21 future. This is due to the fact that the size of the
22 charger can be adjusted for the needs and size of the
23 vehicle traction data reading and does not have to rely on
24 the standard charger size, as with an off-board charger.
25 Thus city vehicles with smaller battery packs will require
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1 smaller chargers, reducing overall system cost.
2 Another important consideration is the cost of
3 the infrastructure or charging station. Costs for the
4 conductive wall boxes are, on average, lower than the
5 inductive charger, and staff expects this trend will
6 continue well into the future. This is because the cost
7 of producing a simple conductive wall box is expected to
8 be less expensive than the cost of producing a charging
9 station that incorporates a charging electronics as the
10 inductive system does.
11 --o0o--
12 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: Finally,
13 future costs are very important. Taking all of the
14 previously discussed factors into consideration and
15 reviewing information provided by auto manufacturers,
16 staff estimates that on-board system costs at high volume
17 for conductive systems will be able to achieve cost
18 targets of $700 for city vehicles and $900 for
19 full-function vehicles.
20 Staff recently received information from one
21 manufacturer of inductive charging equipment in which they
22 estimated they would be able to achieve a future high
23 volume cost target identified by conductive.
24 --o0o--
25 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: Patents and
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1 licensing fees covering infrastructure equipment are a
2 potential impediment to competition.
3 This concerns, specifically, with that portion of
4 the charging system that needs to be compatible with a
5 variety of vehicles and users. Conductive systems allow
6 for an open architecture in which patents or proprietary
7 designs have been minimized, thus encouraging future
8 technology of evolution.
9 Conductive keeps the infrastructure uncomplicated
10 and cost effective, because it uses simple wall box
11 technology. Inductive systems, on the other hand, rely on
12 a complex or costly charging for the infrastructure. The
13 conductive wall box is somewhat analogous to the situation
14 with a typical consumer product. The 110 household outlet
15 remains basically unchanged, allowing products like
16 toasters to evolve and improve over time. We don't need
17 to constantly change the electrical outlet to accept new
18 technology developments, like the microwave.
19 However, the opposite situation exists for
20 inductive technology, as inductive technology involves the
21 off board charging needs to be replaced or upgraded.
22 Conductive systems have only one patent that
23 covers the connector vehicle inlet. There is a universal
24 licensing agreement in place. This is $100,000 plus four
25 percent of profits and represents a small fraction of the
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1 total charging system.
2 --o0o--
3 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: Manufacturers
4 of inductive systems have stated that inductive is an open
5 technology. However, there are a number of patents
6 covering inductive technology that introduce a level of
7 uncertainty regarding costs. Because there's no universal
8 licensing agreement covering inductive technology, the
9 future costs for a new manufacturer are unknown.
10 General Motors, a manufacturer and inductive
11 patent holder, has provided comments that patents issues
12 would be resolved between them and interested
13 manufacturers.
14 --o0o--
15 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: To summarize,
16 staff believes that two high priority cost issues favor
17 the on-board conductive system.
18 Next, I will turn to the discussion of the
19 criteria that have consumer concerns.
20 --o0o--
21 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: High priority
22 criteria included the safety, reliability and durability
23 of charging equipment, the ease of use or how consumer
24 friendly the equipment is. Charging efficiency is also an
25 important consideration.
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1 Other criteria include public access, product
2 support, and the ability to provide convenience or 110
3 volt charging.
4 --o0o--
5 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: All charging
6 systems meet or exceed the established industry practices
7 for safety. These safety standards are included in the
8 Society of Automotive Engineers' recommended practices for
9 charging systems.
10 The safety standards are generally implemented
11 through the UL listing process. While there is no peer
12 review data available, all systems have demonstrated
13 excellent reliability and durability. This includes
14 meeting stringent industry testing recommendations for the
15 connector 10,000 insertions.
16 There have been field problems with both systems.
17 This includes a failed component in the inductive vehicle
18 inlet that resulted in the safety recall of the EV 1 and
19 S10 last year.
20 There were larger than expected durability
21 problems with the prototype conductive connector. Both
22 problems have been resolved.
23 --o0o--
24 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: Staff
25 assessment of the inductive paddle is that it is easier to
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1 use. It only requires one angle of motion rather than two
2 with the conductive connector.
3 However, both systems meet consumers ergonomic
4 needs and are easier to use than a standard gasoline pump.
5 All auto manufacturers conducted consumer focus groups to
6 evaluate different connector designs.
7 Conductive charging is more efficient than
8 inductive charging. Inductive systems are one to two
9 percent less efficient at the peak power levels. These
10 sufficiency differences are significantly greater when EVs
11 charge at lower power levels.
12 Therefore, some city EVs as well as EVs with lead
13 acid technology would be expected to have greater
14 efficiency losses, as compared to the comparable
15 conductively recharged vehicles.
16 In addition, full performance, inductively
17 charged EVs that charge often at lower power levels may
18 also have lower charging efficiencies.
19 Staff attempted to conduct independent tests to
20 measure efficiency. Testing done in El Monte has shown a
21 negligible difference in some cases, but up to a 20
22 percent difference in other cases.
23 --o0o--
24 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: To summarize,
25 conductive equaled or exceeded inductive in four out of
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1 the five high priority criteria for consumer concerns.
2 --o0o--
3 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: Next I will
4 turn to the discussion of future technology evolution.
5 This is the ability of different charging systems to keep
6 pace with the advances in technology. The high priority
7 criteria included vehicle to grid or using the battery to
8 send power back to the grid.
9 The second criteria is level two plus charging, a
10 fast charging option. Other considerations are level 3
11 high power charging and auto docking.
12 --o0o--
13 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: Vehicle to
14 grid charging reverses the power flow, in that the charger
15 can provide power to the electricity grid when not
16 charging the batteries. When EV charger connection
17 systems were developed, they were only expected to deliver
18 power to charged vehicles. Much has changed in the last
19 ten years. There are a variety of electric drive vehicles
20 including pure battery electric vehicles that contained
21 all of the basic components needed for a distributed power
22 generation source.
23 This is considered a promising application for
24 the future. ARB funded a study to evaluate the viability
25 of EVs as power resources. The conclusion was that EV's
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1 could be cost competitive in providing power for ancillary
2 services. Ancillary services are used to cover imbalances
3 in power availability by California independent system
4 operators.
5 Conductive systems are capable of bi-directional
6 flow with little or no expensive modifications. Minimal
7 modifications are needed to wall boxes, cables and
8 connects to support vehicle to grid power flow.
9 However, vehicles need to be designed to allow
10 for this application. Current inductive systems are not
11 capable of reversing power flow. Although an inductive
12 system could be designed to do this. It would require
13 adding components to the vehicle side. In addition, it
14 would require adding considerable components to the
15 charger, which will significantly increase the cost and
16 complexity of the inductive system.
17 --o0o--
18 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: There are two
19 types of fast charging. Level 2 plus uses an on-board
20 charger and level 3 uses an off-board charger. Level 3
21 provides a faster charge time, about 20 minutes to
22 recharge from 20 to 80 percent of charge. Level 2 plus
23 could recharge a vehicle in less than an hour.
24 However, due to the very high costs of off-board
25 chargers, auto manufacturers do not anticipate a business
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1 case to support level 3 charging in the near to mid-term.
2 Level 2 plus is considered by many to be the only cost
3 effective approach in the near to mid term. Level 2 plus
4 is very promising for conductive applications.
5 Several auto manufacturers are working on
6 integrated chargers that would provide faster charging.
7 Some systems are already commercially available. It is
8 technologically feasible for inductive, but those systems
9 are currently under development and it would be more
10 complicated than a comparable are conductive system.
11 --o0o--
12 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: The following
13 slide summarizes staff's findings on the criteria included
14 under technology evolution. On-board conductive systems
15 exceeded inductive in the two categories of vehicle to
16 grid and level 2 plus charging.
17 Here are the complete results of the staff's
18 technical evaluation. On-board conductive systems met or
19 exceeded inductive in seven out of the eight high priority
20 criteria.
21 --o0o--
22 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: Next, I will
23 discuss the regulatory approach that staff is recommending
24 to standardize infrastructure. Staff is recommending that
25 the ZEV regulations be modified to add requirements for
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1 charging. There are two basic requirements. One is for a
2 conductive vehicle inlet as specified by the Society of
3 Automotive Engineers in their recommended practice.
4 This is currently in final draft form and
5 expected to be finalized later this year. The second
6 requirement is to require a minimum on-board charger.
7 This will ensure that every EV would be able to use every
8 conductive charging station.
9 The proposed implementation year is to 2006.
10 This provides industry with a full four years to make
11 changes to vehicle platforms and work out any inner
12 operability issues.
13 --o0o--
14 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: Staff is
15 proposing that these requirements would apply to all
16 vehicles that qualify for 1.0 or greater ZEV credit and
17 which are capable to be designed of level 2 or 220 volt
18 charging.
19 Staff also proposes that grid-connected EV's that
20 will utilize Level 2 charging also be included. This
21 would exempt all neighborhood electric vehicles and city
22 vehicles that would only be capable of a Level 1 charging.
23 --o0o--
24 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: As part of
25 the regulatory development process, staff considered a
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1 number of options to the proposed approach. This included
2 establishing a consensus process. Given the divisions
3 within the industry, there was no viable option for
4 achieving consensus in the near term.
5 Another option was to standardize both charging
6 systems. However, that would not meet the needs of the
7 consumer who will need one standardized system in order to
8 ensure access to public charging.
9 Other options were to recommend the charging
10 system but not require it or implement through public
11 policy initiatives. Neither of these approaches would
12 provide certainty to the ZEV Program.
13 --o0o--
14 AIR POLLUTION SPECIALIST SWEIGERT: In
15 conclusion, staff has found that on-board conductive
16 charge will provide consumers and public charging
17 supporters with the lowest infrastructure equipment costs,
18 has the greatest potential for future technology
19 evolution, and meets or exceeds industry standards for
20 safety, reliability and durability.
21 Conductive keeps the infrastructure the simplest.
22 And when we have completely standardized, we will achieve
23 the goal of every EV fitting every EV charging station.
24 This concludes the staff presentation.
25 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much.
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1 Questions from the Board or comments?
2 I have one, I guess. On your efficiency slide, I
3 heard what you said, but it wasn't particularly crisp
4 there. Can you basically summarize, is it definitive in
5 terms of that, one system over the other? You know, I got
6 some range into negligible to 20 percent, but you know --
7 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: Yes.
8 Let me try and clarify. And you will probably hear both
9 negligible and 20 percent in the testimony a little bit
10 later. And they're not necessarily mutually exclusive.
11 We've heard comments from manufacturers and we
12 did a little bit of testing on our own to get our own,
13 sort of, hands-on feel for the testing. We've confirmed
14 with what we have heard from the manufacturers.
15 At high power levels inductive and conductive can
16 be comparable one to two percent is about right. And I'm
17 not really an electrical engineer, as a kind of person, so
18 if it helps you, the analogy I use is to kind of think of
19 it like water flow. And what we're trying to determine is
20 how much the nozzle at the end of the hose might, you
21 know, restrict the water flow coming out. And when you
22 have that water turned on full blast, inductive and
23 conductive, they're about the same, probably slightly
24 better for conductive.
25 The challenge comes in do you ever need to turn
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1 that nozzle at half or even less than half? And there are
2 a lot of situations where that's the case.
3 When you can't fill the battery right to the very
4 top, you can't keep going full blast, full blast and then
5 shut it off, there has to be some logic to the charging
6 strategy. And especially for lead acid batteries, you
7 need to taper it even more and more and more and more.
8 So we found that lead acid batteries will have
9 more of a tendency to have that nozzle turned down a
10 little bit toward the end of the chart, so they will
11 suffer from lower efficiency at some point.
12 In addition, there are other instances where you
13 aren't going to want to do it. If you cool -- if you
14 charge on a hot day, some of the battery management
15 techniques to ensure long life of the battery, what they
16 do is they cool the battery when you're charging on a hot
17 day. It can't take all of the heat of the charge all at
18 once.
19 When you're cooling the battery, you're running
20 at a very low charge, you're trickling that charge in
21 there. And when you're trickling that charge in there,
22 that's when the efficiency drops dramatically. Level 1
23 charging would be the same thing. Some of the smaller
24 battery packs would be the same thing.
25 So there's a number of instances we've seen where
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1 the efficiency is likely to drop. And so the two percent
2 number, I think, one to two percent number is right. And
3 I think the 20 percent number in some cases is right.
4 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you. That's a good
5 explanation. I appreciate that Jack.
6 The other point I heard, staff, on 2006, why that
7 was selected. I would be interested in the witnesses
8 talking about that timeframe. In fact, the additional
9 time there would be useful. So for those who are
10 testifying, it would be a question I would like to
11 explore.
12 Professor Friedman.
13 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: I don't propose,
14 personally, that we get into a full blown discussion of
15 what I'm to raise at this point, but I think before the
16 end of the day, I'd like to hear from any witnesses on it
17 and from the staff, at some point. To what incentive have
18 you considered, if we were to go this way, what we'd be
19 doing to the existing infrastructure, and those who own
20 vehicles, and how we could assure -- make every reasonable
21 effort to assure that those charging capabilities are
22 still available for the life or the reasonable expectation
23 of life of such vehicle?
24 And I think if we're going to decide that
25 standardization is a must, and have to pick one or the
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1 other, I mean, inductive is clearly a very legitimate
2 rational approach. But assuming comparatively it doesn't
3 measure up for the reasons that have been proposed, the
4 stated ones, and we're going to have to pick one, I'm
5 concerned about what it does to those who in good faith
6 have not only made them, but have bought them and are
7 using them.
8 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I think that's a legitimate
9 issue there, too. I think, as you said, we probably could
10 shortly get on that issue.
11 Ms. D'Adamo and then Mr. McKinnon.
12 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: Just a quick question of
13 Mr. Kitowski. The issue that you were just raising about
14 efficiency on warm days, would that apply to all batteries
15 or was it just the lead acid?
16 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: It
17 would apply to those batteries that have a thermal
18 management system, which incorporates some sort of cooling
19 or air-conditioning. That's not necessarily lead acid.
20 That depends on what the manufacturer believes is
21 necessary to ensure the durability of the battery. There
22 are lead acid systems that use it, but there are nickel
23 metal hydride systems that use it and there are nickel
24 metal hydride systems that don't use it.
25 Most batteries -- well, it's pretty mixed. It's
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1 not dependent on the battery type itself, it's the system
2 approach. And I believe Honda has used it, General Motors
3 has used it, Toyota has not.
4 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Mr. McKinnon.
5 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: Yeah. I'm concerned
6 about stranding, kind of, cars. If we start building more
7 and more cars with two different systems, I don't know
8 that we solve the problem. We may make the problem worse.
9 I'm also concerned with those that have invested
10 already in inductive. And if we were to pass this
11 resolution today, I'm interested, as folks testify today,
12 if there might be some room for us to figure out a way to
13 reward the conversion of some of the inductive cars or
14 maybe, you know, they're going to be too old by the time
15 this happens.
16 But it seems to me that at least part of the
17 discussion might be today is how we do the transition.
18 And, frankly, if folks are arguing we should leave it to
19 the market till later, then I think that how we do the
20 transition discussion is still important, because some day
21 we're going to have to deal with that question.
22 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Good point. I'm sure we'll
23 address that. I guess I didn't ask you Madam Ombudsman if
24 you would like to comment on the process by which this
25 recommendation was brought before the Board.
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1 OMBUDSMAN TSCHOGL: I'd be pleased to. Chairman
2 and members of the Board. The proposed regulation before
3 you now was developed in response, as you know, to your
4 request at this year's January board meeting. I'll
5 summarize the outreach that staff conducted in preparation
6 for today.
7 On February 27th staff held a workshop in El
8 Monte. The workshop began at 10:00 a.m. and ended at 8:00
9 p.m. The evening session was held to facilitate greater
10 public participation. Staff sent the workshop
11 announcement to 50 people via the US Postal Service, and
12 electronically to nearly 650 people. Staff sent the
13 announcement to the environmental community, concerned
14 citizens groups, industry representatives, government
15 agencies and others who have identified their interest in
16 the ZEV mandate. Staff posted the announcement to our web
17 site as well.
18 Fifty people attended the workshop at some point
19 during the day. Staff convened a working group to discuss
20 the technical issues surrounding the requirements of these
21 amendments. The group consisted of the manufacturers of
22 vehicles and charging systems, government agencies and the
23 public.
24 This working group was announced at the February
25 27th workshop, and anyone interested in participating was
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1 invited to do so. The working group met on March 14 and
2 again on April 10 in El Monte. Staff had an additional 15
3 individual meetings with interested parties since January
4 of this year.
5 These parties included automakers, energy
6 providers, ZEV enthusiasts, and infrastructure providers.
7 Staff also conducted a conference call with all seven
8 automakers on April 17th.
9 Finally, the staff record and the announcement of
10 this hearing were posted to ARB's web site on May 11. At
11 this time, the announcement was sent to the recipients
12 identified a few moments ago.
13 Throughout the process, staff heard comments that
14 helped shape the regulation that is before you now.
15 Thank you.
16 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thanks very much. Now, going
17 to the public testimony. Before we do that, again, one of
18 the issues, Mr. Kenny, I would like to explore in addition
19 to some of the issues that have already been raised, is an
20 answer to the argument of well, let the free market take
21 its place. And I know staff commented on the issue here
22 that we have tried to -- basically tried to come up with
23 some standardization during the last few years and nothing
24 happened. That's yeah, we're coming here.
25 So, maybe, we can comment on that now or later.
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1 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: Yes. I'd be happy to.
2 We actually had this discussion, a very similar one to
3 this, back in 1997/1998. And, at that point in time, we
4 actually were looking to standardization. And we thought
5 that, in fact, we knew that if we had a standardized route
6 for exactly the kinds of reasons you've heard today, we
7 thought it would make the market more successful, we
8 thought it would be easier on the consumers, we thought
9 that, in fact, it would probably provide for a dedication
10 of resources that would work to everyone's advantage.
11 At the time, what we heard from the manufacturers
12 was that what we should do is essentially allow the market
13 to, sort of, work this out, and that the market would
14 likely work it out. There was also a lot of discussion
15 that SAE committees were looking at that and that would
16 help the market move towards some level of being able to
17 work this out.
18 In the end, as a staff, we actually debated this
19 fairly intensely among ourselves to decide whether we
20 should allow it to be worked out over time or whether we
21 should propose to the Board back then a standardized
22 approach.
23 And what we decided back then was that we would
24 allow the market the opportunity to try to work it out.
25 Unfortunately, here we are four years later and the market
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1 hasn't worked it out, and we don't see any likelihood
2 that, in fact, given another six months, given another
3 year, given another two years, that, in fact, the market
4 would work it out. It seems, in fact, at this point in
5 time that the market is even more entrenched than ever
6 with regard to multiple systems.
7 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you.
8 Let's start the public testimony. I'd like to
9 remind the witnesses to sign up if you want to testify
10 with the Clerk of the Board and also provide 30 copies of
11 your written statements.
12 So I'd like to start off with the first witness
13 who signed up, and also to alert the others, which is Rich
14 Bell from Ford and Bob Cassidy from Nissan and Michael
15 Wolterman from Toyota.
16 Maybe, Rich, you could also clarify -- that I see
17 that we have later on Craig Toepfer from Ford testifying,
18 one is against and one is for.
19 I presume you're taking about different aspects.
20 MR. BELL: We fight each other all the time.
21 (Laughter.)
22 MR. BELL: I'm speaking on the multi-manufacturer
23 issue and Craig is speaking on the inductive charge on
24 behalf of Ford and EVC3.
25 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Is your mike on?
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1 MR. BELL: Is there any way to get the slides up
2 on -- the Board can see but the audience can't.
3 I'm Rich Bell with Ford Motor Company. I just
4 want to speak briefly on multi-manufacturers, since we are
5 affected the greatest by that proposal.
6 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I guess does this fall in the
7 category that no good deed goes unpunished?
8 (Thereupon an overhead presentation was
9 presented as follows.)
10 MR. BELL: That's right. As part of an overview,
11 I want to talk a little bit about the things your staff
12 has been telling us about what's coming in post-2001 --
13 post January 2001 revisions since the Board last met on
14 this issue, and then talk a little bit about
15 multi-manufacturer rationale for changes, our structure,
16 fairness, cost, air quality benefits and necessity.
17 --o0o--
18 MR. BELL: As far as changes since January of
19 2001, there are some revisions we're expecting that will
20 have a positive impact on Ford Motor Company's credit
21 position, and actually make it easier for us to comply,
22 based on where we thought we were in January.
23 And, if you recall, we said in January that near
24 term we thought we were in really good shape with where
25 the direction of the mandate was headed. But there are a
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1 couple of other provisions that are being considered,
2 inclusions of trucks up to 8,500 pounds that would more
3 than double our requirements of Ford Motor Company,
4 multi-manufacturer provisions, we increase our ZEV and ADP
5 said requirements by about 15 percent or equivalent to
6 about 600 Pure ZEV credits in 2006.
7 --o0o--
8 MR. BELL: And if we finally had time to go back
9 and analyze the impact of the fixed three-year volume
10 average that staff proposed to the Board and looked at in
11 January and approved, and that would result in a ten
12 percent greater credit required over the first five years
13 than would be required if we based it on our actual sales.
14 In other words in 2003, our actual sales are
15 lower than the 97/98/99 volume average that we would now
16 have to base it on. So over that period, you've got a ten
17 percent hit. And the net effect is basically now piling
18 on of our credit deficit. We had a deficit earlier than
19 we thought we were going to.
20 --o0o--
21 MR. BELL: Moving on to the multi-manufacturer
22 issues specifically. There are two reasons that staff has
23 provided for making changes. The first is ambiguity. And
24 we believe that that can be addressed by staying with the
25 operationally dependent definition and just providing some
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1 turns and concepts that better define operationally
2 independent.
3 As far as fairness is concerned, the second
4 rationale or change, it's hard for us to talk about
5 fairness in the ZEV mandate in the same breath, because
6 it's, you know, it's basically -- it's hard to be fair
7 when you're requiring manufacturers to do things and other
8 manufacturers not.
9 So it is kind of a tough concept. One can argue
10 that to be equitable you would have to mandate it applied
11 to all manufacturers equally. You could argue it the
12 other way as well.
13 But basically, you know, all the groupings of
14 affiliated companies, this is approximately the same size,
15 don't have the same ability to -- and resources to apply
16 towards orders meeting, you know, ZEV mandate. And that's
17 why we feel the fairness issue is kind of soft.
18 --o0o--
19 MR. BELL: This slide depicts our view of Ford's
20 structure. Ford Motor Company is the parent company. We
21 have divisions of Ford that you're familiar with, Lincoln
22 Mercury. And they are clearly divisions of Ford Motor
23 Company. We also have operationally independent
24 corporations, Land Rover, Jaguar, Volvo, Aston Martin and
25 Mazda.
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1 --o0o--
2 MR. BELL: We view Lincoln and Mercury and Ford
3 as divisions of Ford Motor Company, not separate legal
4 entities, and they are clearly not operationally
5 independent.
6 --o0o--
7 MR. BELL: Jaguar, Aston Martin, Volvo and Land
8 Rover are wholly owned subsidiaries. I think Aston Martin
9 is as well. They're operationally independent from us.
10 They are separate, legal entities. I think you saw these
11 three points earlier in the ARB presentation.
12 Self-sustaining capital structures. They have a separate
13 Board of Directors, and they maintain their own
14 distinctive image and reputation. They have their own
15 cycle plans, et cetera.
16 --o0o--
17 MR. BELL: Getting back to the fairness. Staff
18 went through some of the details about how Ford affected
19 and how VW is affected.
20 In Ford's case, we are significantly affected.
21 Volkswagen was estimated at, I think, $100,000 a year and
22 Ford staff estimated it at $2.4 million a year.
23 The revisions would become effective in the 2006
24 model year, and that's well within the scope of our
25 current product plans. We share the product plans with
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1 the staff that go out to 2008. And, in our view, you
2 know, there's really insufficient time to optimize our
3 costs and our plan for compliance if it were to take back
4 in 2006.
5 And under the proposal our ZEV and ATP ZEV
6 requirements would grow quite quickly, and we don't see
7 anything that let's us on the demand side. Back in
8 January there was a complete staff report that talked
9 about the market and whatnot. This increases our
10 requirements about addressing the demand side of the
11 equation.
12 --o0o--
13 MR. BELL: As far as cost is concerned, I have
14 shared some specific numbers with staff, but basically the
15 2006 costs staff has presented are low by our estimates by
16 a factor of about four. And that varies up and down
17 depending on where staff stands with the efficiency
18 calculations that they're playing with now. It's about
19 four, based on the efficiency calculation that you saw
20 back in January.
21 So instead of $2.6 million a year it's over $10
22 million a year. And, of course, those costs go up as the
23 mandate ramps up to 2018. It goes from four percent to
24 ten percent. And then also the inclusions of trucks up to
25 8,500 pounds. That combined effect of those two things,
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1 our annual cost will go to three and a half times where
2 they would be in 2006, so it's a significant amount of
3 money.
4 --o0o--
5 MR. BELL: Moving on to air quality benefits.
6 And air quality benefits by the proposal's estimates are
7 quite low, and there isn't really a discussion of cost
8 effectiveness in the proposal, except to say that they're
9 going to dismiss the concept of cost effectiveness based
10 on Ford's decision earlier to retain the mandate despite
11 cost effectiveness.
12 And that basically was related to the Board's
13 view that the mandate made sense regardless of the costs,
14 simply because of technology advancement. And in our
15 view, the multi-manufacturer division that has been
16 proposed won't promote technology advancements and we
17 think the rationale is somewhat flawed.
18 --o0o--
19 MR. BELL: In our view the revisions aren't
20 necessary. Consolidation within the auto industry isn't a
21 threat to ARB's air quality goals. You won't end up with
22 fewer ZEVs because of consolidation. In other words you
23 are where you were regardless of who buys them. What you
24 would do by this proposal is simply get more of them, not
25 less, than what you're talking about.
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1 It won't increase the number of ZEV models in our
2 case. We won't do Jaguar ZEVs. We won't do Aston Martin
3 ZEVs. We won't do Land Rover ZEV models. We'll simply
4 have to do more Ford models to the ones that are already
5 planned. We'll have to find a way to market more of those
6 incentives, other ways to get more customers.
7 --o0o--
8 MR. BELL: We don't think your revisions are
9 necessary that you can work with your definition of
10 operationally independent. You've done all the hard work.
11 Staff has categorized all the manufacturers. We're all
12 packed in our little boxes, whether we're covered or not.
13 Any further aggregation in industry that things have been
14 set, you just follow the path that we've already laid out.
15 --o0o--
16 MR. BELL: So in conclusion, the costs are high.
17 They're nearly exclusive to Ford Motor Company. The air
18 quality benefits are small. The consolidation proposes no
19 threat to the goals of the mandate, revisions won't
20 increase the number of ZEV models on the market. The lead
21 time is insufficient to optimize costs. And it should
22 probably be at least a couple of years longer.
23 And we believe that revisions are not necessary.
24 --o0o--
25 MR. BELL: Getting back to the points that staff
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1 put up. We believe that you can fix the definition you
2 have by adding factors such as separately remedy,
3 self-sustaining capital structure and operation.
4 Any question?
5 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I'm sure there are some. I'm
6 sure there will be others who will testify on this
7 particular item before we get on to the recharging of
8 standardization to come about.
9 One of the things you talked about is the timing.
10 And staff has that information there. Clearly, your
11 bottom line is no time is a good time. Does additional
12 time help?
13 MR. BELL: It certainly helps us evolve our
14 product plans, such that we can have the lowest cost
15 compliance plan company. In other words, look at our cost
16 per credit, put together a plan that makes the most sense.
17 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Yeah, but you're also -- in
18 your concluding comments, you're also pretty confident
19 that the Board can basically cover some of these issues
20 itself without putting it into significantly more
21 production.
22 MR. BELL: I think so, yeah.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Mr. Kenny.
24 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: I think this whole
25 discussion really boils down to, kind of, a pretty
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1 straightforward issue between us and Ford. And it really
2 is the question of should the wholly owned subsidiaries be
3 counted?
4 And If you look at the operational definition
5 that Rich was proposing, he's proposing that we not count
6 those companies even though they are wholly owned
7 subsidiaries. And what we're proposing is that we think,
8 in fact, we should count those companies. And that really
9 is kind of, I think, the heart of the question.
10 And what that means is that if we count the
11 companies, then Ford volume does increase and consequently
12 their ZEV obligation increases.
13 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: How do you respond to the
14 issue, Mike, where they've got an independent board of
15 directors and cases where they rate independently. And
16 clearly we know from the badges on there, I can understand
17 why you wouldn't get an Aston Martin ZEV.
18 So there's --
19 BOARD MEMBER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN: Darn.
20 (Laughter.)
21 EXECUTIVE OFFICER KENNY: Well, I guess I would
22 use the same argument that was used earlier, which is that
23 wholly owned subsidiaries, if we're going to define them
24 in the context of separate board's of directors, that is
25 not that difficult to establish, and we could actually see
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1 a kind of Lincoln division, which is a wholly owned
2 subsidiary, but which essentially is established with a
3 different board of directors and things like that, if
4 people chose to try to avoid this particular requirement.
5 I would also refer back to the argument that Mr.
6 Jennings made which is that if you look at GM and Saab,
7 you know, it's a very similar situation, and yet the Saab
8 vehicles are counted.
9 And so what we were trying to do is simply
10 reflect that we think these vehicles should be counted,
11 because, in fact, Ford does, in the end, control these
12 five companies.
13 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Yeah, I hear you, but I'm
14 also cognizant of the fact that as we included SUVs into
15 the requirement and then we add here, I can see why Ford
16 would think of this as being picked on rather unfairly at
17 a time when they were actually trying to work with us very
18 strongly.
19 Any comments?
20 Professor Friedman.
21 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: Well, just a
22 follow-up. Could you respond to the point that this does
23 not promote technological advancement. It just piles on.
24 It just adds more credit requirement.
25 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: I don't think it's a
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1 piling on. I do think it does promote technological
2 advancement to the extent that we get greater numbers of
3 vehicles out into the marketplace. I mean, ultimately the
4 goal is to have as many of the, either zero emission
5 vehicles or Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emission
6 vehicles in the marketplace as we can achieve.
7 And I think Rich's comment about the fact that
8 we're probably not going to see an Aston Martin ZEV or a
9 Land Rover ZEV, I think, he's probably very accurate in
10 saying that. But at the same time, those are vehicles
11 that are in the marketplace that essentially do have a
12 pollution consequence to them. And the entire goal of the
13 ZEV Program was to essentially develop a mobile
14 transportation future in which we minimize the amount of
15 pollution that's coming from those vehicles.
16 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: If they were still
17 owned independently, they would not be subject to these?
18 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: That's absolutely
19 true. And actually --
20 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: And some of them
21 were acquired probably in good faith and without any
22 thought that this would mean any changes.
23 EXECUTIVE OFFICER KENNY: I think it's true, if
24 they continue to be independent companies, they would not
25 be subject to this requirement, because then they would
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1 fall into either an intermediate volume manufacturer or a
2 small volume manufacturer. And they would have either a
3 different requirement or no requirement, depending on the
4 fact of that status.
5 But what we are trying to reflect is that these
6 are no longer independent companies. I mean, they are
7 companies that are completely owned by Ford, and they have
8 therefore the resources of Ford at their disposal. And
9 that's what we've been trying to basically reflect in
10 terms of the ZEV requirement.
11 We did exclude the small volume manufacturers for
12 the simple reason that they didn't have those resources
13 available to them and so we didn't think it made sense to
14 actually put that burden upon them.
15 With regard to the intermediate volume
16 manufacturers, you know, we tried to essentially
17 discriminate in favor of them because of the lack of
18 resources that they had in comparison to the larger volume
19 manufacturers. But in this situation, Ford is essentially
20 increasing its market share through it's wholly owned
21 subsidiaries, and it did seem to us to be reasonable to
22 include those vehicles as part of the ZEV requirement.
23 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: What would be your
24 outside current product year plan? In other words, you
25 said 2006 is too soon, but what --
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1 MR. BELL: We basically have our ZEV compliance
2 plan AT PZEVs, PZEVs and ZEVs out to 2008 at this time, so
3 beyond 2008, it's basically, you know, when we would have
4 time to completely adjust the --
5 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Would staff agree with that?
6 EXECUTIVE OFFICER KENNY: In terms of a timeframe
7 for adjustment, I mean we would take Ford at its word on
8 that. I don't think we've actually looked at that or have
9 we?
10 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: We have
11 not looked at that. Generally, the domestic automakers
12 need an additional more than two years compared to the
13 foreign automakers, the Japanese automakers, and it's
14 probably in the ballpark.
15 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: I guess what's
16 bothering me is that there is something retroactive about
17 this, that sort of bothers me. It just that we're really
18 in a sense, although hopefully minimally, that the effect
19 of this would be certainly to be a disincentive of some
20 kind for companies to acquire other companies that have
21 been independent, and that would not be subject to these
22 requirements. And all of a sudden because they've been
23 acquired or 50 percent plus has been acquired, they
24 suddenly are subject to it, particularly where there's
25 special custom type vehicles, and so that just -- all it
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1 does is increase the volume of the traditional credit.
2 EXECUTIVE OFFICER KENNY: That is correct. I
3 mean --
4 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: I know what our goal
5 is. And, you know, we're staying the course, but --
6 EXECUTIVE OFFICER KENNY: I think the one thing
7 that is probably worth some exploration is the issue of
8 timing. I mean we issued it as a 2006 timeframe, because
9 we thought that it was actually a reasonable timeframe.
10 If, in fact, we are off by a year or two years,
11 that may be a reasonable course to pursue.
12 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Mr. Chairman, if I might,
13 I would like to see staff maybe pursue some thought there
14 that would give to Ford and the subsidiaries some
15 opportunities. Obviously, they're good partners for us in
16 terms of achieving what we want to achieve in terms of the
17 ZEV requirement. And sometimes a little help can go a
18 long ways in getting everybody on the same track.
19 So while, we understand, or at least I feel I
20 understand what you are trying to achieve through the
21 staff recommendation, it seems to me that maybe there's a
22 timing issue again that we could partner up a little bit.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Supervisor DeSaulnier, Dr.
24 Burke.
25 Anybody down here?
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1 BOARD MEMBER DeSAULNIER: Mike, sort of on the
2 same line of anything, it seems as if we're concerned with
3 more future mergers and the potential to manipulate the
4 ruling. I wonder in terms of what Alan said, when we
5 started this, your testimony was no good deed goes
6 unpunished, if there was any discussion about sort of
7 separating this, the world as we know it now is accepted,
8 but any future mergers would come under some kind of
9 control.
10 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: Actually, I don't
11 think we actually looked at it from that perspective.
12 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Could you?
13 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: Yes, we could.
14 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: Would you?
15 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: Yes, we would.
16 (Laughter.)
17 BOARD MEMBER DeSAULNIER: So to finish my
18 thought, would you do that, please?
19 (Laughter.)
20 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: Yes, we can.
21 BOARD MEMBER DeSAULNIER: Thank you.
22 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Dr. Burke.
23 BOARD MEMBER BURKE: I was right with you up
24 until you said that Jaguar and some of the other
25 divisions, Aston Martin, have the full resources of the
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1 corporation available to them, which may or may not be
2 true, I don't know, how do you know that?
3 Because if I owned Ford Motor Company, what I
4 would do to obfuscate this rule is to reverse sales to
5 employees, make the sales so that arguably we kept all the
6 profit, and then I wouldn't own them. I'd just take all
7 the profit.
8 The other thing that bothers me about what you've
9 been saying this morning is that you've been speaking
10 about these corporations like they're proprietary
11 corporations. And they're not, they're public
12 corporations.
13 So 50 percent is not controlling. A somewhere
14 much lower figure than that is really what a controlling
15 interest in a corporation like this is. So, you know,
16 you're not really comparing apples and oranges. And I
17 think there is probably some unfairness there.
18 EXECUTIVE OFFICER KENNY: In response to that,
19 Dr. Burke, I think we agree with you, that controlling
20 interest could be lower than 50 percent quite easily.
21 What we were trying to do is reach a kind of balanced
22 approach where we thought there was a number that would
23 actually reflect kind of the overall goal that we were
24 trying to achieve.
25 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Any other questions from the
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1 Board?
2 Thank you, Rick. And anyone else testifying on
3 this particular part of this item?
4 Then we go with Bob Cassidy, Mike Wolterman and
5 Tom Austin.
6 MR. CASSIDY: Good morning, Dr. Lloyd, Dr. Lloyd
7 and members of the Board. I'm Bob Cassidy. I represent
8 Nissan Motor Limited this morning. As you know, Nissan
9 has two EVs in California. We have alter EV, which uses
10 the large battle conductive system, and we have the
11 hypermini which is a city car, uses the small inductive
12 system.
13 The first units are produced by GMADB. The
14 second by TAL.
15 Our view on the than standardization issue is
16 quite simple. We think it's too soon to select a
17 standard. I will address several of the issues, which
18 leads Nissan to this conclusion and then I'll offer
19 recommendation.
20 (Thereupon an overhead presenation was
21 presented as follows.)
22 MR. CASSIDY: Our recommendation is that we delay
23 consideration for one year. During that time we appoint
24 an independent expert panel to look into this issue in
25 detail.
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1 --o0o--
2 MR. CASSIDY: One of the important considerations
3 addressed by staff is cost. If we look at the cost of the
4 two systems, they're generally the same. Intuitively this
5 makes sense. The electricity comes out of the wall or out
6 of the grid, we process it, and we charge the battery. So
7 the bits and pieces that go into the charging system
8 included in the connector are essentially the same and
9 therefore the costs of the two systems ends up the same.
10 I don't think we should be confused by current
11 selling prices or alleged costs, because they don't really
12 reflect all the bits and pieces in volume production.
13 However, a key consideration as staff has pointed
14 out, is where do you put the money. And there is a
15 difference between the inductive and conductive. With
16 that conductive it's on-board and so the money stays with
17 the car. The inductive system, you can move some of the
18 money to the infrastructure and take it off the car.
19 Nissan believes that one of the largest
20 impediments of the widespread adoption of EVs is the cost
21 of the vehicles. So we move to do what we can to reduce
22 the cost of the vehicle. We see the inductive system then
23 as one mechanism to do this. It takes a few dollars off
24 the car and puts them on the ground. So from a
25 manufacturer perspective, that's a good choice with this
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1 criteria.
2 The Board, of course, needs to address who pays
3 for what's in the ground, and that's a very good question.
4 --o0o--
5 MR. CASSIDY: We would propose that the local
6 community, a local government, perhaps a business that
7 goes into the charging business itself can be responsible
8 for this infrastructure. We think that's appropriate that
9 other groups become involved in the ZEV mandate as an
10 issue.
11 --o0o--
12 MR. CASSIDY: We've heard from staff about
13 efficiency. Essentially the two systems are very much the
14 same. We agree with the high level of power numbers that
15 staff has cited. However, we would point out that the
16 on-board conductive does have a penalty in that the car
17 has to carry around its own charger all of the time. So
18 you're forced to add this additional weight to the
19 vehicle, and that results in probably the same order of
20 magnitude, loss and efficiency, a one to two percent loss
21 in efficiency by carrying around your own charger. So
22 when we look at the efficiency issue, we see, yes, they're
23 both pretty good, and it's really not a criteria to make
24 the decision. They're very much the same.
25 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Bob, would you disagree with
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1 staff's comment that says high temperatures when there is
2 a difference there?
3 MR. CASSIDY: No, I wouldn't. That's a good
4 issue. It depends very much on the battery selection and
5 the vehicle design.
6 For example, the 20 percent of number cited is
7 also vehicle and battery specific. The Alter EV, as you
8 probably know, uses a lithium ion battery. And its
9 capability is such that it can sustain a high power level
10 of charging longer than some of the other batteries.
11 So, again, it's very subtle. I might add that
12 the differences in the efficiency are very small compared
13 to vehicle fuel economy, if you will. So we're looking at
14 a very small number. I guess I would suggest that the
15 number is so close and so small again it shouldn't be the
16 basis for a decision. It shouldn't be the selection
17 criteria. They are very much the same.
18 --o0o--
19 MR. CASSIDY: Real world durability. This is
20 probably the key concern for Nissan over the proposed
21 choice of the conductive charger. We've had good
22 experience with the inductive system. As you know, this
23 is a simple plastic paddle. It slides in, it slides out.
24 There's no moving parts. It's hard to break it.
25 The conductive system is in contrast made up of
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1 many pins and springs, a protector plate. It is
2 mechanically reasonably complicated. We feel that it is
3 subject to outside contamination and could experience
4 deterioration.
5 Nissan originally looked at conductive years ago,
6 and dismissed it because of those problems. We understand
7 the new connector is improved and we support that work and
8 are pleased to have seen that.
9 However, we don't think that it has had
10 sufficient time in the market to really judge its real
11 world durability. We understand its past construction
12 tests, if you will. We need to let the market beat it up
13 for awhile and see how it really does.
14 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: What does Renault use?
15 MR. CASSIDY: Renault uses a conductive system.
16 In Europe, there are many different conductive systems.
17 And I don't believe they're using that Avcon connector.
18 It's an older style connector.
19 --o0o--
20 MR. CASSIDY: Ease of use. Again, this is a
21 tough issue. We think that the paddle system is just a
22 slam dunk. You can push it in. You can pull it out. We
23 happen to think the consumers really respond to that and
24 find it easy and contemporary and modern and all the
25 things we want in the EV.
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1 As you know, the conductive system is a little
2 bit more complicated. Is this a deal breaker? I don't
3 know. But clearly we prefer the inductive for our
4 vehicles.
5 --o0o--
6 MR. CASSIDY: The next issue I'm calling future
7 technology. As you may know, Nissan is very active with
8 Station Car Programs in Japan. One program is a joint
9 program with Toyota as well. As Station Car Programs
10 require a Robust communication system between the vehicle,
11 its charger and then the control center for the Station
12 Car Program.
13 When we're transferring information such as state
14 of charge, vehicle trouble codes, if you will, the
15 reservation system, access codes, consumer codes, things
16 that we need to make the program run, we dismissed the
17 conductive system because we had concerns about a reliable
18 communication connection. The mechanical system just
19 isn't as robust as we feel we have with the infrared,
20 which is included in the inductive system.
21 --o0o--
22 MR. CASSIDY: So looking at these issues,
23 especially the end-use durability in a communication
24 issue, we offer the following recommendation. We'd like
25 you to delay consideration for the selection of a
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1 connector standard for at least one year. And during this
2 one year period, we ask that you appoint an independent
3 expert panel to evaluate the market and system
4 performance, and make the choice at that time.
5 Thank you.
6 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much.
7 Questions or comments from the Board?
8 Professor Friedman.
9 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: I think the staff's
10 evaluation in comparing the analysis indicated that the
11 inductive system was easier to use. But, in your view,
12 would the conductive connector be any less easy to use
13 than using the gas, opening the gas tank door, and
14 unscrewing the gas cap and sticking in the filler?
15 MR. CASSIDY: In terms of ease of use, if I had a
16 way, I guess, to refuel my Nissan, that was slick as a
17 paddle and everybody else was using gas pumps, we'd market
18 it and sell them like crazy, because it's new and easy to
19 use.
20 We think it's a marketing tool that is effective.
21 We think consumers would like it and we think we'd like to
22 do it. Is it a deal breaker? I don't think so.
23 Again, assuming that the real world durability is
24 present, and we simply don't know, we're a little bit
25 reluctant to go with this standard at this time and start
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1 putting them on vehicles when we ourselves are not
2 confident they will hold up.
3 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: What do you think
4 one year will do?
5 MR. CASSIDY: I hope that one year gives us
6 enough data with these types of connectors to, at least
7 from Nissan's perspective, to be more comfortable in
8 saying, okay, maybe this isn't our first choice, but the
9 choice is okay.
10 At this point, we're reluctant to say the choice
11 is okay.
12 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: How many additional cars does
13 staff expect to be out there, so that what -- if we are
14 looking now, and staff has looked at the experience to
15 date, given say X vehicles out there worldwide, now in one
16 year would give us X plus Y, what percentage are we
17 expecting that to be?
18 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: Well, a
19 one year delay, assuming a decision was made in one year
20 from today, and therefore the implementation would need to
21 be delayed from 2006 to 2007, it would result in
22 approximately -- a little over -- well there's the chart
23 right there. Boy, talk and there it is. I was going to
24 say a little over 10,000 and the point is there it's about
25 12,000 additional vehicles on the road.
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1 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS: Dr.
2 Lloyd was asking how much of a --
3 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: No, the point is -- what I'm
4 looking at as an independent panel what increased database
5 do they have available during this time?
6 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: The
7 question being how many more vehicles do we expect on the
8 road over the next year?
9 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Yeah, correct.
10 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: And the
11 number of vehicles, what we're seeing, is there are some
12 vehicles starting to come on the road due to the earlier
13 production of -- higher early production credits the Board
14 gave in January, that number is probably over 500, but
15 less certainly than 2,000.
16 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: So a percentage increase but
17 not a significant percentage increase. And obviously
18 during that time period there is not much durability.
19 DEPUTY EXECUTIVE OFFICER CACKETTE: I don't think
20 you can postulate that we'd gain a lot of durability
21 experience. We already pretty much know the consumer
22 response is pretty good. It's a little easier. We have a
23 bigger sample, I suppose, of consumer reaction, but the
24 consumer reaction has been positive in both cases, so I
25 don't think we've really anything from that.
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1 MR. CASSIDY: Dr. Lloyd, I'd also bring up that
2 our second point is an independent group to look at this
3 so we can more systematically tabulate the data. Our
4 feeling is much of it seems to be anecdotal, very limited
5 sample where somebody goes here and their connector didn't
6 work or there were two choices and neither of them were
7 the one they needed.
8 So we really think the independent panel could be
9 a real plus to try to put these things in a, what we would
10 say, is a more even perspective.
11 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: It might take us six months
12 to get the independence of that panel established. I mean
13 my concern would be that.
14 MR. CASSIDY: I understand.
15 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you.
16 Ms. D'Adamo.
17 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: Well, Mr. Cassidy, I
18 appreciate your testimony, especially since your company
19 utilizes both systems, so I think that what you have to
20 say about the comparison is particularly helpful.
21 I would question, however, ease of use, that it's
22 anymore than perhaps a marginal difference, having
23 utilized both systems. What I'd like to ask you, though,
24 are a couple of questions regarding efficiency and cost.
25 And I'd like to hear from you and then also have staff
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1 respond.
2 On cost you're saying that there is a difference
3 because of where you place the cost, whether it's on the
4 vehicle or on the charging system. Could you be more
5 specific about those figures. And, secondly, regarding
6 efficiency, if the on-board conductive chargers add to the
7 weight and reduce efficiency, how much weight and how much
8 of a loss of efficiency?
9 MR. CASSIDY: Yes, I understand. Let me answer
10 the second question, because I have firm numbers. For the
11 Alter EV my technical staff says it would be approximately
12 50 kilograms to introduce the on-board charger and the
13 necessary vehicle structure changes to have it pass the
14 quality appliance procedures. They estimate a one to two
15 percent reduction in efficiency.
16 Turning to the first question regarding how much,
17 I have not taken that pencil to paper and calculated that.
18 Off the top of my head looking at the pieces, you're
19 probably in the 20 percent of the dollars on conductive
20 system on the ground versus maybe 60 percent of dollars of
21 inductive system.
22 Mike Wolterman from Toyota is speaking on the
23 technical guide, perhaps he can give us an overview.
24 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: Could staff respond to
25 those two questions?
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1 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: Well,
2 I'll respond, but then I also want to point out that there
3 are technical representatives of the conductive industry
4 that will also be providing some input especially on the
5 impact of the efficiency for the conductive charger being
6 on board the vehicle, that that information will probably
7 be useful, because there are some scenarios in the future
8 that will significantly affect that.
9 But in terms of the cost that we have -- as was
10 stated, the primary cost for the inductive is off-board
11 the vehicle. The primary cost for the conductive is
12 on-board the vehicle. Both those costs are expected to
13 reduce in the future. We evaluated current and future
14 costs on-board and off-board. Our estimations are
15 certainly that, without a doubt, conductive costs are less
16 expensive off-board the vehicle, and as a system today,
17 you know, in total today. And the off-board, the
18 off-the-vehicle portion is important because that's the
19 part if we want public infrastructure that people are
20 going to have -- the extra costs people are going to have
21 to pay.
22 In the future it is still very clear to staff
23 that the off-the-vehicle portion of conductive will be
24 less expensive than the on-the-vehicle portion. The only
25 point in question is whether we've recently received some
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1 information that the system costs in the future, that the
2 inductive may be able to get to the point where conductive
3 could get on the system cost basis.
4 If those optimistic projections come true, then
5 the on-board and off-board could get potentially to the
6 same location in the future, although the off-the-vehicle
7 portion would remain less for conductive.
8 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: I was hoping for something
9 a little more specific.
10 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: In
11 terms of specific numbers?
12 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: Um-hmm.
13 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: The
14 dollar amounts. We showed some -- we provided some
15 numbers in the future, system costs in the lead for
16 conductive are about $700 for a city vehicle, about $900
17 for a full function vehicle.
18 Previously, using our estimates, we had thought
19 inductive would be well over $1,000 for the system. We
20 recently received some information from General Motors
21 that believes they can, through technological
22 advancements, volume reductions, they can get down to
23 comparable cost reduction levels for conductive.
24 Hopefully, they can.
25 The off-board portion currently is already for
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1 conductive at $350. We would expect that to continue to
2 have cost reductions in the neighborhood of 50 percent.
3 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: Thank you.
4 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much.
5 Thanks, Paul.
6 Michael Wolterman, Toyota, Tom Austin, and then
7 Greg Hanssen.
8 (Thereupon an overhead presentation was
9 presented as follows.)
10 MR. WOLTERMAN: Good morning. My name is Mike
11 Wolterman. Can you hear me okay?
12 My name is Mike Wolterman and I'm with the Toyota
13 Technical Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan and I'm here
14 representing Toyota Motor Corporation.
15 --o0o--
16 MR. WOLTERMAN: And first I'd like to discuss
17 Toyota's experience with charge systems. As you're aware,
18 Toyota adopted the conductive charge system using Yazaki's
19 coupler for the 1998 model year RAV4 EV. And we began
20 using the inductive system on our 1999 model year RAV4 EV.
21 Toyota is in the unique position of being the
22 only automaker in the world that has had and is currently
23 operating electric vehicle fleets using both conductive
24 and inductive charge systems.
25 Given our experience with both conductive and
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1 inductive charge systems, we are the only company that can
2 provide a comparison of these systems based on our
3 firsthand experience. A key point here is that we started
4 with the conductive system, and through our own analysis
5 decided to switch to the inductive system.
6 --o0o--
7 MR. WOLTERMAN: Today, I'd like to discuss
8 several points with you, one being a comparison of the
9 inductive and conductive systems. This is based on our
10 experiences both in the lab and the field. And I would
11 like to discuss our concerns with the current conductive
12 recommended practice.
13 Specifically, its ability to become an
14 international standard, the fact that the recommended
15 practice is still being developed, the lack of geometric
16 tolerance data, concerns over the interoperability of the
17 coupling and the lack of mandatory communications.
18 --o0o--
19 MR. WOLTERMAN: Based on our experience, we have
20 found inductive to be a better system than the conductive
21 system. This chart shows the results of our experience
22 with the General Motors and all Toyota works inductive
23 systems, and the Yazaki and Avcon conductive systems.
24 These areas are discussed further in our written
25 comments and I'm going to summarize this chart here this
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1 morning.
2 Concerning ease of use, staff has already
3 addressed that issue. As far as safety, durability and
4 reliability, the Avcon coupling conductive system relies
5 on pressure contacts, moving parts, springs and seals.
6 And during this reliance, we are concerned that the
7 durability and the reliability of the system over time may
8 deteriorate.
9 In our opinion, these issues also foster a safety
10 concern. Communications is a key component for station
11 car programs and technological advances. The inductive
12 system utilizes an infrared communications system, which
13 is standardized worldwide and is the same system that is
14 used by your TV remote control, while the conductive
15 system's communication is optional, and I'll discuss this
16 issue further later on.
17 As far as societal costs, efficiency, complexity,
18 we're configuring the systems with like features. These
19 are similar between the two technologies.
20 Packaging the charge system, especially on
21 smaller vehicles, such as the Ecom or the Nissan
22 Hypermini. It's easier for the inductive system because
23 the charge port is smaller and the charger is located off
24 the vehicle. This also results in favorable on-vehicle
25 weight.
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1 As far as the infrastructure is concerned, staff
2 in their initial report stated that 60 percent of the
3 charges in the State of California were inductive.
4 And finally, the potential for advanced
5 technologies for both of these systems is there. However,
6 one of the points is that neither the inductive nor the
7 conductive recommended practices, at this point,
8 acknowledge any advanced technology, such as Level 2 plus
9 or vehicle-to-grid power.
10 So overall, we believe the inductive system to be
11 superior to the conductive system.
12 --o0o--
13 MR. WOLTERMAN: Our concerns related to
14 conductive recommended practice.
15 One is the ability for it to become an
16 international standard. All the automakers in this room
17 are building vehicles for the worldwide market. And our
18 vehicles must be designed to meet international standards.
19 It is very costly to design and package one vehicle for
20 one market and another vehicle for the rest of the world.
21 In this regard, the inductive system with the
22 small paddle has been accepted, as an IEC Committee draft.
23 And that draft is now in the review process to become an
24 international standard.
25 In addition, the small paddle inductive coupler
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1 has been standardized in the US as an SAE recommended
2 practice J7273, and in Japan as a Japan electric vehicle
3 standard G107.
4 --o0o--
5 MR. WOLTERMAN: The IEC started to consider the
6 standardization of the conductive coupler last year.
7 However, based on the information that I have
8 here, there is currently no charge for coupling the
9 configuration of conventional data in this draft. We are
10 concerned that the Japanese and the European auto makers
11 that produce small vehicles may not accept the buck type
12 coupler due to the size and the complexity.
13 If the IEC ultimately decides to standardize a
14 coupler that is not Avcon's coupler as their standard, the
15 conductive recommended practice may need to be amended to
16 reflect that.
17 As I mentioned earlier, it's costly to design and
18 package a vehicle for a specific region, as compared to a
19 vehicle that meets worldwide standards. And we are
20 concerned that if the ARB decides to standardize the
21 coupler at this time, the conductive charge infrastructure
22 in California might need to be changed again in the future
23 as these standards evolve.
24 --o0o--
25 MR. WOLTERMAN: Since we do not know what form
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1 international standards will take in the future, we have
2 some serious concerns with the use of the conductive
3 recommended practice. Specifically, it is now in a draft
4 form, and as a matter of procedure draft documents are not
5 referenced in SAE documents, and as such should not be
6 reference in the ZEV regulations.
7 As the conductive recommended practice evolves,
8 the contents may become unacceptable to what the ARB is
9 looking for. And I'm curious as to what might happen to
10 the ZEV regulations if the conductive recommended practice
11 were to be substantially changed.
12 --o0o--
13 MR. WOLTERMAN: In the current version the
14 conductive recommended practice, there is no geometric
15 tolerance data. This can be added. I am one of the two
16 people on the SAE Charging Systems Committee reviewing and
17 trying to try to make the two a recommended practice.
18 However, this review is not complete and I cannot tell you
19 today that the data I've seen can be used to build
20 interoperable components.
21 As a member of the subcommittee reviewing these
22 documents, I'll take some of the responsibility for this
23 tolerance data not being in the current draft.
24 --o0o--
25 MR. WOLTERMAN: Another concern is
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1 interoperability or compatibility from the parts from
2 various manufacturers. There is no process in place to
3 ensure the interoperability between different
4 manufacturers. This interoperability needs to address
5 both the physical and the communications areas.
6 If consumers are confused today about the
7 existence of the two charging systems, imagine how
8 confused they will be when there is only one conductive
9 charging system, but the connector from supplier A doesn't
10 fit into the inlet from supplier B or the connector from
11 supplier C doesn't communicate with the inlet from
12 supplier D.
13 It should be noted that even though TAL and GM
14 worked together to develop the small inductive system, our
15 first units were not interoperable.
16 --o0o--
17 MR. WOLTERMAN: In addition, the conductive
18 recommended practice does not require communications for
19 Level 1 and Level 2 charging. Communications will be
20 required for station car projects, neighborhood car
21 projects, future technologies. Even if the conductive
22 recommended practice were changed to require
23 communications, most of the existing infrastructure does
24 not support it.
25 And the communications specified in conductive
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1 documents, specifically SAE JA1850, which is multiplexing
2 and SAE 2293 will be obsolete by the year 2007. Some
3 other types of communications, such as infrared which is
4 where we're using the inductive or blue tooth which is a
5 2.4 gigahertz radio, is required if conductive is to be
6 operable in the future.
7 In addition, message sets including header and
8 data fields need to be developed and communications
9 interoperability to the various manufacturers' gateways
10 need to be verified.
11 --o0o--
12 MR. WOLTERMAN: Given these unknowns, it is
13 virtually impossible for the automakers to use the
14 conductive recommended practice to design future vehicles.
15 This does not mean to imply that the inductive recommended
16 practice is a Level 2 standard. But the inductive
17 recommended practice is at least one iteration ahead of
18 the conductive practice, in that we have already addressed
19 communications and interoperability issues.
20 In addition, a decision here today for either
21 conductive or inductive will only transfer this debate
22 from here to SAE Charging Systems Committee. A group of
23 about ten volunteers will now have to argue these issues,
24 specifically can we build partiality drawings, do we need
25 communications, are they interoperable? And this
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1 committee is not the place for this debate to take place.
2 These recommended practices are not mature. They
3 are evolving, and they need to be allowed to evolve
4 naturally, not by force. Force of these recommended
5 practices will only result in a substandard document.
6 --o0o--
7 MR. WOLTERMAN: A major concern for Toyota is the
8 fact that if the ARB chooses conductive as a single
9 standard, then the ARB is requiring Toyota to place a part
10 onto its electric vehicles that Toyota does not have
11 confidence in and has chosen not to use, a part which
12 could effect the safety and well-being of our customers.
13 --o0o--
14 MR. WOLTERMAN: To summarize, there are too many
15 concerns with conductive to choose conductive as a single
16 standard. It's actually too soon to choose either
17 conductive or inductive as a single standard. They both
18 need more time to mature.
19 And if a single standard must be chosen, the
20 inductive system should be chosen, since the recommended
21 practice is more refined at this point in time than the
22 conductive recommended practice.
23 --o0o--
24 MR. WOLTERMAN: We believe the marketplace should
25 make the final decision. The marketplace will reward the
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1 system that meets the consumer's requirements and punish
2 the system that does not. I realize the marketplace is
3 slow to make a choice, but the losing technology cannot
4 blame anybody but itself for its failure.
5 If this is not an acceptable solution, then I
6 request that the Board appoint an independent expert panel
7 to evaluate the merits and the demerits of the conductive
8 and inductive systems, and make a recommendation to the
9 Board for a single standard.
10 I'd like to also state that a request came up as
11 far as the additional time in delaying this. That would
12 be helpful in the design process, but I'm not sure it
13 would change our opinion at this point in time.
14 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Just to alert everybody,
15 after this witness we're going to give a ten-minute break
16 for the court reporter.
17 Professor Friedman.
18 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: Mr. Wolterman, if we
19 were to pursue your suggestion and recommendation and seek
20 to appoint an independent panel, and that independent
21 panel, after evaluating the two systems, recommended also
22 as the staff has, a conductive, as far as you're
23 concerned, would that put the matter to rest?
24 MR. WOLTERMAN: Yeah. As Toyota, we would agree
25 with that. If that independent panel came back to you and
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1 said our recommendation says --
2 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: And how do you --
3 what do you mean by independent panel?
4 MR. WOLTERMAN: I would probably let the people
5 who are knowledgeable in the area, but not with any
6 current or past ties directly to conductive or inductive,
7 somebody who --
8 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: Without any past
9 ties to any automobile manufacturers?
10 MR. WOLTERMAN: Well, that potentially, too. How
11 do you get a truly independent panel, I guess, is a little
12 tricky. I can appreciate the difficulty in doing that,
13 but, you know, some of the professors from well known
14 universities, some knowledgeable people --
15 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: Now, you're talking.
16 (Laughter.)
17 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: Never done any
18 funded research, yeah.
19 (Laughter.)
20 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: One question I had, that
21 you're working on a volunteer basis on coming up with an
22 SAE standard for the conductive system, can you explain
23 why you at Toyota would spend some time, given the fact
24 that it's chosen the inductive system?
25 MR. WOLTERMAN: Well, given the activities going
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1 on here, it's imperative that both the systems, conductive
2 and inductive, become built to recommended practices. And
3 at the May 10th meeting of the SHR System Committee, which
4 addressed both inductive and conductive. And hopefully
5 because you haven't distinguished between those two, when
6 they're there, they're working on both of them.
7 As I mentioned, we're not asking -- that were
8 included in the proposed draft. So myself and Tom
9 Cartwright are taking on the responsibility to make that
10 more of an ability to use backups and address the issues,
11 and is there enough data here, can someone pick this up
12 and actually go forward and build this without having to
13 go to the conversion systems?
14 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Would it be fair to say that
15 given the fact that we're not going to require this until
16 2006, at the earliest, and if we did decide conductive
17 that that may spur the SAE committee to move faster?
18 MR. WOLTERMAN: It would spur the SAE Committee
19 to move faster, but I think there may still be a lot of
20 issues that need to be resolved, but we may move faster
21 and it may not take any less time. As I mentioned there's
22 still issues with communications that need to be resolved,
23 interoperability issues would be resolved.
24 So I'm not sure if we're cutting any time off.
25 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Any questions from my
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1 colleagues on the Board?
2 Mr. McKinnon.
3 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: Did I understand you
4 correctly that you felt that the SAE process with ten
5 volunteers wasn't the best way to set the bill to do
6 standards? I mean, it seems counterintuitive to your
7 argument so far that we should help do that.
8 MR. WOLTERMAN: All I'm implying is that SAE is a
9 volunteer effort. These people are there not representing
10 their company, but representing themselves. And as such,
11 of course, their companies support their being there, but
12 as such, it's not something that companies are going to
13 allow people an unlimited amount of time to do that, to
14 spend developing these standards. It's a slow process,
15 and it's not something that I mean -- we're getting ready
16 to develop, I believe, the current draft of a document,
17 but the current draft still needs more refinement to make
18 it the standard to address the issues that I've brought up
19 today.
20 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: Thanks.
21 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Okay. Thank you very much
22 indeed.
23 We'll take a ten minute break because again, we
24 have a long agenda ahead of us today, so just ten minutes,
25 if that's okay with the court reporter, and then we'll
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1 start up with Tom Austin right after the break.
2 (Thereupon a brief recess was taken.)
3 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I'd like to restart the
4 meeting, please.
5 Welcome, Tom, I'm still used to looking over
6 there.
7 MR. AUSTIN: All set.
8 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Yes, thanks.
9 (Thereupon an overhead presentation was
10 presented as follows.)
11 MR. AUSTIN: Good morning, Mr. Chair. I'm Tom
12 Austin, senior partner of Sierra Research, today providing
13 testimony on behalf General Motors and Toyota. I'll start
14 by saying that General Motors concurs with the testimony
15 that you just heard from Toyota and Nissan and will not be
16 addressing that issue. I'm addressing a totally separate
17 issue, the vehicle to grid power services issue.
18 Next.
19 --o0o--
20 MR. AUSTIN: The staff report cites vehicle to
21 grid power services as one of the justifications for a
22 conductive charging design requirement by saying that
23 deployment of EVs with vehicle-to-grid power delivery
24 capability would provide another source of value to the
25 owner of the vehicle, and that while the vehicle to grid
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1 power flow from inductive charges would be possible, it
2 would be cost prohibitive.
3 Our analysis concludes that the potential for
4 vehicle to grid power flow is not a sufficient reason to
5 require a conductive charging requirement. Vehicle to
6 grid power delivery doesn't come close to providing an
7 economic benefit to the owner as my analysis will
8 describe.
9 --o0o--
10 MR. AUSTIN: That's a different conclusion than
11 other people reached. And the reason, the conclusion I've
12 come to, is different is listed on this slide. Other
13 analyses of this issue have totally ignored the effects of
14 battery life on using the vehicle for vehicle to grid
15 power transfer.
16 In addition, the analyses that you've seen from
17 others have used the current peak electricity crisis as
18 the basis for the economics of this process in the future.
19 Finally, there's been an insignificant
20 attention -- inadequate attention paid to the overlap
21 between peak electricity demand period and peak travel
22 demand period.
23 And, finally, there's been no attention paid to
24 the infrastructure and importantly administrative costs
25 associated with the vehicle to grid power transfer.
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1 --o0o--
2 MR. AUSTIN: Battery life does not exceed the
3 vehicle life in electric vehicles. And so shortening the
4 battery life with additional charge/discharge cycles must
5 be accounted for. There have been projections from
6 battery producers that the cost of nickel metal hydride
7 batteries in high volume may come down into the range of
8 $250 per kilowatt hour as the wholesale price to an OEM.
9 That will translate into roughly a $500 per
10 kilowatt hour retail price for replacement battery to the
11 owner of electric vehicles. You've also heard people talk
12 about nickel metal hydride battery life being in the range
13 of thousands of charge/discharge cycles.
14 If you want to look at what the damage, economic
15 damage, to the battery is associated with extra
16 charge/discharge cycles, you merely have to divide the
17 cost per kilowatt hour by the cycle life and it translates
18 into 50 cents per kilowatt hour as the additional battery
19 cost the owner will end up incurring if the vehicle is
20 used for vehicle to grid power transfer.
21 --o0o--
22 MR. AUSTIN: Charging/discharging losses are
23 another factor that adds to cost. To send a kilowatt hour
24 back to the grid, you're going to have to use more than a
25 kilowatt hour drawn from the grid to charge the battery.
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1 Charging/discharging losses are typically about 30
2 percent. That means to send a kilowatt hour back to the
3 grid it's going to be necessary to purchase 1.4 kilowatt
4 hours.
5 If you look at the current prices being charged
6 by Southern California Edison for off-peak recharging,
7 which are eight cents per kilowatt hour, that means it's
8 going to cost 11 cents for every kilowatt hour if it's
9 transferred back to the grid.
10 And accounting for transmission losses it also is
11 going to translate into higher greenhouse gas emissions
12 associated with the electricity supply, because of the
13 fact that we end up using more fossil fuel to provide the
14 electricity with vehicle to grid transfer as part of the
15 process.
16 --o0o--
17 MR. AUSTIN: This graphic shows the practical
18 problem associated with the concept, where I have
19 overlaying on the same graph the current marginal cost of
20 electricity that's experienced by Southern California
21 Edison showing that for summer weekday conditions, the
22 price of electricity, the cost of electricity, peaks at
23 about 3:00 p.m., which is precisely the beginning of the
24 afternoon commute period.
25 So any vehicle that's used to sell electricity
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1 back to the grid when it's most economic to do so, will
2 end with a depleted battery and not be available for use
3 during the p.m. travel period.
4 --o0o--
5 MR. AUSTIN: You have to account for what would
6 be called the opportunity cost of not having the vehicle
7 available for use during normal commuting periods. I've
8 done a first order approximation of what that might be by
9 assuming in this example that someone rents another
10 vehicle for summertime weekdays in order to dedicate the
11 electric vehicle for use by the grid.
12 If you do that, we end up with the opportunity
13 costs being $1.67 per kilowatt hour for the cost of coming
14 up with the replacement transportation if the vehicle is
15 going to be tied up providing power back to the grid.
16 --o0o--
17 MR. AUSTIN: The next slide please. Also, most
18 of the analyses that others have published in this area
19 use current electricity costs, but current costs of
20 electricity are truly an aberration. By 2002 our estimate
21 is that the cost of electricity during peak periods is
22 unlikely to exceed 15 cents per kilowatt hour. That's
23 because there are many new energy efficient power plants
24 coming on line.
25 The electricity production costs from these power
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1 plants is going to be well under ten cents per kilowatt
2 hour, even if natural gas prices are on the high side.
3 And unless there are significant new disincentives imposed
4 on energy producers by the government, we think supply and
5 demand is going to be back in balance within the next
6 couple of years.
7 And the long range forecast for what the value
8 might be of electricity sold back to the grid is going to
9 be way down from the 50 to 60 cent per kilowatt hour
10 numbers that are consistent with what current prices have
11 been.
12 --o0o--
13 MR. AUSTIN: Here's a summary of what the math
14 looks like. The 50 cent per kilowatt hour prices that
15 we've seen recently are not going to be with us in the
16 future. I think a more realistic projection of the value
17 of power transferred back to the grid during peak periods
18 is about 15 cents per kilowatt hour.
19 Then if we look at the elements of cost to the
20 vehicle owner associated with providing electricity back
21 to the grid, we see that battery life reduction is in the
22 neighborhood of 50 cents per kilowatt hour, the cost for
23 recharging the battery is about 11 cents per kilowatt
24 hour.
25 And the opportunity costs for not using the
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1 vehicle could be $1.67 per kilowatt hour, if you want to
2 look at rental car costs as the replacement for a total
3 cost per kilowatt hour of $2.28.
4 --O0o--
5 MR. AUSTIN: Our conclusions are that if you
6 account for the opportunity costs of not having the
7 vehicle available for the afternoon commute period, the
8 cost to the vehicle owner of providing electric power back
9 to the grid exceeds by more than a factor of ten the
10 likely value of that electricity and the compensation the
11 owner could conceivably obtain.
12 And even if you ignore the opportunity costs of
13 not having the vehicle available, if you assume this is
14 only being done by people who for some reason don't need
15 to drive their car in the afternoon during summer days,
16 and if you use current electricity prices, it's still not
17 economic because of the damage that's done to the battery
18 when it goes through additional charge/discharge cycles.
19 And when you consider what the cost of
20 electricity is likely to be in the near future when supply
21 and demand come back into balance, the economics of this
22 concept don't even come close to working. You can look at
23 the assumptions that I've used. You can change them by 50
24 percent or 100 percent and you're still not going to come
25 close to showing that this makes economic sense for
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1 vehicle owners.
2 So for that reason, we see this concept as
3 providing no justification for a design requirement for
4 conductive charge systems.
5 Thank you.
6 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thanks, Tom.
7 Yes, Dr. Friedman and then Mr. McKinnon.
8 BOARD MEMBER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN: I need to better
9 understand this opportunity cost of vehicles out of
10 service. What is your assumption? Are you assuming that
11 people are charging their batteries at peak commuter
12 times?
13 MR. AUSTIN: No. For this concept to generate
14 maximum revenue --
15 BOARD MEMBER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN: You gave us a
16 graph and you showed us from 3:00 to 5:00 o'clock the cost
17 is the highest. And what does that have to do with when
18 people charge their cars and have you factored in how many
19 people don't travel more than 100 miles in a day?
20 MR. AUSTIN: Just to be clear, I'm not assuming
21 that anyone is charging their car during that period.
22 That's the period when the value of the electricity in the
23 vehicle's battery is the greatest. That's the period when
24 you want to send it back to the grid to get the maximum
25 economic value out of this concept.
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1 What I'm showing you here is that that is
2 precisely the period when the vehicle is needed for the
3 p.m. commute period, and so if we're going to use the
4 vehicle to send power back to the grid, the vehicle is not
5 going to be available for normal commute activity.
6 This concept doesn't come close to working if
7 you're talking about sending power back to the grid early
8 in the morning or overnight, because the marginal cost of
9 electricity is so low that you can't justify the
10 inefficiency of charging the battery and discharging it.
11 BOARD MEMBER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN: I guess I
12 understand that. But on the one hand you're talking about
13 the cost back to the vehicle owner and you're telling me
14 that that's the $1.67, that the vehicle -- that's your
15 cost as a vehicle owner from vehicle to grid transfer,
16 $1.67 per kilowatt hour.
17 Now, how in the world does that -- I own one of
18 these cars let's say, how do I see that $1.67?
19 MR. AUSTIN: Let me explain it to you. That is
20 if you assume that the vehicle is tied up sending power
21 back to the grid and can't be driven, but the owner still
22 needs transportation.
23 BOARD MEMBER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN: I understand all
24 that. My car is being charged at night, and where -- I
25 don't see that $1.67 anywhere.
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1 MR. AUSTIN: My analysis assumes the car is
2 charged at night. The point is in order for this concept
3 to work economically or to come as close to working as it
4 can, you have to discharge back into the grid in the
5 mid-afternoon and late afternoon.
6 That means you can't be driving the car. If you
7 need the car for transportation, that $1.67 per kilowatt
8 hour is the cost of providing transportation with some
9 other vehicle, like a rental car that you might use only
10 on summer weekdays, where there's a high demand for
11 electricity.
12 BOARD MEMBER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN: Well, maybe that
13 works for you, but I still can't imagine any need for me
14 to drive any other vehicle or to give a damn about what
15 goes on in terms of my sending power back to the grid at a
16 time when I want to use the car.
17 I mean, it just, in the real world, makes no
18 sense to me for you to add $1.67 to $2.28 and tell me
19 that's what it really costs.
20 MR. AUSTIN: What makes no sense is to assume
21 that people are actually going to be willing to send power
22 back to the grid in the afternoon when it's needed the
23 most when the primary purpose of the car can't be
24 provided. You can't use it for transportation and send
25 power back to the grid.
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1 BOARD MEMBER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN: The primary
2 purpose of the car is not to fortify the energy
3 requirements of the State of California.
4 MR. AUSTIN: Exactly.
5 BOARD MEMBER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN: Whoever said it
6 was. The amount -- what the amount of electricity used
7 for X thousand cars is a tiny blip on -- it's a pimple on
8 the nose of what the energy requirements are for the State
9 of California.
10 MR. AUSTIN: I'm not disagreeing with that, but
11 when the staff report says there's this big economic value
12 to owners to send power back to the grid, I'm saying well,
13 that doesn't make sense because you can't send power back
14 to the grid and use the car for commuting. If you're
15 going to tie the car up in that service, you have to look
16 at was that a good investment, what's the opportunity cost
17 of letting the car stay tied up connected to the grid as
18 opposed to having it available to drive.
19 BOARD MEMBER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN: I understand.
20 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thanks, Tom.
21 Mr. McKinnon.
22 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: Yeah. First of all, I
23 want to assure you that I'm not going to decide this issue
24 and this resolution today based upon this particular
25 benefit or not benefit or whatever. It's nice if it
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1 works. If it doesn't, that's not what the major thrust of
2 the decision is about today.
3 But I do have some questions about the numbers
4 you used. And I'll give you a concrete example. I drive
5 four miles to work every day. I have a battery that's got
6 100 mile range that I drive surface streets actually 30,
7 35 miles an hour. So that 100 mile range is pretty real.
8 That's a good number.
9 So there's 96 miles of that range I don't need
10 every day. I get real world conditions of Sacramento.
11 It's hot, and they're saying we might have rolling black
12 outs in the southern part of the city today around 3:00 or
13 4:00 in the afternoon.
14 I get off work at 6:00 o'clock at night, if I'm
15 lucky, okay. I drive to work. I plug in. I program and
16 I say I'm willing to give up 50 percent of my battery. I
17 only need four percent of it, but something might come up
18 today, whatever, I'm going to give up 50 percent of my
19 battery. For people that drive further back and forth to
20 work, maybe they only give up ten percent or 20 percent or
21 whatever.
22 Are you calculating -- I mean, are you looking at
23 it as if people 100 percent discharge their battery at
24 that 3:00 p.m. -- prior to 3:00 p.m. or during the 3:00 to
25 7:00 period or whatever? Is your calculation based upon
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1 100 percent discharge?
2 MR. AUSTIN: No. The numbers I used are not
3 simply tied to 100 percent discharge. If in the example
4 you used, if you were going to cough up 50 percent of your
5 battery charge back to the grid during the afternoon peak
6 period, because you still have enough to drive home, my
7 analysis indicates that that still would not be in your
8 long-term economic interests, because it's going to
9 shorten the life of your battery and the cost to you or to
10 the subsequent purchaser of that vehicle is going to
11 substantially exceed the return you're going to get by
12 selling that power back to the grid.
13 Batteries have a life, which is related to the
14 number of charging/discharging cycles they go through. If
15 you decide to spend some of that life having your vehicle
16 committed to this type of a system, you have to be
17 prepared to replace the vehicle earlier than it otherwise
18 requires replacement.
19 And when you just run the simple economics of how
20 much will it cost me to replace the battery earlier
21 because I'm sending power back to the grid, it doesn't
22 pencil out. That factor alone is enough to make it
23 uneconomical.
24 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: Well, okay, then let me
25 broaden this question to staff too. Is an occasional
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1 discharge unrelated to driving of 50 percent or 20
2 percent, does that have the same kind of -- how do you put
3 this -- do I lose battery life as if I was fully
4 discharging the vehicle for having the cycle -- having to
5 recharge the 50 percent or the 20 percent?
6 DEPUTY EXECUTIVE OFFICER CACKETTE: Well, I think
7 if you discharge the battery -- the life of the battery is
8 related to the discharge, so directionally, yes, you would
9 lose some life, if you did this a lot.
10 But unfortunately the issue that's being
11 discussed is not relevant to where we saw the potential
12 advantages of vehicle to grid. We did a study that went
13 out and looked at how could battery vehicles help our
14 electric system become more efficient. And one of the
15 things was well, gee, when you run out of electricity in
16 the afternoon at some peak period, could we have all these
17 batteries dump, you know, their energy back into the grid,
18 the lights stay on.
19 And I think our conclusion was that that's not a
20 very good way of doing things for some of the reasons that
21 Mr. Austin set forth. But what we did find was that there
22 was another vehicle to grid opportunity that wasn't
23 discussed here, and that is in the area of power
24 regulation.
25 The State pays $800 million a year to power
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1 plants from the Independent System Operator to have them
2 spun up and be just sitting there sort of idling ready to
3 put a little bit of energy in here, take a little bit of
4 energy out there, because this whole system has to stay in
5 balance. As you can guess sometimes there's too much
6 juice over here and not enough here and voltages aren't
7 quite right, et cetera. So they pay power plants to be
8 spun up and ready to regulate the quality of the power and
9 the system.
10 And that's where electric vehicles might be a
11 really good match, because if they're plugged in, and not
12 all of them have to be plugged in, but it's going to occur
13 during all times of the day, but when they're plugged in,
14 they can be asked to put a little bit of juice back in to
15 help balance off, you know, a shortage of voltage or a
16 little bit of flow of electricity in one area and put it
17 back in a little bit later, and you wouldn't be going
18 through these 50 percent discharges, you'd be using all of
19 them as a way of kind of an accumulator or a buffer to the
20 system.
21 And that's where we think, because there's a huge
22 amount of money we spend on doing that in the electric
23 system today, that maybe battery vehicles could do it more
24 effectively. Maybe the utilities could ultimately end up
25 paying for part of electric vehicles to provide that
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1 service instead of paying it to a power plant to be spun
2 up and ready to generate electricity when it doesn't need
3 to be.
4 And so the issue here, I think, we pretty much
5 don't think it's a particularly attractive approach
6 compared to this other one. And we've, you know, rated
7 whatever value you want to give to the potential of having
8 electric vehicles play a part of regulating our
9 electricity system is more likely to be on the one I
10 described than the one that Tom Austin described.
11 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: It's because the prices
12 end up much, much higher.
13 DEPUTY EXECUTIVE OFFICER CACKETTE: Well, it's
14 not so much the price. It's that the system has to pay a
15 power plant to be up when it didn't need to be up for an
16 example. And when that occurs, that's a fairly expensive
17 item. And if some of that money could go to subsidizing
18 electric vehicles to do the same approach, maybe giving
19 you free electricity, for example, when you're plugged in,
20 it would end up being -- we think it could end up being a
21 lot cheaper way to go for the State as a whole.
22 MR. AUSTIN: I'm familiar with the concept that
23 Mr. Cackette is describing. I focused on the analysis
24 that the Board has seen in the past. I've done some
25 analysis of his other concept as well. It also doesn't
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1 pencil out, the potential value to the owners of electric
2 vehicles is pennies. The total cost the State incurs in
3 doing this per electric vehicle in the future is not
4 sufficient to justify the administrative costs and the
5 time involved for people to plug their vehicles in when
6 they normally wouldn't plug them in.
7 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Any other questions?
8 One other comment, Tom. On your first overhead,
9 the second highlight you had, "...while vehicle to grid
10 power flow from inductive chargers is possible, it would
11 be cost prohibitive," from the staff report. You didn't
12 address that comment.
13 MR. AUSTIN: Well, the only point in raising that
14 is this was the rationale given in the staff report for
15 why the conductive option had more appeal. And I'm not
16 disagreeing with this statement about it being more
17 difficult to do, vehicle-to-grid power transfer with
18 inductive. It is possible. I've not analyzed in detail.
19 I'm just saying the basic concept doesn't pencil out, so
20 it's not a reason for doing this.
21 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I'm sure we'll hear some more
22 of this when I think that -- in the comments later on so
23 maybe we have some more questions.
24 Bob.
25 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS: Very
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1 quickly, the question of battery life and its connection
2 to depth of discharge was sort of left floating. And I
3 think Mr. McKinnon brought it up. I think that if you
4 discharge a battery very modestly, that has much less
5 impact on its life than if you go to the full 80 percent
6 that we consider ending.
7 So I think that that's the connection to what Tom
8 was saying which is that if they're floating along and
9 doing small charge/discharge cycles, that's not a terribly
10 significant impact on the battery life.
11 MR. AUSTIN: That is true. But in Mr. McKinnon's
12 example, if you're then using the battery to get home, and
13 discharging it more fully, the net effect is the same for
14 this concept as my analysis indicates.
15 If you only draw it down 40 or 50 percent to send
16 power back to the grid, but you still have to use it that
17 day to get home you're going to end up drawing it down
18 closer to 80 percent and the effect on cycle life is going
19 to be identical to what I've assumed in my analysis.
20 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Yeah, but he goes four miles.
21 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS: It
22 goes from 50 to 60 percent.
23 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: So as I understand your
24 argument, and I think it probably comes pretty much to a
25 wash, but if this kind of approach becomes a reality, then
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1 it's probably going to behoove all of us to educate people
2 on where those lines are where they work and where their
3 battery works harder.
4 In other words -- you know, I might decide to
5 only give up 30 percent instead of 50 percent, based upon
6 some set of knowledge of what it's going to do to my
7 battery life.
8 And so I think you raise real good points. And I
9 don't know that what you raise is even a factor in the
10 decision before us today. It was in the report and you're
11 addressing that and I understand that. I don't know if
12 it's a huge one for me.
13 But it certainly is one that anyway we go, if we
14 get involved in this grid transfer business, we better
15 consider it and we better think about how people's battery
16 life is affected and give people good data as far as
17 making good choices along the way.
18 Because if I found out, instead of giving up 50
19 percent, I could give up 30 percent and not -- and
20 maximize the efficiency of my battery, help out with the
21 power problem and get paid for it, then that would be the
22 choice I would make.
23 MR. AUSTIN: I understand that. And I think what
24 you'll find is that any really careful credible analysis
25 of this issue will show you why the utilities don't use
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1 batteries for this function now.
2 BOARD MEMBER WILLIAM FRIEDMAN: Well, Tom, I need
3 to apologize to you for being too dense in the beginning
4 to understand where you're coming from on the transfer
5 issue.
6 It seems to me, though, that if we are going to
7 depend in any way, shape or form on electric vehicles to
8 solve the energy crisis in the year 2005 or 6, then I'm
9 living in the wrong State. I mean, you know, to me it's a
10 way that I can't imagine that that's going to be the
11 successful route to dealing with what we're trying to deal
12 with for the future in terms of energy supply and demand.
13 MR. AUSTIN: We agree on that.
14 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I think the good news you
15 had -- we're going to have plenty of electricity for next
16 year, so that was good news for all of us.
17 (Laughter.)
18 MR. AUSTIN: We're permitting a lot of power
19 plants right now.
20 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: I had one quick
21 question. You're assuming lead acid battery?
22 MR. AUSTIN: No, nickel metal hydride is what I
23 used in my analysis.
24 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: So when I follow the
25 principle of discharging batteries as fully as possible
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1 before recharging them, I'm pursuing a bad principle?
2 MR. AUSTIN: That's a good principle for nickel
3 cadmium batteries, if you want to have the maximum power
4 available. But a lot of the new technology batteries do
5 not require a deep discharge to have the maximum power
6 available after recharge.
7 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: And lead acid and
8 nickel metal hydride are the same in that respect?
9 MR. AUSTIN: Yes.
10 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Lead acid you don't want to
11 discharge, as Bob mentioned.
12 MR. AUSTIN: Don't have the same memory problem
13 on that as NiCads do.
14 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thanks, Tom.
15 We have Greg Hanssen, then Craig Toepfer and
16 David Packard.
17 MR. HANSSEN: Good morning, almost afternoon. I
18 didn't really intend to speak on vehicle-to-grid, but just
19 one quick note, if you have to jump through half as many
20 hoops as I had to jump through to get permission from
21 Edison to connect my solar array to the grid, then they've
22 got a ways to go, in my opinion. I hope they can resolve
23 that.
24 My name is Greg Hanssen. I'm the co-chairman of
25 the Production Electric Vehicle Drivers Coalition. I'd
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1 like to say here that my views here do not -- are not
2 unanimous amongst the group, but I do speak on behalf of
3 many of the members, and actually one infrastructure
4 installer.
5 I should also note that I have a vested interest
6 in this, because my company is about to get some RAV4 EVs
7 and so we are investing in some more magna chargers.
8 And Toyota has said that they'll build as many as
9 the market can take. It's unfortunate that they're
10 limiting it to fleets right now, because I know a lot of
11 people who are still trying to get one.
12 For the record I am pro-conductive and I am
13 pro-inductive. I'm here to basically argue for duel
14 standards or at least some relaxed method of achieving
15 your goals, you know, without all the harsh endings.
16 I do not support General Motors. As a matter of
17 fact, I've spent much of my time and energy fighting
18 General Motors in the Legislature and we're preparing to
19 fight them in the court if need be.
20 But it's funny, some of the stuff here in this
21 staff report. They say, "The proposed infrastructure
22 regulation will have several positive effects for EV
23 drivers and ultimately cleaner air for all of California."
24 I say, wow, that kind of reminds me of the sinister mirror
25 to mirror version of the GM lawsuit, which says that the
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1 cost of the ZEV program will raise the cost of new cars in
2 California. And the people who hold on to their old cars
3 will create more pollution. Because it creates more
4 pollution it goes against these federal laws and State
5 laws and ARB rules and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
6 It's basically a house of cards that falls apart
7 if you don't buy into the silly assumption. I don't
8 believe that this main issue here is that public
9 perception is going to be dramatically changed by going to
10 a single standard. I think if you're worried about public
11 perception in the EV market, there are probably a dozen
12 much more critical issues that you really need to be
13 handling before you talk about whether consumers are
14 worried about inductive or conductive chargers.
15 You know, what is the range of the vehicles, is
16 it fast enough to go on the freeway, is it -- where do I
17 plug it in, how much does it cost to plug in, et cetera,
18 et cetera, et cetera?
19 I mean, if you've driven the vehicles, you've
20 been asked these questions. So you know where the public
21 misperceptions are.
22 The duel charging standard isn't really that
23 critical of an issue. As a matter of act, as an EV1
24 driver it's not an issue for me at all, because in
25 southern California anywhere I want to plug in they've got
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1 an inductive charger.
2 I mean, there aren't conductive chargers at all
3 the sites, but just about every site has an inductive
4 charger. So as a big paddle EV1 driver I'm doing okay
5 there.
6 The staff report mentions that the perception
7 issue could cause someone with the duel standards to be
8 confused about whether or not they get an inductive or a
9 conductive system for their garage. But I have to ask is
10 that really better than the inductive driver who gets an
11 inductive vehicle and knows that his new charger is going
12 to be a doorstop in five or six years? I mean, it sounds
13 to me that's a bigger negative there.
14 I'd like to go into the funding for the public
15 infrastructure. I have to ask, we all know that GM for
16 all of its faults has put a lot of effort into the
17 inductive infrastructure right now and maintaining that
18 infrastructure.
19 If we select conductive as the standard, do you
20 really think Nissan, Toyota or General Motors is going to
21 put a penny into the conductive Avcon infrastructure?
22 Chrysler is not, because they're just building NEVS. Ford
23 has told me that they have no intention of supporting
24 public infrastructure because most of their vehicles are
25 fleet vehicles. And Honda, so far, has a less than
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1 perfect record of supporting the conductive
2 infrastructure.
3 So if you mandate conductive, it seems to me that
4 all of the burden of adding these chargers will fall on
5 the public. It would be public money or just very
6 generous shopping store owners or something like that.
7 And then we also get into the maintenance issue.
8 GM has also been very good about maintaining their
9 chargers, even out-of-warranty chargers they've replaced.
10 I've been told by some of the installers from Clean Filed
11 Connection that, at one point, the issue was so bad with
12 EV1 that they were told not to repair, not to pull out the
13 bad conductive chargers in the field, because they simply
14 weren't being reimbursed for these costs.
15 Now, I mean you can't blame them. They're a
16 small company. I mean, I'm sure they would grow
17 tremendously under this regulation, but there is something
18 to be said for a big company with deep pockets buying the
19 infrastructure and supporting the infrastructure and
20 maintaining it. And so I think that's one point where
21 this rivalry of conductive, inductive is actually kind of
22 healthy.
23 In the staff report they mentioned the effect on
24 employment in California. And somehow they know that
25 conductive is going to be better for employment in
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1 California and not that we're talking great numbers of
2 people here, but the last time I checked more people work
3 at GM in accordance with the inductive system.
4 And the last thing I'd like to say is that for
5 the last couple of years I've been working my butt off
6 trying to make the electric vehicles market a success.
7 And I beg of you, please do not mandate a regulation here
8 that could have detrimental effects on the infancy of the
9 EV market.
10 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thanks, Greg.
11 Ms. D'Adamo.
12 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: Could staff respond to the
13 witness' concerns about the manner in which this would
14 affect public infrastructure.
15 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: Well,
16 I'll give us a short answer to start and maybe somebody
17 else will come in.
18 And the comment by Mr. Hanssen that General
19 Motors has, in fact, supported public infrastructure is
20 entirely true. They've probably supported it more than
21 any other manufacturer. That is not necessarily meaning
22 going forward, whether we standardize or don't
23 standardize, that General Motors is a panacea out there
24 for public infrastructure.
25 We haven't any indication that they're going to
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1 have long-term commitments to expanding and continuing to
2 support that long-term infrastructure. Public
3 infrastructure is a serious issue that we are -- we have
4 established a stakeholder group on, that we want to work
5 with all the parties on what is the best mechanism, you
6 know, how many sites, how do we handle warranty issues,
7 who pays for them? We're very committed to doing what's
8 necessary to get out the adequate number of public
9 infrastructure.
10 We do need the cooperation of all the parties and
11 really it's a serious issue mostly outside the
12 standardization issue. If anything, the standardization
13 does help because then you're dealing with one simpler
14 lower cost infrastructure item as opposed to two, and one
15 of them being higher cost.
16 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: Has staff given Mr.
17 McKinnon's suggestions that he made earlier a thought in
18 terms of rewarding those that convert systems that are out
19 there, including these public infrastructure systems, for
20 example, if GM wanted to maintain its commitment, some
21 sort of subsidy to encourage them to still be involved in
22 the public infrastructure side of this?
23 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: We have given that
24 some thought. Unfortunately, we don't have a perfect
25 answer on it. Part of the difficulty is that it's very
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1 difficult and very expensive to convert a car. And so
2 it's probably unlikely that any cars would be converted.
3 To the extent that public charging is converted, for
4 example, from inductive to conductive, what it really
5 means is simply replacing that particular charging unit.
6 We can look at some way of trying to incentivize
7 that, if, in fact, the manufacturer wanted to go that way.
8 But what I think we're going to have to do is essentially
9 look at this whole issue of a transition between a duel
10 standard and the Board then going to a single standard,
11 and how we basically make sure that we don't have, at
12 least, some level of obsolescence or some level of market
13 concern about the fact that people who currently own
14 vehicles are losing the opportunity to charge those
15 vehicles for the future.
16 Part of the way we try to address that is with
17 the start date. When we were looking at 2006 as a
18 reflection of the timeframe, that will give manufacturers
19 the chance to put new systems in place, put new vehicles
20 in place and therefore minimize the number of vehicles
21 that would be out there that would be subjected to this
22 potential obsolescence.
23 At the same time, you don't want anybody in 2006
24 to suddenly have a vehicle that they can't essentially
25 charge, and so we do need to figure out how we're going to
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1 move in that direction, and that's what we'll continue to
2 look at.
3 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: What would be your
4 recommendations today, if we act on this regarding the
5 transition period?
6 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: I think the key is
7 going to provide some level of incentive for the existing
8 vehicles that are out there and to look at, you know, what
9 the transition period of time will be between what we
10 currently have in the marketplace and when we would
11 actually see vehicles that are produced that are
12 essentially a single charging standard.
13 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: I should have been more
14 clear. Would it be your recommendation and then staff
15 would come back -- first of all, the staff is recommending
16 that we adopt this, but that staff would come back with
17 recommendations for the transition period say in six
18 months or something of that nature?
19 EXECUTIVE OFFICER KENNY: I think that in terms
20 of coming back to the Board with a transition plan, I
21 think what we would like to do is simply try to develop
22 that plan and then figure out whether we should bring it
23 back to the Board and what the timeframe would be on that.
24 Actually, I can't give you a real direct answer on that
25 today.
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1 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Mr. McKinnon.
2 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: I was going to say we may
3 find out down the road that the cars that are left out
4 there, so to speak, stranded, are old enough that people
5 aren't using them anymore, that kind of thing. I mostly
6 wanted to let Greg respond to this transition issue,
7 because I'm real interested in what an owner thinks that
8 bought -- you drove EV1s for quite a while.
9 MR. HANSSEN: Yeah, I've got a Gen 1 Magna
10 Charger which has survived four years and a trip to
11 Florida. And it's still holding up great. And now
12 because of the transition to the small paddle, we're going
13 to have to get a small paddle charger for the RAV4, which
14 we're willing to do, that is my company, which is just
15 three us.
16 But I know others who have expressed concern
17 about this. My friend Bob Seldon who has been a long time
18 EV1 driver was seriously looking at a RAV4 EV also and had
19 gotten the paperwork signed up to do all this, but -- and
20 he was ready to buy the charger too, because of course it
21 would work on either of his vehicles, the EV1 or the RAV4,
22 but when ARB announced that they were pursuing this course
23 of mandating conductive charging, he basically had to
24 rethink it, do I really want to get another $2,000 box for
25 this vehicle. How valuable is it to me to have this
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1 vehicle?
2 I was actually kind of surprised, because I would
3 have thought that he would have just gone for it, because
4 what's $2,000? But for a lot of people I think who might
5 be looking at EVs in the first couple years here,
6 especially from, you know, like the Toyota products,
7 buying a charger that they know is going to be a door stop
8 in a couple of years is just unsettling. Just from an
9 efficiency standpoint, it doesn't sound right. You don't
10 have to invest in that and know that it's going to have a
11 limited appeal.
12 I mean, if you could somehow pull this regulation
13 off as a trick and kind of throw it on people at the last
14 minute and say oh, surprise, by the way, this is
15 happening, you know, then it wouldn't be -- you wouldn't
16 have all this problem. But as it is right now, anyone
17 who's going out to look at an inductive car, and I guess
18 right now the RAV4 is the only thing out there really
19 available, they have to ask themselves do I want to invest
20 in a charger for this, or should I wait several years
21 before I get, you know, some other vehicle.
22 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: You know, the thing that
23 worries me is us tricking people by letting a bunch of
24 cars being built and down the road making this decision --
25 MR. HANSSEN: I realize the staff has actually
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1 put some thought into this. They're not proposing
2 actually getting rid of any inductive infrastructure until
3 2010, post-2010. So you know, in all likelihood, they
4 would support infrastructure as long as the vehicles are
5 out there.
6 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Bob, do you want to comment?
7 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS: I
8 think, though, that one of the things to recognize is that
9 right now the fleet of vehicles that's existing out there
10 that uses inductive is leased. And in many cases leases
11 are coming due, some of them are being renewed, in most
12 cases they're being renewed, some aren't.
13 And the only vehicle that is currently on the
14 market that's inductive is the RAV4, which is also leased.
15 And it would seem to me that if there is a good time to
16 change it's now, when there -- when a product that was
17 made with inductive is several years old. There's not
18 that many going out that are inductive right now.
19 And another generation of ramping up volume is
20 going to happen in the reasonably near future. So it
21 seems to me that the problem that we are talking about,
22 the longer we wait the worse they get.
23 MR. HANSSEN: But you're not changing now, you're
24 changing in 2006. I mean there could potentially be a lot
25 of vehicles that come out here in the next few years.
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1 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS: But
2 if you knew the standard was conductive it would be less
3 likely that there was two standards.
4 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I think we've got to cut this
5 off unless there's any more questions from the Board?
6 Greg, thank you very much.
7 I'm going to, basically, after the next witness
8 hold everybody to five minutes. We've got a number of
9 people that have been added to the list and we are going
10 to lose a quorum in the early afternoon, so since it's a
11 regulatory item, I wanted to move ahead.
12 But the next person is Greg Toepfer from Ford,
13 and I'd like to give him due time, but then after that
14 then limit people to five minutes and that's for David
15 Packard, Thomas Dowling, Michael Coates, et cetera.
16 MR. TOEPFER: Mr. Chairman, members of the Board,
17 Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this
18 morning. For those of you that I've had the pleasure of
19 meeting in the past, hello. For those of you who have not
20 met me before, I'd like to introduce myself a little bit
21 and tell you why I'm here.
22 For the past ten years, I've been an employee of
23 Ford Motor Company, a technical specialist responsible for
24 electrical codes and standards development. In that
25 capacity, I've served in several leadership positions,
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1 Electric Power Research Institute, Infrastructure Working
2 Council. I'm the chairman of the SAE Committee that
3 created both the inductive and conductive recommended
4 practices. I represent the SAE on the National Electric
5 Code. I'm the Secretary of the International Electro
6 Technical Commission, Technical Committee Number 69,
7 Electric Road and Industrial Vehicles, and I'm also
8 Secretary of a Joint Steering Committee between ISO and
9 IEC.
10 I will try to focus my comments on the discussion
11 that we've had on standards this morning. I respectfully
12 disagree with the points made, and in toto believe them to
13 be either incorrect or inaccurate. I think if you're to
14 discharge your duties and responsibilities as board
15 members, you need to have the facts, and I hope that
16 you'll understand those as we go forward through my
17 presentation.
18 First of all, a couple of opening statements are
19 important. Who is the International Electrico Technical
20 Commission? What is the role that standards play in our
21 society? And I'd like to address those.
22 The International Electrico Technical Commission
23 is the sibling organization to the International Standards
24 Organization located in Geneva, Switzerland. IEC as it's
25 called is responsible for developing all electrical
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1 standards for all equipment worldwide.
2 ISO on the other hand, handles international
3 standards for all nonelectrical equipment including
4 automobiles.
5 The IEC has 60 member countries, including all of
6 the industrialized nations and many of the emerging and
7 industrializing countries around the world.
8 The IEC consists of 107 technical committees,
9 four advisory committees, which we call super committees,
10 that deal with environmental aspects, safety, electro
11 magnetic compatibility and telecommunications.
12 We have ten sister committees, which is similar
13 to our FCC, it regulates radio interference and
14 communications, and 17 joint committees for information
15 technology. We are tied in with virtually every other
16 standards organization whether regional or national or
17 around the world.
18 --o0o--
19 MR. TOEPFER: Earlier this morning I passed out
20 an information packet that describes a little bit about
21 the work of international standards organizations to the
22 facilitators here and I also passed out some information
23 from the Society of Automotive Engineers technical
24 standards for their governance policy.
25 Let me clarify what a standard should do.
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1 According to the IEC, it should meet the requirements of
2 the global market efficiently. It should ensure privacy
3 and maximum worldwide use of the standards and conformity
4 assessment schemes, assess and improve the quality of
5 products and services covered by its standards, establish
6 the conditions of interoperability of complex systems,
7 increase the efficiency of industrial processes,
8 contribute to the improvement of human health and safety,
9 and contribute to the protection of the environment.
10 A shorter thing that I'd like to say about
11 standards is we establish the safety and functional
12 requirements necessary to bring technology from the
13 laboratory into the commercial marketplace, that is our
14 sole purpose. We are not designers of equipment.
15 Secondly, the activities of these standards
16 committees are regulated by consensus agreement. In the
17 United States, the American National Standards Institute
18 has that responsibility. In other countries, similar
19 organizations perform the same function to ensure that
20 people that are directly and materially affected by our
21 work are considered into the process as an open process.
22 --o0o--
23 MR. TOEPFER: Now, with respect to international
24 standards, Europe, their regional body satellite and their
25 national standards bodies or the member countries normally
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1 recognizes and adopts IEC as a mandatory, regulatory
2 product requirements for anything introduced into the
3 European union.
4 IEC Technical Committee 69 has, over the past six
5 years, developed, under the consensus process, a final
6 draft international standard for electric vehicle
7 conductive charging. My committee has 31 member
8 countries, 16 of them participating or voting members, 15
9 of them are observer countries that are interested in our
10 work and are kept abreast of our work through the
11 communications network that we have established.
12 It was approved by a hundred percent of the
13 voting members and published in the first quarter of this
14 year. I have copies of the standards here.
15 Secondly, the inductive standard, which we took
16 on as a new work item proposal nearly seven years ago, has
17 been through four project leaders, two product changes,
18 and the project leader didn't even show up at the last
19 meeting when the comments that were submitted by all of
20 the countries were to be considered.
21 I hope they will show up at the next meeting,
22 because that is where the standards were that represents
23 the interests of the marketplace and the consumers really
24 should take their place.
25 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I am a little bit concerned.
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1 I was chopping people to five minutes. I didn't think you
2 were -- how much longer are you going to go.
3 MR. TOEPFER: I have two slides.
4 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Okay, good.
5 MR. TOEPFER: I think I covered the good stuff
6 already.
7 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Slides isn't always a good
8 indicator of how long it's going to take.
9 --o0o--
10 MR. TOEPFER: Now, in the United States we put in
11 installation rules effective with the 1996 National
12 Electric Code. They were modified slightly in '99 and
13 they were modified slightly in 2002, which is another
14 important aspect of standards development as all of these
15 organizations have mechanisms in place for review and
16 updating of the standards to ensure their relevancy on a
17 continuing basis.
18 In the United States Electrical Products
19 Standards are developed by Underwriters Laboratory a not
20 for profit private organization that has the same impact
21 of national standards bodies in other countries.
22 Through the development process, we have
23 developed three products standards. UL 2202 is a basic
24 generic EV charging system equipment standard. UL 2231 is
25 a personal protection system for EV supply circuits which
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1 insists on protecting people against shock and fire
2 hazards.
3 UL 2251 covers the test requirements to assure
4 conformity with the functional requirements of plugs,
5 receptacles and couplers for EVs. It covers the
6 conductive connector for vehicle inlets. There is no
7 similar standard for inductive. It may be a proprietary
8 tie standard located in somebody's offices.
9 And finally, the Society of Automotive Engineers,
10 as you know, has passed two recommended practices for
11 electric vehicles, one for conductive, one for inductive.
12 At this point in time, both of those documents are being
13 circulated for approval or in the case of conductive a
14 second time. In the case of inductive a third time.
15 As you know, we've had Gen 1. We developed a
16 standard for it, and it was replaced by Gen 2. We
17 developed a standard for it. Another communications
18 system wasn't functioning properly so they made some
19 revisions to it. We will send that out to ballot
20 simultaneously with 1772.
21 1772 in its original form was passed, and it had
22 two connectors, the Yazaki connector and the Avcon
23 connector referred to in an Appendix. Since that time,
24 the 26 voting members of my committee have agreed, by a
25 substantial majority to settle, based on the technical
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1 information available to us, on the Avcon as being a
2 superior design.
3 We are in the process of moving that information
4 into the body of the report, and with Mr. Wolterman's help
5 will even try to make it more like the built-to standard
6 that he insists on. But it's not really a requirement, if
7 you read the SAE information that I provided to you.
8 The other thing that we've done in the second
9 version of 1772 is that we've improved the part of the
10 system, the control pilot that regulates the safety and
11 management. There were a few misinterpretations of the
12 information, but I think we've clarified that.
13 We did not change out the connector, modify
14 anything, obsolete any equipment or do anything else that
15 would affect the vehicles that are on the road today.
16 I think we've done an outstanding job in setting
17 up a series of standards, not only industry standards but
18 national standards and international standards that we
19 very, very efficiently together rely on and complement
20 each other perfectly.
21 My conclusion is I know it's a difficult job
22 making all of the conflicting information on this. I
23 think the staff has done a magnificent job trying to make
24 sense of it, differing opinions, technical data that may
25 be limited or based on assumptions of some kind, and come
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1 up with a very solid reasonable recommendation to you.
2 I support their recommendation. I think you
3 should go forward with it. Failure to do so will have a
4 detrimental effect on the electric vehicle industry.
5 Number one, I believe that the debate over this
6 system or that system is an effective barrier to EV
7 commercialization. If you believe that EVs are important,
8 and I personally do, it's time to make a decision.
9 Secondly, we talked about some costs. Do we
10 postpone this or study it for a year or debate it
11 continuously, I may retire by the time we get there.
12 So the people that have cars, the people that
13 will be buying cars in the future need that assurance that
14 a single standard that best represents their interests
15 will be in place in California, so that we can get on with
16 it and not create or compound the problems that we've
17 heard about this morning.
18 So thank you very much for your attention. I
19 hope you do the right thing.
20 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you, Greg. Thanks for
21 clarifying some of the issues here.
22 Any questions from the Board?
23 Thank you very much. We have David Packard,
24 Thomas Dowling, Michael Coates, Tim Hastrup.
25 (Thereupon an overhead presentation was
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1 presented as follows.)
2 MR. PACKARD: Hi. David Packard. I'm director
3 of business development of EVI. I want to thank you, Mr.
4 Chairman and the Board for allowing me to present today.
5 EVI is a conductive power control manufacturer.
6 Second slide, please.
7 --o0o--
8 MR. PACKARD: We're located in Auburn,
9 California, and we're on our eighth generation product
10 since our inception in 1994. We have shipped close to
11 5,000 power control stations, EV charging stations, in
12 that time, and about 3,000 of those have been our ICS
13 model, which makes up the bulk of the conductive
14 infrastructure in California.
15 We have three distinct products that we're now
16 offering that we brought to display today. And in
17 addition to that we have the DCS 55 model exclusively for
18 the United States Postal Service, that we're working in
19 conjunction with Ford on.
20 We'd like to think we can do all this, come out
21 with all these different products for different
22 applications because we're just such a great company. But
23 really I think it's a testament to conductive charging,
24 how easy it is to implement a safer public product that
25 people can handle and charge their vehicles.
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1 --o0o--
2 MR. PACKARD: We appreciate the hard work staff
3 has done. We can't imagine having to do something like
4 this and the difficulty to make the decision and also the
5 difficulty which it will impose on the automakers for
6 complying with this.
7 However, we support the staff's determination
8 that now is the time to standardize not only for the cost
9 savings show, but really because this is an ancillary
10 product. We don't want to lose the focus of the market on
11 selling zero emission vehicles, because that's really what
12 it's all about. And people are not buying charging
13 stations, they're buying vehicles. We'd like to think
14 they're buying cars because of our stations but really
15 they're buying the vehicles. What comes with it, comes
16 with it.
17 We also support staff's decision to go with
18 conductive charging, because on board conductive charging
19 is a product that is going to allow us to really reduce
20 the cost of the market and give us a flexible technology
21 that's reliable, efficient and safe and keep pace with
22 changes in the battery size, battery voltage, battery
23 chemistry on board the vehicle.
24 Additionally as we've had various competitors
25 over the years, it seems that conductive is very conducive
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1 to competitors entering and leaving the market, and these
2 are competitors who have had no relationship whatsoever,
3 who have come into the market at various times.
4 Next slide.
5 --o0o--
6 MR. PACKARD: Our current product offering is
7 shown here as well as over there. On the left our
8 flagship ICS-200B is really a high end specialty product.
9 Some of the users still prefer that, but it's got a lot of
10 features that really aren't needed by the majority of the
11 market. When we originally designed it, we had to
12 accommodate every possibility, and that added to the cost.
13 It has some features that work in extremely harsh
14 environments. It can log battery charging profiles and on
15 and on and on. So we've cost reduced the product and then
16 we came out with DS-50, which is really low-cost
17 residential and fleet unit, and the DS-200-DL, which is a
18 duel unit, able to charge two vehicles at the same time.
19 The interesting thing about that product is it
20 also slashes installation costs, which on a cost per port
21 basis rivals the cost of the hardware. By putting two
22 units in one, we are able to cut that cost potentially in
23 half. And also you can see that we go through a pretty
24 rigorous approval process with all the listings we have to
25 get.
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1 Change the slide please.
2 --o0o--
3 MR. PACKARD: Conductive technology, as we've
4 heard, has been around for over 100 years. We've all been
5 using it all our lives. In fact, there's even some
6 conductive contacts within the inductive unit itself.
7 The plastic component of the Avcon connector has
8 been changed to a much more durable unit. And nobody
9 feels the pain of breaking those connectors more than we
10 do, because we have to go out and change them out.
11 However, there has been no change to the contacts
12 within the connector, the important part, where we
13 transfer the electricity. And of all the units we've
14 shipped, over 5,000 units over the past six years or so,
15 we haven't seen any failures in those pressure butt type
16 contacts.
17 Next slide, please.
18 --o0o--
19 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Dave, can you --
20 MR. PACKARD: I'm going to skip a bunch of
21 slides.
22 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Okay.
23 MR. PACKARD: One of the favorite terms we hear
24 about is in-volume, where the price is going to be in
25 volume, and in significant volume, because we know we can
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1 promise anything and we'll worry about it when we really
2 get there. But as far as quality and pricing go in every
3 year since 1995, we have reduced the price to the market
4 by reducing the part count within the product, with
5 innovation and by improving the quality of the product.
6 We think our track record bears testament to what
7 we expect in the future. Mind you, we've been able to
8 accomplish all of this without the in-volume or
9 significant volumes in any single year. And our price
10 reductions have all been due to the market pressures from
11 competitors in conjunction with new engineering designs.
12 You can skip the slide 9.
13 --o0o--
14 MR. PACKARD: The future -- I'm sorry, that's
15 eight. Here we go.
16 We're coming out with a 110-volt product for use
17 in the US, city EVs, NEVs, a 220-volt product for Europe,
18 which is essentially all conductive. And also our ICS
19 300, which is really the one I wanted to point out, that
20 we've designed. The design is complete, which will
21 operate up to 200 amps for AC Level 3 charging
22 incorporating the conductive on-board charger with the
23 controller to get higher charge rates on board the
24 vehicle.
25 And all our products are compatible for
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1 vehicle-to-grid charging.
2 Change the slide, please.
3 --o0o--
4 MR. PACKARD: In summary, we support staff's
5 determination. We think it's in the best interests of the
6 market to choose a standard that is -- we think the best
7 choice is conductive, because it's a safe, reliable,
8 flexible technology. It's efficient and it allows us to
9 stay with one technology for the next hundred years.
10 Thank you.
11 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you.
12 Of course, I'd be very surprised if you said
13 others would, since you make the systems there.
14 Thank you.
15 MR. PACKARD: I'm trying not to be biased.
16 (Laughter.)
17 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much.
18 MR. PACKARD: Any questions?
19 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much.
20 Next, we have Thomas Dowling, Michael Coates, Tim
21 Hastrup.
22 MR. DOWLING: Good afternoon. My name is Tom
23 Dowling. I'm an EV1 owner, and a Ranger EV owner. I've
24 driven EV1s for about 60,000 miles and the Ranger EV for
25 about 10,000 miles, so I've got a lot of -- I've done a
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1 lot of public charging all over northern California.
2 Actually I've rented a RAV4 in southern California and
3 have done public charging down there, too. So I'm quite
4 familiar with the public charging infrastructure and have
5 had a lot of experience with it. I've made a lot of trips
6 back and forth to the Bay Area and other such places, so
7 I've used it a lot.
8 At the present time, I have two inductive
9 chargers at home and a conductive charging station as
10 well. So I'm quite familiar with them.
11 I'm not here to debate the merits of one versus
12 the other. They both work. They both could be improved.
13 My position is that we really already have a standard, the
14 duel standard that we have works. It could be improved
15 too, but I don't think we should change it now or a year
16 from now or any particular time, unless the cars are not
17 there, you know.
18 I think the charging standard, as even Mr.
19 Packard said, is secondary to the cars. What people are
20 buying are cars not chargers. I don't think people are
21 confused by different charging standards now. I do think,
22 however, that if we do discontinue either standard, we'll
23 make it harder, specially in the short-run, for people to
24 get cars. The availability will be impacted. People will
25 not want to buy a car, if they were aware of it, if they
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1 knew that the charger was going away, or lease the car.
2 And we know that Toyota is delivering cars now.
3 There are substantial incentives in the regulations for
4 early deliveries. I think we're doing significant
5 short-term damage if we discontinue either one of the
6 current standards. Who would want to buy or lease a
7 vehicle if they knew that that standard was going away.
8 That would really make it harder to move
9 vehicles. And as Toyota said, they don't feel comfortable
10 with the conductive standards. They would be forced to
11 put parts on their cars that they don't really like. So
12 there's going to be a real long time before they're going
13 to be ready to change, I think.
14 So the current standard, I think, it works and I
15 think we should leave it alone and see what cars are
16 manufactured. And if one of the other kind of cars stops
17 being manufactured, then the decision is made. And that's
18 really where the marketplace decides, not at the charger
19 level but at the vehicle level.
20 Even today, you'll see that most places have both
21 conductive and inductive charging stations in the same
22 place. EVI, in fact makes a pedestal, which is installed
23 in several locations where you can mount one of their
24 conductive charging stations and a Gen 2 inductive charger
25 on the same mount back to back.
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1 You see that at several -- El Dorado Hills park
2 and ride is an example of that. There's a picture of that
3 on EVI's web page.
4 So anyway, in conclusion I think we have a
5 standard that works. It could use improvement. We should
6 continue to improve it. People are buying vehicles and
7 not charging stations, and we want to make it easier for
8 people to buy or lease vehicles. That's what the
9 regulation is all about.
10 Thank you.
11 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much. Nice to
12 have someone with experience in both systems there.
13 Next, we have Michael Coates, Tim Hastrup, Steve
14 Heckeroth.
15 MR. COATES: Good morning, Dr. Lloyd and Board
16 Members. Thank you for allowing me to speak very briefly
17 this morning. I'm Michael Coates. I'm speaking as a
18 board member of the Green Car Institute, an independent
19 nonprofit organization dedicated to research and education
20 on automobiles and the environment. We're a fuel neutral
21 organization. We're not an advocate for electric vehicles
22 or any specific fuel system or company.
23 We do strongly support the CARB's regulatory
24 approach and move to set a single charging standard. We
25 think such a standard, from our view of the industry, is
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1 critical for the industry to move forward with its future
2 research and development and ultimately with this
3 marketing. We might even suggest a shorter time limit for
4 implementation.
5 However, we do have one concern that we wanted to
6 add to this public record. During the next two years, our
7 research indicates there may be 20,000 to 30,000
8 neighborhood electric vehicles introduced to the
9 California market. These would probably be the dominant
10 electric vehicles on the market. And while the staff is
11 focused on charging the city and full function EVs the
12 infrastructure demand is going to be very strong on these
13 Level 1 chargers as well.
14 And so we recommend that any future
15 infrastructure development include this level of charging
16 as well.
17 Thank you.
18 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much.
19 Tim Hastrup, Steve Heckeroth and Ken Smith.
20 MR. HASTRUP: Good afternoon. Good to see you
21 all again. I'm Tim Hastrup. I live in the Sacramento
22 area out in Granite Bay. As you may remember from our
23 earlier testimony, our family, we've had the pleasure of
24 leasing a Honda EV Plus. We are one of the first ones
25 since May '97, so we've had some experience with that and
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1 we continue to love it and it's still going strong. My
2 wife is out probably driving as we speak.
3 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Have you talked to Ben?
4 (Laughter.)
5 MR. HASTRUP: And we also have an EV1. We
6 started out with a Gen 1 that got recalled. We have a Gen
7 2, which I drove down here. And so, you know, we've been
8 happy with them. We've had a good opportunity to live
9 with both systems. Our thoughts are that, gee, you know,
10 they both work great. They're easy to use. When we got
11 the Honda back in '97, our son, Carson, was two and a half
12 at the time, didn't last many days. He was able to plug
13 the car in and continues to love to do that.
14 I'd like to think that that's because, boy,
15 another engineer in the making, and just like his big
16 sister, they'll be just like their dad and they'll be
17 electrical engineers. But I hate to admit it, it's
18 probably because it's just fairly easy to use.
19 We've had good performance from both of them.
20 They've worked. We've never really had any problems.
21 We've always felt from Day 1, gosh, why don't we just have
22 a single standard? Why did we have to go with all of that
23 complexity? And we still feel that way today. We think
24 they're both fine. They're both safe. I mean, our house
25 hasn't burned down with either system. Garages are still
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1 standing. If we were going to make a nod towards either
2 one of them we'd probably go with conductive for a couple
3 of reasons.
4 One, I think it's a lot simpler. It's a lower
5 cost solution. In my business in manufacturing as an
6 engineering manager, low cost, is something you appreciate
7 and think a lot about. It's more efficient and especially
8 at the lower power levels when you're pulling less than
9 full power, it's easier to deal with. And as we all know
10 these days, as I've been teaching all of my friends,
11 efficiency does count. And it makes a big deal. And then
12 another small thing, I think it's just easier to come out
13 with new vehicles or if you have a conversion to adapt to
14 a conductive standard.
15 I've had a conversion. I've made that work with
16 the conductive standards. There's really no practical way
17 that I could do that with an inductive.
18 So the bottom line for us is the most important
19 is a single standard. We think that's important. If
20 we're going to be going there, we feel comfortable with
21 the conductive. We probably prefer that. In closing, I'd
22 like to thank you for your leadership to move us toward a
23 common standard. Thanks to the staff for their report.
24 You know, we really would have preferred industry
25 to show the leadership. We just feel that, gosh, it
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1 really hasn't happened. We can't continue to delay and
2 wait and now is a good time before we get a lot of cars
3 out there. Now is the time to have the standard. We
4 realize that we've probably got a couple of boat anchors
5 in our garage, because it doesn't look really promising
6 for us to get replacement EVs. I may beg and I may plead,
7 you know, but I know there are no more EV Pluses coming.
8 We're certainly going to miss it.
9 Hopefully when the EV1 lease expires, maybe we
10 can extend that for a couple more years, but who knows.
11 And other wise, it's looking kind of bleak. So, you know,
12 the most important thing is, I think, to get a standard
13 and we hope long term if the cars go away, we'll be able
14 to return another day.
15 Thank you very much.
16 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you, Tim. That was a
17 very positive report.
18 Steve Heckeroth Ken Smith, David Burch.
19 MR. HECKEROTH: Hi. My name is Steve Heckeroth.
20 As a sole architect and EV manufacturer and an EV driver
21 over the last 30 years, I've tried to live a zero emission
22 life. I have three electric bicycles for my family. I
23 have two electric cars. I have probably the largest
24 electric tractor fleet in the world. It's only 3, but
25 there aren't many, and I drive a Prius for long trips. I
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1 got 55 miles to the gallon coming here. I charge my
2 electric cars from a seven kilowatt photovoltaic array.
3 And I just wanted to let you know that for the
4 last 30 years, I've had this nightmare. It's a fact that
5 burning fossil fuel harms our life support system. In
6 1995, I testified before this Board and I challenged the
7 auto industry to a range test, my electric vehicle against
8 the best they had to offer. The only requirement was that
9 the exhaust pipe be terminated and capped. The auto
10 industry did not take me up on that challenge, because, as
11 you know, they would die.
12 This is the nightmare that I have. I watch my
13 child in the cab of the car dying of exhaust. Now, how
14 much harm does exhaust do? There's a very easy test. You
15 get in your car with your child, you start the engine, you
16 have the exhaust pipe terminated in the cab, you get out
17 of the car and you watch your child as she struggles for
18 breath.
19 If this is just repeated by a few cars, that's
20 one thing, but this is being repeated all over the world.
21 And this country has taken the lead in putting this
22 technology all over the world.
23 It doesn't matter if it's a small manufacturer or
24 a large manufacturer, this exhaust is harmful. And there
25 should be fines for it. It doesn't even matter if it's a
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1 car. Another way to test is to take a lawn mower or a
2 leaf blower, put it in your living room, turn it on and
3 then sit there and explain to your family why it's more
4 important to use this energy saving equipment or time
5 saving equipment over a regular a push mower.
6 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Wouldn't they ask why you've
7 got the lawn mower in the living room.
8 (Laughter.)
9 MR. HECKEROTH: Yeah, well I think that's
10 something we should all ask, why we have a polluting -- a
11 lawn mower produces 50 times as much as a vehicle. So
12 this is a very critical situation, and I think it's
13 incumbent on this body to look at the way -- I've watched
14 for the last nine years, I've testified before this Board,
15 and watched as the zero emission mandate has been pushed
16 back and watered down. And I want to see it go the other
17 way. If it can go that way, can it go the other way? Can
18 you put a fine, like a ten percent fine on every
19 manufacturer of equipment that produces exhaust.
20 Now, I'll close by something I testified on six
21 years ago in '95, and that's the inductive chargers, which
22 I think are only employed by the industry to control the
23 infrastructure. And I can plug my car in. Even though it
24 only gets a 75 mile range, I can go across the country in
25 it, because I can plug it into a conductive charger and
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1 there's millions of them. And there's no restriction on
2 my charging.
3 So please take a second look at ways to make this
4 zero emission mandate really function in a way that we
5 eliminate exhaust and stop making deals with the industry.
6 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Well, but I think it's also,
7 Steve, to recognize the enormous progress made by the
8 industry, so that, in fact, some of the companies
9 legitimately claim that looking at the engine, not
10 emissions or the tailpipe emission which are sometimes
11 cleaner than those going in.
12 So there's been significant progress on that too.
13 So some cases when you put that tailpipe into your car it
14 would be difficult to actively --
15 MR. HECKEROTH: Yeah, the only reason they could
16 be cleaner is because we've polluted so bad in the past.
17 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you.
18 Next Ken Smith, David Burch and Ted Holcombe.
19 MR. SMITH: Good morning. My name is Ken Smith.
20 I represent the American Lung Association of California,
21 but I'm also here on behalf of the Coalition for Clean
22 Air, the Union for Concerned Scientists, Planning
23 Conservation League and the Natural Resources Defense
24 Council.
25 And I'm here today to urge you on behalf of these
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1 organizations to adopt a single on-board charging
2 standard. We need to move on this now. Don't wait, don't
3 create more confusion, adopt it now.
4 While the staff has been very specific in
5 recommending a single on-board charging system of a
6 specific type, we are more concerned that you make this
7 decision for an on-board charging system as opposed to
8 what type. We're not opposed to staff's position on this,
9 but it is essential that you make this single choice now,
10 before we get too many cars out there.
11 I think I drew this assignment on behalf of these
12 organizations, because of more than 20 years of fighting
13 these things. I have been involved in infrastructures of
14 almost every type of nonpetroleum fuel except hydrogen.
15 I'm sure that I'll get involved in that as we proceed.
16 I'm from the school of hard knocks on this. I've
17 been out there. I've been stranded. I've been
18 everything. One of my recent experiences was with an EV
19 rental in southern California, where I pulled up to
20 Fashion Aisle, the mall there. There's five charging
21 stations. There was one available. Of course, it's the
22 wrong kind.
23 I won't bore you with all the details of waiting
24 in the restaurant and getting unplugged and replugged and
25 I took a taxi. I gave up. I finally -- I was going to an
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1 ARB meeting and I finally just gave up and took a taxi. I
2 just had to have that happen.
3 Now, the natural gas industry faced this problem
4 several years ago. In the eighties, before there was a
5 lot of production of natural gas vehicles, there were
6 mostly after-market vehicles, the natural gas industry
7 decided we've got to step up and solve this problem.
8 Today, if you get a natural gas vehicle from an
9 OEM, from an Original Equipment Manufacturer, you can be
10 assured that when you go to a station here in California
11 or anywhere in the country you've got a standard plugin.
12 It's a very simple, you know, easy-to-use system. I use
13 them all the time with natural gas vehicles.
14 I also want to share with you a massive failure
15 with methanol and the M-85 system. I watched an SAE
16 committee spend more than five years. In fact I went away
17 from the industry for two years and came back and didn't
18 see any progress at all.
19 This was all over a fueling system, of not having
20 Joe six-pack put in and see 102 octane methanol and try to
21 put it into his gasoline car. And the oil industry
22 absolutely insisted on this being solved. And the car
23 companies came back with, of course, three different
24 unique systems to solve this. And the oil companies
25 wanted a very elaborate electronic system to solve it.
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1 And, frankly, it never was resolved. It failed.
2 And I would hate to see the electric charging system go in
3 that direction. So I urge you to make a decision now.
4 Sometimes you just can't get the industry to do this
5 independently like the natural gas vehicle industry did.
6 Sometimes it requires regulation. I urge you not
7 to delay. Let's get this thing going in the right
8 direction, do it now.
9 Thank you very much.
10 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thanks, Ken.
11 David Burch, Ted Holcombe, Mickey Oros.
12 MR. BURCH: Good afternoon, Dr. Lloyd and members
13 of the Board. My name is David Burch. I'm a senior
14 environmental planner with the Bay Area Air Quality
15 Management District.
16 At the BAAQMD, we have a long record of support
17 for the ZEV mandate and for electric vehicles. We've
18 devoted significant resources to promoting the EVs in the
19 Bay Area.
20 In addition to providing incentives to acquire
21 vehicles, we also implemented a program to install
22 electric vehicle charging stations around the region to
23 create a network of public EV chargers.
24 Air District staff supports the CARB staff
25 recommendation to adopt a single standard charging
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1 technology for electric vehicles. We recognize that the
2 CARB board needs to consider many factors in evaluating
3 the staff recommendation. And the Air District takes no
4 position as to the relative technical merits of conductive
5 versus inductive charging.
6 Our experience indicates that both inductive and
7 conductive systems are safe and effective. And testimony
8 from CARB staff and other speakers today bears that out.
9 Our key point is that we believe and agree that a
10 single charging standard is an important prerequisite to
11 successful implementation of the ZEV mandate.
12 We believe that the lack of a standard charging
13 technology will impede our efforts to promote electric
14 vehicles and install a network of EV charging in a cost
15 effective manner.
16 The public charging can provide several benefits.
17 It can help to encourage the public to consider purchasing
18 electric vehicles. It can enable current EV owners to
19 drive their vehicles for more trips and for longer trips.
20 And it can increase the visibility of electric vehicles
21 and help to increase public awareness of this new
22 technology.
23 Like most parties, we would prefer to see a
24 marketplace solution or a voluntary agreement among the
25 automakers, but there has been little or no progress to
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1 date, and there doesn't seem to be much prospect of an
2 agreement in the future. Therefore, we support CARB
3 staff's recommendation in their efforts to develop a
4 single standard charging technology via the rule-making
5 process.
6 I'd like to emphasize a couple of points. We
7 think the public perception is important here. The lack
8 of a standardized charging technology contributes to the
9 public perception that the EV industry is not yet sure.
10 In our interaction with interested members of the
11 public, we find the people are perplexed by the lack of a
12 standard charging technology. I go out a lot of times and
13 represent the district at events like electric vehicle
14 positions, and I interact with people that are
15 sophisticated about electric vehicles, other people that
16 are just getting introduced to the technology.
17 There are two things I always take home are one,
18 that everybody wants to know how they can get a vehicle
19 and are frustrated at the lack of product out there. But
20 the other thing is that people, when you start talking
21 about the various types of chargers, and, you know,
22 inductive versus conductive, and couplers, they're just
23 kind of amazed that there isn't a standard out there
24 already. And almost invariably people say that's got to
25 get fixed, somebody has got to deal with that issue.
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1 The second point is that the cost to install and
2 maintain a system of public chargers is higher due to the
3 need to purchase and service two different types of
4 charging technology.
5 The third point, most existing public charging
6 sites currently provide both inductive and conductive as
7 has been noted, but that's not the case in all locations.
8 So we have a situation right now where there's
9 some stations have both, some only have one, and it
10 complicates the effort to provide the information via web
11 sites and resources to people that want to know where they
12 can go and charge their electric vehicle.
13 And that lack of clear information basically
14 undermines the credibility of the current system and
15 complicates our efforts.
16 Finally, in terms of getting the most bang for
17 the buck with installing EV chargers for the public, it's
18 going to be more effective if all the vehicles can use the
19 same chargers. Right now, if you've got a site that has
20 one inductive and one conductive charger, you've got two
21 chargers, but if you've got an inductive vehicle and you
22 pull up and that inductive slot is full, well essentially
23 that site is not rendered useful for you in the same
24 situation vice versa.
25 So if you have two chargers that are the same,
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1 then you've got double the capacity, and it makes for a
2 more cost effective use of the system, creating more
3 capacity with the same number of chargers.
4 What the means is that we can install a greater
5 capacity with less resources and fewer chargers if
6 everybody can share the same chargers.
7 In summary, adoption of a single standard will
8 facilitate the effort to promote public charging by
9 reducing the infusion of EV drivers, allowing for more
10 efficient use of the public charging network and reducing
11 the cost in both public and private dollars to construct
12 and maintain a network of public chargers.
13 It seems that there's consensus that we need a
14 single charging standard sooner or later. The question is
15 when do we take that step. There's no perfect time. In
16 our opinion, it makes more sense to adopt a single
17 standard now, while the number of people and chargers that
18 are out there is relatively limited. The costs and the
19 disruptions from the transition will be minimized if we
20 deal with it now, rather than waiting until we have more
21 vehicles and more chargers out there.
22 If the CARB does adopt a single standard, we're
23 certainly going to work with CARB, automakers and other
24 stakeholders to ensure the most viable and smooth
25 transition to that new standard.
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1 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much. And we
2 appreciate the support of the Bay Area to come and testify
3 today. We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco
4 next month.
5 Next, we have Ted Holcombe, Mickey Oros, and
6 Hans-Henning Judek.
7 MR. HOLCOMBE: Chairman Lloyd, I'll try and make
8 this brief here. We also support the concept that a
9 single standard is preferable to two. We don't care which
10 one. We think they both have merit. They're both good,
11 but settling on one would be desirable.
12 Relative to the grid discussion that came up
13 earlier, I think people -- there might be -- people should
14 realize first of all under deregulation, that we no longer
15 produce the power, so I don't see the utilities going out
16 necessarily to place chargers in order to bring this
17 market in. But there would be, perhaps, a profitable
18 market there, where somebody who owns a parking lot could
19 put chargers in the parking lot and make a profit out of
20 charging vehicles in the morning and taking power out in
21 an amount in the afternoon if the vehicles are parked
22 everyday, for instance say a BART parking lot or a
23 CalTrans parking lot. There might be certain areas where
24 this would be profitable.
25 But I would also think that if there was a
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1 question of taking power out of the vehicle, that that
2 power might be more valuable to the owner in his own house
3 to service his own load if, for example, power is lost to
4 him if he loses a power supply.
5 So I think that going -- thinking of a battery
6 electric vehicle as being a backup for a house power
7 supply might be a more prudent backup use than they can
8 use a backup for the grid.
9 And I think that the question of whether the
10 existence of that backup might prevent the placement of
11 gasoline or diesel generators, might be a consideration.
12 Thank you very much.
13 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you, Ted. Now, Mickey
14 Oros, Hans-Henning Judek and Dale Foster.
15 MR. OROS: Thank you. My name is Mickey Oros. A
16 brief history. I founded EVI in the early nineties, '92.
17 It was a group that was put together to -- I was working
18 with SMUD as a consultant and was asked to put together a
19 safe, cost effective system for the marketplace.
20 I've since moved on to fuel cells and
21 electrification. And also I have just been working on
22 doing the design for the electrical systems for the Post
23 Office. And I am able to say that because of a conductive
24 system, we're able to save a third of the cost doing it
25 conductively for the Post Office. And when you're talking
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1 dollars in excess of a half a million dollars for material
2 costs, it's quite sizable.
3 In working with SMUD, I was asked to bring in
4 some -- hire some engineers to help develop this system.
5 I could have easily gone into an inductive format, no
6 problem, since I was green and had no basis to start from.
7 But after thorough investigations we found that
8 the systems -- there were other systems available out
9 there that made the inductive system a little less
10 desirable to go with.
11 What I've heard today is comments that go either
12 way if the system were to go inductive or the system were
13 to go conductive.
14 But this is what I have discovered and that is
15 five years ago, if we just look at five years ago, and
16 consider that ground zero, we have done a tremendous
17 amount of engineering development to the point where we've
18 made both systems as safe for the consumer as they could
19 possibly be.
20 Given that five years, and starting from a ground
21 zero with codes, standards and safety, you're giving this
22 industry another five years to work towards, to go ahead
23 if one manufacturer had to change its format.
24 This is a lot of time. You're giving them a good
25 fair amount of time to go ahead and make that transition.
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1 So what you're hearing is that it cannot be done, it's too
2 short. I think it's just ego and greed talking here.
3 I don't need to comment on a lot of the comments
4 that have already been talked about today. But I think
5 that if you were to get -- and I'm sure that the Board has
6 not been given true costs from most of the manufacturers,
7 for simple reasons. But I think once these true costs
8 were to surface, you would probably see that from a
9 standpoint of the consumer that a conductive system makes
10 a lot of sense. And when we go out, as the consumers here
11 in the United States today in our country go out and buy,
12 we basically go out, and the first thing that comes to
13 mind is what does it take or how much do we take out of
14 our pocket and cost is always the driving factor.
15 And once we look at that, I think from those that
16 have spoken earlier and said that some developer should
17 come out and bear all the cost to this, we find out that
18 if they were, they would probably also go back to that
19 saying, well what is the most cost effective system for me
20 to get a return on the investment.
21 And we think, again, that drives us towards the
22 conductive standard. The architecture, conductively, I
23 found over the years is much more open. The investment
24 costs are far less, and the time is now. I don't think
25 that you should wait and continue to wait. It will only
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1 worsen as time goes on, before the ramp up begins.
2 And I hope you'll take some of these comments to
3 heart and take a look. And I also have figures that would
4 backup some of the statements that I've made.
5 Thank you very much.
6 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: Thank you, Mr. Oros.
7 Any questions?
8 Who used the phrase Last of the Mohicans?
9 Mr. Hans-Henning Judek, and then Mr. Dale Foster
10 and Mr. Alec Brooks.
11 MR. JUDEK: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
12 I hope everybody is not too hungry. It's already after
13 lunch. So anyway, I just wanted to briefly introduce what
14 we are doing or trying to do.
15 My company is trying to implement an automatic
16 mechanical car parking system in the United States. And
17 we have a project in the Los Angeles area, which is very
18 close to a subway station. And about four weeks ago,
19 somebody had the glorious idea that we should probably
20 implement electric vehicles into this apartment facility
21 to provide an intermodal means of transportation.
22 So that means that people who arrive by the
23 subway have the opportunity to get a car right at the
24 subway station. And I found out that there are already
25 quite a substantial amount of people working on this
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1 matter, for example, Matt Barth in Riverside and Susan
2 Shaheen here in the Bay Area.
3 The problem that I see to make a decision now on
4 which kind of connector should be used or inductive system
5 should be used is that we definitely should not forget
6 that we may in the future have the need to automatize this
7 whole procedure, that this -- it could be some kind of
8 robot or some kind of mechanical device would be necessary
9 that automatically connects the connector or the panel or
10 whatever we are using to the vehicle.
11 And I would like to ask you please try to think
12 now already about these kinds of possibilities, because
13 any cost-sharing system can only really work with these
14 kind of automatic systems. So it means we will have to
15 think about where to allocate the contact point. We have
16 to think about how to open, for example, the cover or a
17 flap. We have to think about how to aim the connecting or
18 conductive device to the car.
19 And I'm really not quite sure we have at the
20 moment really all the facts together to make a decision on
21 this matter.
22 And I'm inviting everybody here to the room to
23 support our effort, because 300 electric cars in the City
24 of Los Angeles would be a good start for electric
25 vehicles.
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1 Thank you.
2 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: Thank you. Are
3 there any questions?
4 Dale Foster.
5 MR. FOSTER: Good afternoon. My name is Dale
6 Foster. I'm with AeroVironment in Monrovia, California.
7 I'm the product manager for the off-board Level 3 charger
8 that uses a conductive charger, which you've heard some
9 discussion about here. We're the technology and product
10 that staff is proposing to effectively make obsolete here
11 with your current proposal. Dr. Paul MacCready and myself
12 on behalf of AeroVironment did submit some bold more
13 extensive remarks on this subject. So I'll just hit some
14 of the highlights. We do support standardization of
15 infrastructure. We think that's very important.
16 We are also a member, one of the founding members
17 of the Electric Vehicle Conductive Charging Coalition, so
18 we support conductive charging for all the reasons that
19 you've heard earlier here today. We also support the
20 single connector as has been proposed, the Avcon style
21 connector we believe we can get there.
22 At this point, we digress from the majority of
23 the EVC3 membership where we do not support mandating and
24 requiring on-board charging, high-powered charging. Now,
25 like most of the folks you've got testifying before you,
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1 we've all got some vested interests in this topic. And AV
2 has a lot of invested interest.
3 We're a small California company and we've
4 invested millions of dollars in our off-board charging
5 technology. And contrary to staff's report we are not OEM
6 supportive as a contract manufacturer. We're an
7 independent company and we sell these to a variety of
8 clients.
9 So that being said, AV suggests deleting the
10 requirement for on-board charging. Let the marketplace
11 decide which is going to work out. We believe there are
12 justifiable cases and applications for both on and off.
13 The high cost that's been quoted for our charging systems,
14 $45,000 for a 60 kW charger, we believe is mitigated if
15 there are lots of EVs per charger, such as oftentimes in
16 the case of fleets and other repetitive use applications.
17 There is a place for on-board charging in some of
18 these low-powered vehicles. We think it would be prudent
19 for every manufacturer of a vehicle to supply an on-board
20 charger with it that can plug into the millions of
21 standard 110/220 outlets that are out there.
22 Fast, fast charging on the order that we achieve
23 with our posicharge system, which is something roughly two
24 percent state of charging increased per minute, we think
25 greatly enhances the market viability and acceptance of
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1 electric vehicles.
2 And, yes, we need to get more of the OEMs, and
3 the battery manufacturers to support fast-charging
4 technology, besides just DaimlerChrysler and some of the
5 other independents. But the higher power, fast charging
6 we think is going to be best accomplished with the
7 off-board charging. So standards are important and
8 useful, but they should enable and not limit advances in
9 this technology.
10 So in summary we support conductive charging
11 standards. We support standardizing that connector as
12 proposed. But we do not support specifying on-board in
13 the mandate. Leave that open for either on-board or
14 off-board.
15 Thank you very much.
16 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Does staff want to comment on
17 that?
18 Jack, the question was, Dale made the comment
19 about it's okay with conductive but don't specify on-board
20 or off-board. And so that was my --
21 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: I
22 apologize for that.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: That's okay.
24 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: Well,
25 the systems are, you know, fundamentally different. And
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1 we did not have an off-board conductive system here
2 available for review. In most of our analysis we didn't
3 put it in the review. There's one manufacturer who
4 utilize the system and it's quite extensive and continues
5 to be quite expensive.
6 It does have some advantages especially for
7 larger vehicles, like the Epic, but the direction seems to
8 be to minimize battery sizes and moving toward smaller
9 ones.
10 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS: Will
11 the connector that we're specifying accept or work with
12 that charger?
13 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: The
14 connector should work.
15 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS: So
16 it's really basically --
17 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Can you speak up just a
18 little bit.
19 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS: They
20 never turn me up.
21 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: No, it's not that. It's
22 the system. You just have to sit on it.
23 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS: I
24 guess the discussion I was having with Jack is that I
25 think that our main concern with specifying on-board
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1 charging is with Level 2 charging, it's the charging that
2 will happen between people's garages and at work sites and
3 things like that.
4 What I was asking was whether or not if a Level 2
5 charging with the on-board charging could co-exist or not
6 with Level 3 capability for off-board fast charging?
7 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: Which
8 it can.
9 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS: So
10 maybe we can settle that. And the next step is can we
11 modify the regulations so that they don't -- or the
12 proposal so that it doesn't specify only on-board charger,
13 in other words, if you're going Level 3 --
14 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: The
15 Level 3 is exempt from the regulations that are set.
16 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS:
17 Okay. Well, does that satisfy you?
18 MR. FOSTER: Well, I think by specifying on-board
19 you're effectively obsoleting off-board technology. I
20 realize that it may not apply to a lot of these vehicles
21 or a lot of the buses and other heavy duty things may not
22 apply, but I think that there's going to be no incentive
23 for the automakers to put duel on-board/off-board systems
24 on vehicles.
25 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: The
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1 situation gets back to the whole reason why we started,
2 and that we did specify an on-board system, so that every
3 vehicle can come up onto any charging station and be able
4 to utilize that charging station.
5 If there's a Level 3, some systems can be able to
6 accommodate greater power, recharge quicker, but we still
7 want those vehicles to be able to not have to have
8 separate distinct charging systems like exists with the
9 DaimlerChrysler system today.
10 MR. FOSTER: But I contend that you could get
11 there with the connector that's being specified.
12 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: I couldn't hear
13 that.
14 MR. FOSTER: I contend that you could get
15 there -- we have the technology to get there with the
16 connector system that's being supplied.
17 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS:
18 We're going around the same circle I just went around, but
19 I'll try again. I think that the staff strongly believes
20 that for Level 2 charging, which is again the garage, the
21 routine stuff, that the charger should be on a vehicle and
22 connectors should be standardized as proposed.
23 As I understand it, some of AeroVironment's work
24 connects to -- is associated with doing very fast
25 charging. And if that's the case, their system should be
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1 able to coexist with the Level 2 that's part of the staff
2 proposal, in other words, if the vehicle has the wires
3 between the battery and the pins on the connector.
4 So I'm not sure that we really have a problem
5 other than saying that the regulation shouldn't exclude
6 the possibility of doing Level 3 charging with an
7 off-board charger.
8 MR. FOSTER: And the regulation does not
9 explicitly exclude off-board charging. The staff has made
10 that comment to me, but it effectively does when you
11 specify that it requires an on-board charger.
12 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: I thought, at one point,
13 it was not specified that that Level 3 --
14 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS: I
15 think he's saying well, for Level 2 that's true, but, you
16 know, in other words we specify an on-board for Level 2,
17 then we are, but I don't think that's exclusive. In other
18 words, the charger that he's developing is a fast charger,
19 then it's a different system.
20 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: What would you do if
21 you were him, had millions invested, what would you do?
22 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS: I
23 would focus on marketing my fast charger as an off-board
24 charger, because the only -- that's what I was asking
25 about the -- if the connector is okay, then his end is
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1 okay, and all that needs to be on the vehicle is the wire
2 between the -- well it's not quite that simple, but the
3 wires between the pins and the battery. So his off-board
4 charger does fast charging through the appropriate pins on
5 the connector, which is already specified.
6 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: So that would be okay.
7 MR. FOSTER: That's feasible. We can continue to
8 market our product as an off-board fast-charging system.
9 We have other niche markets that we're doing development
10 work, and we're doing sales work. And my concern is,
11 again, if by requiring anybody who's going to get a ZEV
12 credit to have an on-board charger greater than three
13 kilowatts, you have effectively disincentivized it by
14 putting any type of off-board combinations.
15 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I think we're hearing some
16 sympathy to your investment here and technology. I guess
17 what we're trying to look for is some hybrid approach
18 where we can have our cake and eat it, too.
19 MOBILE SOURCE CONTROL DIVISION CHIEF CROSS: If
20 we go the way he's suggesting though, we're going down the
21 path of multiple standards again, because you can't have
22 off-board and on-board Level 2 charging without multiple
23 standards.
24 ON-ROADS CONTROLS BRANCH CHIEF KITOWSKI: In
25 effect, it would be analogous to taking the
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1 DaimlerChrysler system but changing the connector so that
2 it looks like the Avcon or Ford, so it looks like it will
3 charge with it. Some vehicles, like a DaimlerChrysler,
4 might look like they could go up to a charging station and
5 they could charge and it would fit, it's just it wouldn't
6 charge.
7 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I think we'll probably have
8 to come back to this point and maybe ask staff how, in
9 fact, we can work with it in the environment to mitigate
10 some of these issues.
11 Thank you, Dale.
12 Our last witness is Alec Brooks from AC
13 Propulsion.
14 (Thereupon an overhead presentation
15 was presented as follows.)
16 MR. BROOKS: Good afternoon, Dr. Lloyd and
17 members of the Board. My name is Alec Brooks. I'm the
18 Chief Technology Officer at AC Propulsion. I've been
19 involved in electric vehicles since 1987, both
20 professionally and as a driver. In 1988, while at
21 AeroVironment, I wrote the proposal to General Motors for
22 the Impact electric car, the predecessor to the EV1, and I
23 was the project manager and chief engineer for the Impact
24 during its development.
25 I've used both conductive and inductive charging
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1 systems, and I leased an EV1 on the first day they were
2 available. And, by the way, I spent $2,000 on a large
3 pile inductive charger.
4 I got the EV1 in spite of the inductive charging
5 system not because of it. I support the Board's
6 initiative to settle the charging standards debate once
7 and for all and I support the staff's recommendations to
8 standardize on on-board conductive charging.
9 --o0o--
10 MR. BROOKS: Lets skip this, because it's been
11 covered.
12 --o0o--
13 MR. BROOKS: "It ain't what you don't know that
14 hurts you; it's what you know for certain that just ain't
15 so."
16 I remembered this when I read a lot of the
17 submitted comments on this issue. And I was reminded of
18 this pearl of wisdom from Charles Kettering, a great
19 inventor, engineer and educator and head of GM research
20 from 1919 to 1946.
21 There's been an awful lot of, what I consider,
22 misinformation and obfuscation of the facts.
23 Next.
24 --o0o--
25 MR. BROOKS: The first one I want to talk about
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1 is cost. There is no reason why the on-board components
2 of a conductive system will always cost more than the
3 on-board components of the inductive system. There are
4 many, many different ways to make a conductive charger,
5 some will cost more than the inductive on-board
6 components, and some will cost less.
7 I want to point out that the display that's been
8 put up here to compare the inductive and conductive
9 systems makes use of the latest unreleased version of the
10 inductive system that takes and shows it compared to the
11 six-year old, separate conductive charger, and that is the
12 most complex conductive wall box. So I don't think it's
13 exactly an apples to apples comparison.
14 These comments from Toyota and GM on the slides
15 show -- and these are taken from the public testimony and
16 submitted -- show that the real cost of the inductive
17 system is high and will remain high through 2020. GM has
18 said that they don't want to be in the charger business.
19 It's easy to see why due to the cost involved. But it is
20 hard to see why anyone else would want to be in the
21 inductive charging business. By contrast, conductive
22 charging systems and connectors are made by small
23 companies that have to pay their bills from the product's
24 sales and are a sustainable business even at today's
25 volumes.
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1 Next.
2 --o0o--
3 MR. BROOKS: Let's skip this one, it's been
4 covered.
5 Another often-heard but questionable fact is that
6 the weight of on-board conductive charges will always be
7 more than the weight of the on-board inductive components.
8 While this has been the case for some first generation
9 electric vehicles, new products and approaches may
10 eliminate or even reverse the weight difference. One
11 nonintegrated six kilowatt charger that I'm aware of could
12 be integrated into the vehicle at a weight of five
13 kilograms, not the 50 that we heard earlier.
14 And GM's claim that a mile of range is lost per
15 kilogram of weight added is completely incorrect. It
16 doesn't stand up to any rational engineering analysis or
17 even common sense.
18 Southern California Edison tested the EV1 with
19 both minimum and maximum payload conditions and reported
20 range losses of only 1/100 to 6/100 of a mile per kilogram
21 of added weight.
22 --o0o--
23 MR. BROOKS: Now, let's talk about consumer
24 friendly. It's true that the inductive paddle is slightly
25 easier to connect to the vehicle than the conductive
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1 coupling. By having used both types quite a bit, this is
2 a negligible difference.
3 Another point worth considering in evaluating
4 consumer friendliness are the multiple warnings attached
5 to the newest conductive chargers. These labels warn the
6 consumer about the potential for burns, fires, shock and
7 state that the ground fault interrupt device should be
8 tested prior to each use.
9 Conductive charging stations also contain some
10 warnings, but these are directed towards service people
11 that will open the box, not the end users of the device,
12 and there is no direction to manually test a ground fault
13 device every time the charge station is used.
14 Imagine a customer that is new to EVs, but is
15 interested in maybe getting one. Out of curiosity, they
16 have to look at an inductive charger and pull out the
17 paddle. What do they see? A warning that you can get
18 burned.
19 By the way, the burn warning label was missing
20 from the charger that's on display here. The recall from
21 the GEN1 EV1s for a charge port problem is well known.
22 I'd like to share some of my own experience in this area.
23 In February 2000 my EV1 was at the dealership for
24 a tire problem. When I got the car back, I noticed a
25 smokey electrical smell while charging. I called the
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1 dealership and was told rather matter of factly, "Oh,
2 that. We put your car on charge after we finished and one
3 of our technicians noticed smoke coming out of the charge
4 port, pulled the paddle, but don't worry, we put in a new
5 port. It happens a lot."
6 It was this incident that caused me to cancel the
7 renewal of my EV1 lease. A month later all Gen 1 and EV1s
8 and S10s were recalled because of charge port problems.
9 We were assured that there was no problem with the 1999
10 Gen 2 EV1s.
11 Next.
12 --o0o--
13 MR. BROOKS: Well, there was a problem. In
14 November 2000, the 1999 Gen 2 EV1 was recalled for a
15 charge port fire danger. The reasons cited were an
16 internal component variation, whatever that means. Are
17 there any more flaws or defects in the latest inductive
18 system that we were not aware of? A recent event suggests
19 that this may be the case.
20 On Monday this week there was a report on the EV1
21 Internet mailing list of a broken paddle on a small paddle
22 inductive charger at a park and ride location in southern
23 California. I drove over to have a look.
24 Next.
25 --o0o--
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1 MR. BROOKS: This is what I found. The paddle
2 casing was shattered. The plastic was fractured with
3 clean sharp edges and appeared to be brittle. I'm not an
4 expert in plastics, but I wonder if the choice of plastic
5 for the paddle was severely limited by the requirement
6 that it withstand temperatures that are hot enough to burn
7 you.
8 How the paddle was damaged is unknown. It could
9 have been vandalism or it could have been dropped, but it
10 does raise the question of whether the paddle is too
11 fragile for its intended application, and expected use and
12 occasional abuse.
13 I picked out of the dirt a couple of plastic
14 fragments from the paddle and I want to pass them up to
15 the Board to have a look at. I also have with me a piece
16 of the segment of new Avcon coupler and it's plastic.
17 --o0o--
18 MR. BROOKS: What's been talked about in the
19 packaging. Well, it turns out that the conductive inlet
20 is smaller in volume by about 20 percent than the new
21 small paddle inductive system. And its mounting depth,
22 the depth from the circuit to the car back is about half
23 as much.
24 There's also in the inductive, there's a
25 requirement for cooling air flow to take away the losses
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1 from the paddle and port.
2 Next.
3 --o0o--
4 MR. BROOKS: Communication is another issue.
5 Proponents of inductive charging have emphatically stated
6 that vehicle-to-charge station digital communications will
7 be an absolute requirement for things like car sharing,
8 vehicle-to-grid and fuel cell vehicles. This is not the
9 case at all.
10 These applications will be better served with
11 wireless broad area coverage such as through
12 cellular-based data systems that will allow communications
13 with the vehicle whether it is parked at the charger,
14 being driven or plugged into a 110-volt outlet at home.
15 Even the Toyota Crayon station car program brochure touts
16 how GPS and cell-based date are used to track the E-com
17 vehicles.
18 Also there is no reason that station cars or
19 shared cars will be EVs. It makes no sense to mandate a
20 communication method for these purposes as part of an EV
21 charging system.
22 Next.
23 --o0o--
24 MR. BROOKS: I want to briefly address charging
25 at higher power than the usual Level 2. Level 1 or 110
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1 volt charging is admittedly slow, but in my experience it
2 has proved very useful. With my EV1 with the so-called
3 convenience charger I was able to make overnight trips and
4 charge with 110 outlets at hotels.
5 Level 1 charging is a kluge with inductive
6 charging. You have to have a separate box, called a
7 convenience charger, that you remove with the trunk and
8 unwind two cords, one with the paddle and the other way
9 with a plug.
10 Level 1 charging is built right into many Level 2
11 conductive chargers, with no additional costs. You just
12 plug it into a 110 outlet. Level one is a useful and
13 valuable feature for EV drivers, especially for efficient
14 vehicles and vehicles with lead acid batteries. You
15 shouldn't reject Level 1 just because it doesn't work well
16 in those vehicles with power-hungry battery cooling
17 systems.
18 Next.
19 --o0o--
20 MR. BROOKS: Level 2 Plus is a system that
21 provides faster charging for vehicles with on-board
22 conductive chargers. The infrastructure side does not
23 require a costly off-board DC charger, only an up-rated EV
24 charge station that looks like the standard unit. I think
25 we heard a little bit about that from EVI.
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1 AC Propulsion's Level 2 Plus compatible charging
2 system allows 20 kilowatts of charge power or about three
3 times the standard rate. Level 2 Plus accommodates up to
4 400 amps AC or 96 kilowatts to allow for future technology
5 growth in the capability of on-vehicle charging systems.
6 Level 2 Plus is backward compatible with Level 2,
7 and drivers of Level 2 Plus vehicles would have the choice
8 of installing standard Level 2 or uprated Level 2 Plus
9 charge stations at home. Level 2 Plus provides the
10 potential to enable the cost effective faster charging
11 public infrastructure that remains compatible with
12 standard Level 2 vehicles.
13 Next.
14 --o0o--
15 THE COURT REPORTER: Could you slow down just a
16 tiny bit.
17 MR. BROOKS: He told me I had to go fast.
18 THE COURT REPORTER: Yeah, I know you told him,
19 but I can't write that fast.
20 (Laughter.)
21 MR. BROOKS: I submitted this in writing as well.
22 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: There are competing
23 interests.
24 (Laughter.)
25 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Maybe, Alec, you could
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1 compromise here and just hit some of the highlights, since
2 we've got this in front of us then, and maybe slow down a
3 little bit as well.
4 MR. BROOKS: Okay. Integrated charging is a
5 method of using -- the components are already there on the
6 vehicle to drive the wheels to use them as a part of the
7 charger. I've made use of figures and charts that the
8 inductive proponents have shown to compare the cost and
9 weight of inductive and conductive. I've put a red line
10 through all of the components that are not needed to be
11 separate with integrated charging, and I've also shown a
12 diagonal red line that shows with integrated charging
13 on-board cost and weight are clearly lower than inductive,
14 and as the inductive camp readily agrees, that the
15 off-board cost and weight are lower with conductive, too.
16 AC Propulsion is not the only company working on
17 integrated charging. We have patents for our approach,
18 but this is not the only approach. By the way, our
19 patents are in no way covering any of the standards that
20 we're talking about for the connector and the off-board
21 equipment. There are at least three other patented
22 integrated charging systems by Fuji, JPL and GM. Toyota
23 showed an integrated charger in the E-com at EVS14 in 1997
24 and may still have an integrated charger today.
25 Ford and Ecostar showed integrated charging in
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1 1999. GM's rejection of integrated charging is based on
2 their experience for the system that was installed in the
3 original impacts, now a 12 year old design and several
4 generations behind the latest technology.
5 Next.
6 --o0o--
7 MR. BROOKS: Vehicle-to-grid is a concept that
8 allows vehicles with electrical storage and generation
9 capabilities to perform valuable services while they're
10 not being driven. The earnings potential is enough to
11 transform the economics of EVs -- instead of a cost
12 penalty associated with the emissions benefit, there would
13 instead be a cost reduction associated with the emissions
14 reduction.
15 I took it as a sort of vote of confidence that GM
16 and Toyota were so threatened by vehicle-to-grid that they
17 hired Mr. Austin to try to shoot it down. If they had
18 spent one-tenth as much effort to find out more about the
19 concept and read the report, they would realize that
20 economic potential for EVs from vehicle-to-grid is not at
21 all related to the daily on-street power sales that we
22 agreed conceptually that that doesn't make any sense.
23 I should point out also that neither Mr. Austin
24 nor anyone from GM contacted us to find out more about the
25 vehicle-to-grid concept. We're, of course, happy to brief
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1 any automakers on the concept and let them know what we're
2 doing.
3 Next.
4 --o0o--
5 MR. BROOKS: This is why they're so worried about
6 it. What I call the inductive camp dismisses this. What
7 I call the inductive system is a vehicle-to-grid disabler.
8 They say that it's compatible with vehicle-to-grid, but
9 this is very misleading.
10 The current designs for the inductive system both
11 on the vehicle side and on the infrastructure side are
12 inherently incapable of bidirectional power flow. By
13 contrast all of the existing Level 2 infrastructure --
14 conductive infrastructure is already vehicle-to-grid
15 compatible right now as installed.
16 It is true that the inductive coupler itself is
17 capable of bidirectional power flow, but the rest of the
18 system isn't. To make it bidirectional would require
19 completely different designs for the infrastructure side
20 charging equipment and the vehicle side equipment.
21 The vehicle side would end up having to carry
22 around something of similar weight and complexity as the
23 current off-board charger.
24 This is a good example of how inductive charging
25 is hostile to new technologies. If you want a new
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1 feature, okay, just rip out and replace all of the
2 installed charger base. This is what happened with the
3 move to the small paddle, thousands of old style large
4 paddle chargers became obsolete.
5 --o0o--
6 MR. BROOKS: To sum it up, press on with
7 selecting on-board conductive as the standard charging
8 system. We don't support a one-year delay for letting a
9 consultant make the decision. CARB staff already made an
10 independent professional evaluation and we support that.
11 Let the technology for chargers continue to
12 develop, but keep the high technology on the vehicle side
13 and keep the infrastructure side simple by adopting
14 standards that require the minimum possible equipment and
15 costs to safely deliver commodity AC electricity to the
16 vehicle.
17 The inductive system is inferior in many ways,
18 including cost both on and off the vehicle, energy
19 efficiency, robustness and vehicle-to-grid compatibility.
20 Conductive is the right choice.
21 Thank you for putting up with my speed.
22 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you, Alec. How would
23 you respond to the comments of your previous employer?
24 MR. BROOKS: I think there's no need to say that
25 you have to -- you can have an option of having only
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1 off-board DC. There is no reason whatsoever that you
2 can't make a vehicle that has both on-board conductive and
3 off-board DC. I think at one point Ford was trying to do
4 that, so they can market the system as best they can.
5 Any conductive vehicle manufacturer could choose
6 to adopt compatibility with that system and they chose to.
7 I think the point that all vehicles being compatible with
8 the standard level infrastructure is an important one, not
9 to let that go.
10 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Mr. McKinnon.
11 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: Yeah, I kind of had my
12 hand raised at the last speaker and I'll just ask you a
13 follow up to that question. What would it cost to have --
14 what's the kind of cost variable to have the capability to
15 plug in to -- to have an on-board charger and be able to
16 plug in to say a fast charger like AeroVironment has?
17 MR. BROOKS: I can give an opinion and then
18 someone from Ford can also talk.
19 Basically, it involves installing a slightly
20 larger or high capacity charged receptacle, which I don't
21 think is a big cost, and putting big wires from the
22 receptacle to the battery pack together with a two volt
23 contactor. And then it also requires a fairly significant
24 software effort to talk back and forth to the charger. I
25 think the software effort is probably the most expensive
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1 part of the whole deal.
2 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: What's your value? Do
3 you value the idea of having fast charging?
4 MR. BROOKS: Yes, within limits. I think one
5 thing to keep in mind is that the electricity company is
6 charging for capacity about $10 a month per kilowatt. So
7 if I have a 60-kilowatt charge station and I have a fixed
8 overhead of $600 a month before I pump any electricity at
9 all, as the demand charge. And also a lot of vehicles may
10 start tapering that power because of battery heating.
11 But I think what you'll find is that the --
12 there's a sweet spot that's somewhere between Level 2 and
13 60 kilowatts. At AC propulsion we have chosen 20
14 kilowatts. We have about three times the normal rate as a
15 nice good compromise that allows you to get a full charge
16 for most vehicles in one hour, and get back on the road.
17 To do much higher levels may or may not be cost
18 effective from the infrastructure side or the vehicle
19 side.
20 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much, Alec.
21 Does staff have any more comments?
22 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: No.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I will now close the record
24 on this agenda item. However, the record will be reopened
25 when the 15-day notice of public availability is issued.
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1 Written or oral comments received after this hearing date
2 but before the 15-day notice is issued will not be
3 accepted as part of the official record on this agenda
4 item. When the record is reopened for a 15-day comment
5 period, the public may submit written comments on the
6 proposed changes, which will be considered and responded
7 to in the final statement of reasons for the regulation.
8 Just a reminder to Board members about our policy
9 concerning ex parte communications. While we may
10 communicate off the record with outside persons regarding
11 board rulemaking, we must disclose the names of our
12 contacts and the nature of the contents on the record.
13 This requirement applies specifically to communications
14 which take place after notice of the Board hearing has
15 been published.
16 I will start off with a communication here that I
17 met with Nissan and GM and Toyota on June the 12th in this
18 building. We discussed the effect of changing to
19 conductive charging systems and the advantage of inductive
20 charging systems. I met with Mr. Treebolt, Mr. McKeon and
21 Mr. Cassidy from Nissan, Mr. Nike Sadam and Wolterman from
22 Toyota and Mr. Weverstad, Ouwerkerk and Buttacadoli from
23 General Motors.
24 Any other board members starting from the
25 Supervisor?
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1 BOARD MEMBER DeSAULNIER: Nothing within the
2 timeframe, Mr. Chairman.
3 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Yes. Mr. Chairman, I have
4 met and the conversations would be reflected in the
5 testimony that was presented today and the written
6 comments. I have Mr. Lindstrom Honda, Mr. Foster from
7 AeroVironment, Mr. Franco, Mr. Rogers from EV1, Mr -- I'll
8 just spell the last name, X-u from Ecostar, Mr. Fledgeon
9 from Mazda, Mr. Brooks from AC Propulsion, Mr. Cartwright
10 from Avcon, Mr. Hosner from Litton, and Mr. Riley from BAE
11 Systems.
12 I also met with people from the Board, Mr. Brown,
13 Mr. Bell, Mr. King, Mr. Phan, Toepfer, Arbuckle, Stevens
14 and Richards.
15 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you.
16 Professor Friedman.
17 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: I was also present
18 at the June 12th meeting in these offices with the Toyota
19 and Nissan and GM representatives that you mentioned.
20 I also was present with others at a meeting at
21 the Ford Think facilities in Carlsbad on June 18th for
22 much of the day. Present were from Ford, Kelly Brown, Mr.
23 Bell, Ms. King, Mr. Phan, Mr. Toepfer, Mr. Arbuckle,
24 Stevens and Richards.
25 And also people from EVC3. There were among
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1 others Mr. Lindstrom from Honda, Mr. Foster from
2 AeroVironment Inc, Mr. Franco from EV1 and Mr. Rogers from
3 EV1, Mr. Jim Jude from Ecostar, Mr. Fledgeon from Mazda,
4 Mr. Brooks from AC Propulsion and Mr. Cartwright from
5 Avcon, and Mr. Hosner from Litton and Chris Riley from BAE
6 Systems. The subject was the same, the advantages and
7 disadvantages of the two systems.
8 CHAIRPERSON Lloyd: Thank you.
9 Ms. D'Adamo.
10 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: Mr. Chair, I, too, was
11 present at Carlsbad on June 18th at the meeting and met
12 with all of the individuals that Professor Friedman just
13 listed. In addition, on June 12th in Modesto, I met with
14 representatives -- the following representatives from
15 Nissan, Mr. Cheeba, Mr. McKino Mr. Cassidy. From Toyota,
16 Mr. Naiki, I'll spell it N-a-i-k-i, Mr. Asada, Mr.
17 Wolterman. And from GM Mr. Weverstad, Mr. Ouwerkerk,
18 O-u-w-e-r-k-e-r-k, and Mr. Buttacadoli,
19 B-u-t-t-a-c-a-d-o-l-i.
20 The subjects discussed at both meetings were
21 similar to the testimony presented by these individuals
22 today.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Mr. McKinnon.
24 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: I was at exactly the same
25 meetings as Professor Friedman on June 12th and on June
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1 18th, with exactly the same people present, and all the
2 subjects that were discussed at those two meetings have
3 been thoroughly discussed at this meeting.
4 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much, Mr.
5 McKinnon.
6 What I'd like to do at this stage is have board
7 discussion to consider this in two parts as the staff
8 presentation was. The first part on majority-owned,
9 small/intermediate volume manufacturers. Any comments
10 from the Board on this or deliberations.
11 Supervisor DeSaulnier.
12 BOARD MEMBER DeSAULNIER: Mr. Chairman, going
13 back to our brief discussion hours ago, I would be
14 inclined to think that I'd like to see this rule modified
15 just so that we either do it prospectively or we extend
16 the period out, in order to really ensure that those
17 companies that are making the investment are doing some
18 positive things, don't become disincentivized.
19 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: I would agree with that,
20 Mr. Chairman. I would like to encourage staff to work
21 through this issue and try to be helpful.
22 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Board members, do you have a
23 suggested date here at all if we extend it out?
24 EXECUTIVE OFFICER KENNY: If I might make a
25 suggestion.
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1 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Mr. Kenny.
2 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: Yes. One thing that
3 might be worth considering would be essentially to extend
4 out the date to 2010, but at the same time to also then
5 reflect in the regulation that any future acquisitions
6 that are made by one of the big companies which is subject
7 to the ZEV requirement, it would be subject to a
8 specified -- essentially would be -- any future
9 acquisitions that would be made would essentially be
10 subject to the 50 percent level that we had proposed to
11 you today. And that that would be in place essentially
12 no -- any company that did that would get a set amount of
13 time, except in fact they would have the ability to sort
14 of make plans and to then adjust before they had to
15 actually comply.
16 And since we would be talking about moving this
17 out to 2010 to address the Board issue that has been
18 raised today, we should look at the same level of equity
19 regarding any future acquisitions that might occur with
20 other companies, but then we would try to identify a
21 specified period of time, for example, four years of lead
22 time, but not less than maybe six years in the event that
23 someone didn't today, something like that. We would put
24 that out for a 15-day comment.
25 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: That would be good.
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1 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Yes, I think that sounds
2 very helpful.
3 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Any comments from my
4 colleagues on the right?
5 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: I think that would
6 work.
7 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Mr. McKinnon.
8 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: Sounds like a great
9 solution to me.
10 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I think you heard the
11 sympathy from the Board to this particular case, but we
12 also recognize that it should be looked at as a specific
13 case here.
14 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: All right.
15 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: So when we come to the
16 resolution then we can reflect that. Now, the next part
17 of it in terms of the infrastructure standardization, I'm
18 hoping for suggestions from my colleagues here.
19 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Do you want to --
20 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Don't all speak at once.
21 (Laughter.)
22 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: Well, I have one issue
23 that I think that -- and I may come back to it. I wanted
24 to hear from some of the other board members as well on
25 this and other issues. But on the transition period, I
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1 know Mr. Kenny made some suggestions earlier. I would
2 feel most comfortable if we could include a provision in
3 the resolution that would address the transition area
4 period in terms of public infrastructure and individual
5 owners.
6 I think probably all of us here today have a
7 concern that we don't want to see anyone stuck, in
8 particular with cars that aren't even purchased or leased
9 yet. It would be very harmful to the overall cause, if
10 individuals do feel that we could somehow address this
11 issue and just left them out there on their own.
12 And I would encourage that staff come back with
13 recommendations on the subsidy program. I really would be
14 willing to consider quite a high subsidy in the event that
15 we need to -- we were just talking about relatively few of
16 the individuals, so I think we need more information on
17 that.
18 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: We'd be happy to do
19 all those things. I think the issue with regard to the
20 transition is a very legitimate one. And I do think we
21 want to approach this with the idea of being that we do
22 not strand investments or owners and that we continue to
23 incentivize purchases and not disincentivize anyone.
24 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Yeah. Again, where I'm
25 coming down here, it's a tough item. The issue of
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1 standardization, I think, is very important, because as we
2 heard at both the September and the January hearing,
3 consumer acceptance is going to be very important, and I
4 think we were asked by the auto manufacturers to help
5 actually get vehicles into the marketplace.
6 So I think standardization of the charging system
7 is important. Other choices, you know, what do we do,
8 what do we utilize there? I've gone round and round on
9 this depending on the presentations and whatnot and so it
10 is a tough issue.
11 But today, I think I heard some additional
12 information I haven't heard before, particularly on the
13 Codes and Standards issue of how much has gone on in that
14 arena. I heard some additional work in terms of the pros
15 and the cons. And I think, on balance, I feel that the
16 staff recommendation here is the one to move ahead on,
17 particularly if we look at the flexibility of the program
18 as we look ahead.
19 So that's where I feel that -- I would also agree
20 with Didi, there is a concern about future vehicles --
21 well, current vehicles, what do we do there, so that we
22 don't discourage them. You've heard some of the testimony
23 from the drivers. We heard testimony from the drivers
24 both ways, go with inductive, go with conductive, which
25 means that, again, there's not a real bias there.
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1 I'm pleased to see some of the material
2 improvement in the conductive system as well.
3 Professor Friedman.
4 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: Well, I gather that
5 even before I joined the Board efforts were under way to
6 get the industry to develop, by consensus, a single
7 standard. I'm sure there were efforts in that direction.
8 I know the staff provided great impetus. But unlike --
9 and I also was hoping the market would take care of it and
10 some day it might, although I don't know.
11 But unlike the Beta and the VHS where everybody
12 wanted to get a piece of this equipment, that it was going
13 to be so great in the house and in the den, and that the
14 cost is even then relatively small, and the market did
15 eventually decide that.
16 But here we've been told all along that the big
17 impediment to the EV is market acceptance, public
18 acceptance. And it seems clearly to me that as long as
19 there's a duel standard and people are uncertain as to
20 what's going to shake out and whether they will be
21 stranded, that's an influencing factor, along with the
22 other potential advantages or disadvantages of one method
23 of charging over the other, particularly cost, and I've
24 heard information about that today.
25 So it falls on us, I think, to try and make a
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1 solemn choice. Unfortunately, we can't split a vote,
2 unless we want to leave things as they are.
3 I think that if we do whatever we can
4 legitimately and reasonably to protect those who have
5 already made the investment, who have the vehicles and
6 those who are the big and small manufacturers who have
7 made the investment and are making the inductive system,
8 then we will have done as much as we can do, and I do
9 think that we need to make the choice and we need to do it
10 soon.
11 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: The other part I would add
12 there, I would like staff to try to work with
13 AeroVironment. They've been one of the pioneers,
14 obviously, in the electric vehicle business, and I think
15 that Dr. MacCready has been one of the real pioneers in
16 advancing technologies to see what we can do, how we can
17 work with the system here or how we can look forward and
18 that's an important part in this small business there, how
19 we can move ahead.
20 Small business, of course, maybe they're still
21 partly owned by General Motors, but they're still, I
22 think, the type of company we don't want to penalize for
23 all their efforts here.
24 Any comments?
25 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Mr. Chairman, I certainly
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1 agree with many of the thoughts that have been advanced.
2 We've got to deal with the transition period and I'm very
3 comfortable with the staff recommendations that have been
4 made. We really did want this to be resolved and not
5 necessarily have to come back to this Board, but clearly
6 it wasn't resolved and so we do have to take a step today,
7 which resolves it, and I'm comfortable with the staff
8 recommendation and then the earlier recommendation for how
9 to deal with the acquisitions of some of the larger
10 automobile companies. And I think Mr. Kenny came up with
11 probably a very good compromise, that makes it all work
12 for everybody.
13 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Supervisor DeSaulnier.
14 BOARD MEMBER DeSAULNIER: I'll just add that
15 although I didn't have any ex parte communications to
16 report, I did have discussions outside the timeframe,
17 because the chairman knows that I was in Japan. And I'm
18 not without sympathy because of those discussions of the
19 testimony here, and it's a difficult decision as my
20 colleagues have said, but I think staff has done a good
21 job at presenting a recommendation that ultimately will
22 lead to greater success for the whole program.
23 So I'd be supportive for a motion at the
24 appropriate time to support staff's recommendations with
25 Didi's comments in terms of the transition.
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1 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I think we'd all agree given
2 what we went through in September and January, if in fact
3 the free market had taken it out of our hands, but it
4 doesn't seem to wait. It's moving in that direction.
5 So, again, we're called upon to exercise some
6 judgment here. And I'm also comfortable by the fact that
7 it doesn't apply to 2006, so if anything catastrophic
8 occurs in the next year or so we still have time to change
9 or do whatever.
10 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: I'm sorry. I want
11 to add a couple more comments. I have fought hard and
12 long about the alternative recommendation that we wait a
13 year and/or try and identify some independent experts to
14 whom we could throw this question and ask them to make a
15 recommendation.
16 I don't know. I just can't see that waiting a
17 year is going to do anything other than make it worse, or
18 at least I don't see that it will improve anything other
19 than to find another group of so-called independents to
20 come up and make the hard choice, or at least help us make
21 the hard choice.
22 But on reflection, I think our staff has done an
23 excellent job. As far as I can tell, they've been
24 unbiased. They've been thorough, thoughtful. We've taken
25 all the input. They've had all the hearings and the
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1 workshops. And I think they're as independent as we're
2 likely to get, if we could identify those independents out
3 there.
4 So while I thought long and hard about it, I just
5 don't feel that that is particularly viable.
6 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I concur on that. I think
7 the big problem that I have is how do you get an
8 independent, impartial group and how long will it take to
9 do that? I've been reminded by recent actions by the
10 President asking the National Academy for their views on
11 global climate change. Well, it came back with what
12 everybody was saying.
13 So I think that from the objective perspective we
14 are not sure we can do anything about that with staff.
15 And again, I think we've scoured the world in those areas.
16 Again, I appreciate the sentiments of all the people
17 testifying on the industry side both ways. I think there
18 was genuine concession about the relative merits of each
19 system.
20 Although, I must say on the standard's side, I
21 thought that when we had that testimony about what's
22 happening internationally, that gave me some comfort that
23 maybe things were further along than I thought.
24 Mr. McKinnon.
25 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: I think it's really too
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1 bad that we had to be the ones to make this decision.
2 That's kind of my starting point. Although I've been
3 watching the development of this data for ten years now,
4 and certainly the discussion about standardization has
5 been going at least four years. And I have a recollection
6 of it being brought up even before that. I haven't been
7 on this Board that long, but I've certainly been
8 interested in this issue for a decade.
9 I wish folks had gotten together and figured this
10 out together. And maybe we'll do better at the next
11 pieces of it. I mean, there's communication standards,
12 you know, there's things that are going to happen as third
13 parties begin to develop charging stations at the
14 Starbucks or whatever the infrastructure form takes now.
15 There's going to be conversations about how the
16 communications are done, how you sell back the energy, how
17 it's accounted for, all sorts of things. And hopefully
18 folks will get together and try to figure out how to
19 standardize those things.
20 I think we're not the best to do that, but I
21 think we've been given little choice. I think if we wait
22 around, we force a situation where we delay the ZEV
23 Program, which may be some people's intention in this. I
24 wouldn't put that out of the realm of possibility, maybe
25 delays it, or maybe sets up the situation where we have a
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1 lot more people with cars that lose their value because
2 they don't have a way to charge them.
3 So I don't see that we have a lot of choice. I
4 think we need to make this decision, and I think that what
5 would be best from here on for this kind of thing is for
6 the industry to try to figure out how to move forward
7 without putting us in this spot to make this decision.
8 And I would think that folks ought to be working
9 on the international standards, and, you know, moving
10 forward. And the SAE Committee, you know, reporting that
11 we've been meeting. And it's voluntary and certainly
12 shouldn't wait on us. If the industry can put it
13 together, the industry ought to put it together.
14 Thanks. I'm going to support.
15 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: So do we have a motion?
16 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: I'll move it.
17 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Second.
18 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Okay, so we're including both
19 of those items there as reflected in our discussion up
20 here.
21 All in favor say aye?
22 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Opposed?
23 Thank you. And thank you very much staff and
24 thank you participants.
25 We're going to take a 15 minute break, before we
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1 address the next item, which would be the particulate
2 matter and health effects.
3 Some of the Board members haven't had lunch yet,
4 some of the people haven't had it, and the court reporter
5 really needs a break.
6 So we'll commence at 2:15.
7 (Thereupon a brief recess was taken.)
8 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Where is our legal staff, do
9 we need a court reporter?
10 Or can somebody take it in longhand?
11 We're going to take up the item here on item
12 01-5-6, three research proposals. Thank you staff for not
13 saying anything. We'll move ahead to the Board discussion
14 here, I think.
15 The Board members have had an opportunity to
16 review these proposals?
17 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: Yes.
18 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Are there any additional
19 concerns or comments by the Board?
20 BOARD MEMBER HUGH FRIEDMAN: I move approval of
21 the proposals as presented.
22 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: I will second the motion.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: All in favor say aye?
24 (Ayes.)
25 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Approved unanimously.
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1 Thank you.
2 We've been briefed on these research proposals,
3 so with that we will now take a 15 minute break and then
4 come back, so we can eat. And the court reporter must
5 come back there.
6 So at least this doesn't hold you up, Bart, now
7 for contracts. It would have been a problem, I realize.
8 So next time we'll put the research proposals at
9 the front then.
10 Dan, this isn't the way we typically approve
11 research by the way. This is showing complete faith in
12 Bart here.
13 (Thereupon a lunch recess was taken.)
14 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I'd like to reconvene the
15 Board meeting.
16 The next item on the agenda today is 01-5-2,
17 Public Meeting to Consider an Informational Item on the
18 Health Effects of Particulate Matter and the Status of Air
19 Quality Standards for Particulate Matter.
20 The Children's Environmental Health Protection
21 Act, SB 25 offered by Senator Martha Escutia in 1999,
22 requires the Board in consultation with the Office of
23 Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to reduce
24 California's current ambient air quality standards for the
25 adequacy of health protection, especially for infants and
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1 children.
2 The outcome of that evaluation discussed at the
3 December 7th, 2000 board meeting was that particulate
4 matter was identified as being one of the three standards
5 that may be inadequate to protect public health. The
6 particulate matter standard was assigned the highest
7 priority for review and revision.
8 We also determined that the health effects of
9 particulate matter are significant enough for us to
10 accelerate this review. Today, staff from the Board and
11 the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment will
12 update the Board on issues involved in the standard
13 review.
14 At this point I would like to ask Mr. Kenny to
15 introduce the item and begin the staff presentation.
16 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: Thank you Dr. Lloyd
17 and Members of the Board. As you stated, Dr. Lloyd, the
18 first standard to be reviewed under the Children's Health
19 Protection Act is particulate matter.
20 As a result of our preliminary evaluation of the
21 health based standards under this Act, we will be
22 reviewing a number of standards over the next several
23 years. Since it has been some time since the Board
24 adopted ambient air quality standards, I asked staff to
25 provide you with an overview of the standard-setting
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1 process and the issues involved with the particulate
2 matter standard.
3 A standard is adopted in consideration of the
4 public health, safety and welfare. Thus, the philosophy
5 behind this standard is that it represents the definition
6 of clean air for particular pollutants. The
7 standard-setting process does not address issues beyond
8 health and welfare, such as control measures and the costs
9 and feasibility or their environmental and economic
10 impacts.
11 Currently, we have three standards to protect
12 Californians from the health impacts of exposure to
13 particulate matter. These are a 24-hour standard for PM
14 10 and the annual average PM 10 standard and a sulfate
15 standard measured as total suspended particulates.
16 Dr. Deborah Drechsler from the Health and
17 Exposure Assessment Branch and Dr. Michael Lipsett from
18 the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment will
19 make the staff presentation. Dr. Daniel Greenbaum from
20 the Health Effects Institute will discuss important
21 results from the recent national studies.
22 Dr. Drechsler.
23 (Thereupon an overhead presentation was
24 presented as follows.)
25 DR. DRECHSLER: Thank you, Mr. Kenny. Good
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1 afternoon, Dr. Lloyd and members of the Board.
2 The ARB in consultation with the Office of
3 Environmental Health Hazard Assessment is currently
4 reviewing the California Ambient Air Quality Standards for
5 Particulate Matter and Sulfates.
6 Since many of you have joined the Board since it
7 last considered the ambient air quality standard, our
8 presentation today is designed to inform you of the many
9 complex issues staff will be considering during the
10 review.
11 Although the issues relating to particulate
12 matter exposure and health effects can be fairly complex,
13 let me emphasize that the health effects due to exposure
14 to particulate matter are significant. The body of
15 evidence associating exposure to particulate matter were
16 premature death and cardio-respiratory diseases, including
17 asthma, bronchitis and cardiac problems is substantial.
18 Elevated concentrations of particulate matter also reduce
19 visibility.
20 --o0o--
21 DR. DRECHSLER: Our presentation today will cover
22 the following topics: I will present an overview of the
23 standard setting process and review schedule. I will also
24 discuss the nature of particulate matter exposure and what
25 makes it more complex than all other air pollutants.
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1 Following my presentation today we'll be having
2 Dr. Bart Ostro rather than Dr. Michael Lipsett from the
3 Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment give you
4 an overview of the latest scientific information on the
5 adverse health effects of particulate matter and sulfates.
6 Finally, Daniel Greenbaum, President of the
7 Health Effects Institute, will discuss several Health
8 Effects Institute funded epidemiology studies that are
9 relevant to the particulate matter standards reviewed. We
10 will also discuss emerging research and particulate matter
11 size composition and effects.
12 So what is an ambient air quality standard?
13 --o0o--
14 DR. DRECHSLER: An ambient air quality standard
15 is the legal definition of clean air. Under California
16 law standards are based solely on health and welfare
17 considerations. Costs and feasibility are not factors in
18 setting ambient air quality standards. They play a role
19 only when specific control and implementation measures are
20 proposed for adoption.
21 --o0o--
22 DR. DRECHSLER: The Board's efforts, including
23 particular pollutant monitoring, emissions inventory
24 development, air quality modeling, and control strategies
25 development are directed toward achieving clean air in
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1 California. Ambient air quality standards form the
2 foundation of the ARB's programs to achieve clean air for
3 all Californians.
4 --o0o--
5 DR. DRECHSLER: The Federal Clean Air Act, which
6 authorizes the US EPA to set national ambient air quality
7 standards, also permits states to adopt additional or more
8 protective State standards. California has exercised this
9 right by authorizing the Air Resources Board to set
10 California specific ambient air quality standards for a
11 variety of air pollutants, including particulate matter
12 and sulfates.
13 The Board has been concerned about the health
14 effects of particulate matter for many years. The
15 original particulate matter standard was based on total
16 suspended particulates. In 1982 the Board set current
17 California ambient air quality standards for particulate
18 matter, based on the mass of particulate matter ten
19 microns or less in aerodynamic diameter for PM 10 at a
20 level that is more protective of public health than the
21 national ambient air quality standard for PM 10, which is
22 currently in effect.
23 The US EPA has never set a separate standard for
24 sulfates, although California did so in 1977. The
25 California Health and Safety Code specifies that an
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1 ambient air quality standard has four elements, definition
2 of the pollutant, in this case particulate matter and
3 sulfates. It also includes an averaging time, for
4 example, 24 hours concentration to be achieved and
5 specification for monitoring to determine attainment.
6 --o0o--
7 DR. DRECHSLER: The current California ambient
8 air quality standard for particulate matter, as I
9 mentioned, is based on the mass of ambient particles ten
10 microns or less in aerodynamic diameter for PM 10. The
11 standard was based on PM 10 because particulate matter ten
12 microns or less in diameter is inhalable and can penetrate
13 deep into the lungs.
14 California has two standards for PM 10, an annual
15 average of 30 micrograms per cubic meter, which protects
16 against long-term health effects, and a 24-hour average of
17 50 micrograms per cubic meter, which protects against
18 short-term health effects.
19 The current sulfates standard is a 24-hour
20 average of 25 micrograms per cubic meter. You've probably
21 heard that US EPA is also in the process of reviewing
22 their ambient air quality standards for particulate
23 matter. They expect to promulgate new particulate matter
24 standards in 2003.
25 Next, we will be looking at several questions,
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1 including what particulate matter is, how small it is and
2 where it comes from.
3 --o0o--
4 DR. DRECHSLER: So what is particulate matter?
5 It is a complex mixture composed of small droplets of
6 liquid, dry solid granules and solid cores with liquid
7 coatings. Particles vary widely in size, shape and
8 chemical composition, and arise from many sources. As you
9 can see from the slide, particulate matter is not a single
10 chemical entity like, for example, ozone.
11 It includes many chemical species that arise from
12 a wide variety of sources. A few examples are metals,
13 nitrates, soil and carbon. Also known dead sulfates are a
14 subtraction of particulate matter. PM 10 can also be
15 divided into several size fractions.
16 --o0o--
17 DR. DRECHSLER: The first particles are between
18 2.5 and 10 microns in diameter and arise primarily from
19 natural processes. Particles less than 2.5 microns in
20 diameter arise primarily from combustion processes.
21 Several examples of substances found in each
22 category are shown on the slide. Particles less than 0.1
23 micron in diameter are referred to as ultra fine
24 particles. These are freshly omitted from combustion
25 sources. They have almost no mass, but the absolute
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1 number of particles in this size category is very large.
2 This represents a new and growing area of
3 research. Adverse health effects have been associated
4 with all inhalable particles, PM 10, as well as PM 2.5,
5 and ultrafine subfractions of PM 10.
6 The potential for particulate matter to induce
7 health effects is related to particle size. Particles ten
8 microns or less in aerodynamic diameter can be inhaled
9 deep into the lungs where they can induce tissue damage
10 and various adverse health effects. Particles larger than
11 ten microns in diameter are generally filtered out in the
12 nasal passages and do not enter the lungs to any great
13 extent. To give you a perspective on how small these
14 particles are, the left side of the slide shows an
15 electron micrograph of a human hair.
16 On the right is a representation of the cross
17 section of the hair compared with 2 partials, one a ten
18 micron particle and the other a 2.5 micron particle.
19 As I mentioned earlier, the current California
20 ambient air quality standard for particulate matter is
21 based on measurement of the mass of the particles that are
22 ten microns or less in aerodynamic diameter. So you can
23 see that PM 10 includes the 2.5 micron particle.
24 --o0o--
25 DR. DRECHSLER: We often also hear reference to
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1 PM 2.5. This is particulate matter with an aerodynamic
2 diameter of 2.5 microns or less. If we measure the
3 concentration of PM 2.5 in the air, we measure only the
4 particles that are 2.5 microns or less in diameter and
5 omit all those larger than 2.5 microns in diameter. Thus
6 PM 2.5 is a subset of PM 10.
7 --o0o--
8 DR. DRECHSLER: Particulate matter comes from
9 many sources, some of which are illustrated on this slide.
10 Some particles are directly emitted from sources such as
11 road dust and combustion related processes like motor
12 vehicles or fireplaces.
13 Still other particles, such as nitrates and
14 sulfates form in the atmosphere from chemical reactions
15 resulting in gas to particle conversion.
16 --o0o--
17 DR. DRECHSLER: You may be wondering how much
18 particulate matter we are exposed to in California.
19 Exposure to concentrations of particulate air pollution
20 greater than the State standard is ubiquitous throughout
21 California.
22 This map shows the current area designations with
23 reference to the 24-hour California ambient air quality
24 standard for PM 10. As you can see, with the exception of
25 a few sparsely populated mountain areas that are
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1 unclassified due to inadequate air quality monitoring
2 data, only Lake County is in attainment with the current
3 standard.
4 The frequency of the 24-hour standard exceedances
5 in 1998 range from 0 to 264 days, and in 1999 from 0 to
6 306 days depending on the air basin. This means that most
7 Californian citizens are exposed to PM 10 polluted air on
8 a few to many days per year. On the other hand, the
9 entire state is attainment for the sulfate standard.
10 Ultimately, the particulate matter standards
11 review process necessitates making a number of decisions.
12 ARB and OEHHA staff are studying the scientific literature
13 to determine what particulate matter size, averaging times
14 and concentrations are the most appropriate to ensure
15 protection of the health of all of California's citizens.
16 We are also reviewing and evaluating the
17 scientific literature to determine whether the separate
18 sulfate standard is still needed.
19 The monitoring method is also required with the
20 standard. Currently, particulate matter and sulfates are
21 monitored with 24-hour filter based particle sampling
22 methods that are typically operated every 6th day. These
23 methods are not readily amenable to short-term averaging
24 for example for times less than 24 hours. Also, the
25 one-out-of-six-day monitoring schedule does not adequately
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1 characterize exposure.
2 The monitoring and laboratory division is
3 currently evaluating several new continuous methods to
4 determine what monitoring strategy will be most useful.
5 Use of these new methods will allow multiple averaging
6 times, both long and short term from the output of a
7 single analyzer.
8 --o0o--
9 DR. DRECHSLER: As you have seen, promulgation of
10 an ambient air quality standard involves several steps
11 with contributions from staff, from ARB and OEHHA, the
12 public, the Board and others.
13 The standards promulgation process begins with
14 the draft report prepared by staff from OEHHA and ARB that
15 is released for public review and comment. We are
16 anticipating the release of the first public review draft
17 of the staff report in late September of this year. This
18 will be followed by a public comment period and several
19 public workshops.
20 The report will also undergo peer review by the
21 Air Quality Advisory Committee, which is OEHHA's outside
22 peer review panel, at a public meeting in November.
23 ARB and OEHHA staff will then revise the draft
24 report to incorporate the comments of the public and the
25 Air Quality Advisory Committee and re-release it for
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1 further public comment in early March 2002.
2 We expect to bring you our recommendations for
3 the particulate matter and sulfate standards at the April
4 2002 Board hearing. Our recommendations will include all
5 of the elements of the standards along with the evaluation
6 of the supporting science.
7 The recommendations will be summarized in a
8 document that contains staff's best advice to you. At the
9 hearing, you will consider our recommendations and make a
10 decision on the new particulate matter standards.
11 Thank you.
12 Are there any questions?
13 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Question, what plans are
14 there in the workshops to hold those in some of the
15 economically depressed communities, minority communities.
16 HEALTH AND EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT BRANCH CHIEF BODE:
17 Richard Bode. We haven't actually set up our workshops
18 yet, but we've been speaking with the Ombudsman Office
19 about identifying which communities. Definitely, we're
20 probably looking at those areas that are most impacted
21 right now. Definitely those areas in the south coast
22 where there is some of the highest particulate matter,
23 especially PM 10 concentrations.
24 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I presume in the Senator's
25 district is one of those?
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1 HEALTH AND EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT BRANCH CHIEF BODE:
2 Yes.
3 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much for your
4 presentation.
5 Welcome Dr. Ostro.
6 DR. OSTRO: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and
7 members of the Board. I'm Dr. Bart Ostro from the Office
8 of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. I'm going to
9 briefly summarize some of the health effects of
10 particulate matter.
11 Basically, there are dozens of epidemiologic
12 studies from around the United States and the world that
13 record associations between particulate matter and both
14 mortality and morbidity or illness.
15 In these studies, particles have been measured as
16 PM 10, as PM two and a half or fine particles, as coarse
17 particles, which are the difference between fine and PM
18 10, that is particles between two and half and 10 microns.
19 Also, some studies have found some effects from sulfates,
20 and a few recent studies have found effects from ultrafine
21 particles.
22 These effects have been observed at current
23 ambient concentrations, which includes levels below the
24 current State standard, and also studies that have looked
25 at it have failed to detect a threshold level for some of
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1 these effects that is a level of which no effects would
2 occur.
3 The effects have been related to both short- and
4 long-term exposure. In this case by short-term exposure
5 we mean the 24-hour average, maybe lag by a day or two,
6 and by long-term exposure we mean particle averages over
7 several years.
8 --o0o--
9 DR. OSTRO: So I want to just provide a brief
10 overview as to how we derived these conclusions. So I
11 want to talk a little bit about some of the epidemiologic
12 studies that were used to generate these conclusions,
13 specifically studies that relate acute exposure to
14 mortality, those that relate long-term exposure to
15 mortality, morbidity studies, and then a summary of our
16 findings.
17 --o0o--
18 DR. OSTRO: Basically, there are several types of
19 studies that look at the health effects of air pollution.
20 We have toxicologic studies, which look at animals exposed
21 in a laboratory setting. There's controlled human
22 exposure studies where humans are basically exposed in
23 controlled settings, and epidemiologic studies where
24 health outcomes are observed among the free living
25 population and exposure is based usually on fixed-site
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1 monitors located throughout the community.
2 As Deborah described, particulate matter is a
3 very heterogeneous mix of different chemicals and sizes.
4 Therefore, most of the health effects literature relies on
5 the epidemiologic studies as opposed to the toxicologic or
6 human control studies.
7 So basically, we're looking at data on humans
8 under real world conditions and there have been recent
9 animal studies supporting some of these epidemiologic
10 findings.
11 --o0o--
12 DR. OSTRO: There's several different types of
13 epidemiologic studies and I'm going to just discuss really
14 the first two that are listed there, time-series study and
15 prospective cohort studies.
16 So by Time-series studies, in this case on
17 mortality, although there are some Times-series studies on
18 morbidity and sickness outcomes as well. We look at
19 associations, really statistical association, between
20 daily changes in air pollution and daily counts of
21 mortality in a specified city or region.
22 We also look at cause specific mortality, looking
23 at cardiovascular mortality, and maybe respiratory related
24 mortality. So these studies have to control for other
25 factors that change on a daily basis, such as weather
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1 changes and day of the week.
2 And the factors that we typically are concerned
3 about like smoking or alcohol use or occupational
4 exposure, obesity, are not risk factors in these types of
5 studies, because we're looking at daily changes. And we
6 really don't expect daily exposures for these things to
7 change. And these things are not really related to daily
8 changes in air pollution, so they don't really affect the
9 results of these studies.
10 One limitation of these studies is that they
11 examine relatively short material exposure, so they look
12 only at the effects of say yesterday's air pollution or
13 the air pollution over the last few days, so they're
14 looking only at very acute or short-term exposures.
15 --o0o--
16 DR. OSTRO: Nevertheless, these studies have
17 found consistent associations with daily mortality, and as
18 I mentioned, this is including all-cause mortality, as
19 well as disease specific mortality, like mortality from
20 cardiovascular outcomes, or respiratory outcomes. And in
21 the last couple of years, there's actually been some
22 studies relating changes in particles to infant mortality,
23 as well.
24 The studies have been conducted throughout the
25 United States, in many parts of California and throughout
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1 the world. I think among these studies are the Health
2 Effects Institute's studies that Dan Greenbaum from the
3 Health Effects Institute will be discussing. They're a
4 multi-city study.
5 But it's important to note that besides their
6 study there's probably several dozen studies that have
7 also been conducted on mortality. As I indicated in the
8 introduction, the associations are found even at very low
9 concentrations of particulate matter with no apparent
10 threshold. Some studies have specifically looked at
11 studies with very low air pollution levels or they've
12 statistically tried to model to see if threshold levels
13 exist. And so far a threshold level has been -- they've
14 been unable to detect the threshold level.
15 The sensitive group that appears from these
16 studies are elderly people, those with chronic heart or
17 lung disease, and infants. These groups appear to be most
18 susceptible to these mortality effects.
19 The other type of epidemiologic study that has
20 been used in the literature and has been reported in the
21 literature are so-called prospective cohort studies.
22 These are a very different type of study than the
23 Time-series studies.
24 These studies actually use individual level data.
25 They follow a specific group of people over time, maybe
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1 seven to ten to 20 years, and they examine the impacts of
2 longer-term exposure that is exposures over several years.
3 These studies allow us to actually calculate the
4 number of life years lost in the individuals. And these
5 studies are expensive but tend to be very informative.
6 Now one example of the prospective cohort study is the
7 American Cancer Society Cohort.
8 This was a cohort of around 500,000 people from
9 151 cities in the United States that were followed for
10 about seven years, and actually now they've been followed
11 for a lot more years, but the paper that was published had
12 been followed for seven years. The study controls for
13 other effects on other factors that can affect mortality
14 like age, sex, smoking, socioeconomic status, obesity,
15 occupational exposure, and alcohol use. Those things are
16 all controlled for.
17 And then differences in the air pollution levels
18 in the cities are looked at to see if mortality is
19 associated with those pollution levels. And basically,
20 this study found that both all-caused mortality and
21 cardiopulmonary mortality were associated with fine
22 particles that is PM 2.5 and sulfates.
23 And among the findings were that the exposure to
24 particles over a long period of time, and we're not sure
25 exactly how long the period is needed, but somewhere
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1 between probably a year and several years, these exposures
2 were associated with significant loss in life expectancy.
3 When you compare the most polluted with the least polluted
4 city in the sample, it's roughly a two-year difference in
5 life expectancy in the cities after other factors are
6 controlled for. So it's quite a significant effect.
7 --o0o--
8 DR. OSTRO: And there's also been several other
9 cohort studies that have been published, generally
10 supporting those results. A study out of Harvard looking
11 at six cities, and a Seventh Day Adventist Cohort study
12 centered in Southern California have also found effects
13 related to particulate matter. And, again, the Health
14 Effects Institute has funded an independent reanalysis of
15 these data sets, and I think that will be reported on the
16 following.
17 --o0o--
18 DR. OSTRO: Another example of a prospective
19 cohort study using morbidity is the Children's Health
20 Study which has been funded by the Air Resources Board.
21 Now, besides the mortality effects, there's a
22 whole suite of morbidity outcomes associated with
23 particulate matter. Among the more severe particulate
24 matter has been associated with hospitalization for
25 cardiovascular disease, as well as respiratory disease,
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1 emergency room visits, urgent care visits, doctor visits.
2 Also there's a whole range of cardiovascular outcomes now,
3 that are shown to be related to particulate matter.
4 You probably heard last week there was a study
5 announced relating particles to heart attacks, one of the
6 first studies of its kind. We've also found studies that
7 relate particulate matter to heart rate, to heart rate
8 variability, which is a measure of how well the heart can
9 adapt to stresses, to see reactive protein, which is a
10 measure of inflammation in the blood, which is a predictor
11 of subsequent mortality, and to other blood parameters.
12 Air pollution has also -- particles have also
13 been associated with exacerbation signs of asthma, with
14 acute and chronic bronchitis, with respiratory systems,
15 including cough, shortness of breath and wheeze, with
16 decrements in lung function and with work loss and
17 restricted activity days.
18 Some of these outcomes were included in some
19 recent studies, like the Children's Health Study, which
20 includes 12 cities in southern California. And they're
21 finding that longer term exposure to particles appear to
22 be related to losses in lung function and increased
23 symptoms among asthmatics.
24 --o0o--
25 DR. OSTRO: So to summarize the general findings,
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1 right now, it's that particles are related to mortality
2 and morbidity and the results do not appear likely to be
3 due to confounding or to chance alone. The exposures
4 seems to be associated with significant shortening of
5 life. There's no apparent threshold for these effects,
6 that is no apparent safe level, and the effects have been
7 associated with all the different measures of particles,
8 PM 10, fine and coarse particles, sulfates and as I
9 mentioned even some findings now with ultrafines.
10 So I think I'll stop here.
11 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank very much. Any
12 questions by the Board?
13 I found it most intriguing thinking about what
14 you didn't say and that was a plea for more time. So I
15 was very pleased to hear that.
16 (Laughter.)
17 HEALTH AND EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT BRANCH CHIEF BODE:
18 Any more questions, Dr. Lloyd?
19 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: No, I don't think so.
20 HEALTH AND EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT BRANCH CHIEF BODE:
21 Okay, with that, I'd like to --
22 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: We may have some after we've
23 heard all the presentations.
24 HEALTH AND EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT BRANCH CHIEF BODE:
25 I'd like to introduce our invited speaker, which is Daniel
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1 Greenbaum, who's the President of the Health Effects
2 Institute and he's going to talk about the latest PM
3 research.
4 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: We really appreciate your
5 coming down. I know how busy you are. We appreciate it
6 very much, sorry to keep you waiting as well.
7 (Thereupon an overhead presentation
8 was presented as well.)
9 DR. GREENBAUM: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's
10 our pleasure to be here. Actually, I'm here with Bob
11 O'Keefe who's the vice president of the Health Effects
12 Institute. And for the record, as I was introduced, I'm
13 Dan Greenbaum, the president.
14 I actually felt this morning was hearkening back
15 to my own days running a State regulatory agency for Air
16 Quality, so it was interesting to see how you know how to
17 diet better on this side Of the country.
18 If you can give me the next slide, please.
19 --o0o--
20 DR. GREENBAUM: Just very briefly, I'll tell you
21 a little bit about who the Health Effects Institute is.
22 And you can flip through these. First, that we're an
23 independent research institute that has joined Equal Core
24 Funding from government and the US EPA and the industry,
25 but that we have an independent board and expert science
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1 committees who have no affiliation with either of those
2 sets of sponsors, who oversee and review all of our
3 scientific research.
4 And finally, we've done over 200 studies on the
5 health effects of a range of pollutants, particulate
6 matter being the center of that.
7 --o0o--
8 DR. GREENBAUM: I'm going to briefly review, and
9 not dwell on some, if you flip that, some of the data that
10 we had in 1997, if you could push the next button there,
11 which, as Bart said, these are the Time-series studies
12 which compare day-to-day relationship between air
13 pollution and health. There are some -- in 1997, there
14 were some 40 studies, both in the US and Europe. This
15 actual chart shows studies in Europe in a number of cities
16 with similar results in the United States, showing that
17 there was, to the right side of that line, an increase in
18 risk of about .5 to one percent per ten micrograms of
19 exposure to PM 10, an increase in risk of mortality. And
20 some similar or sometimes even greater increase in risk
21 for hospitalization.
22 Next slide, please.
23 --o0o--
24 DR. GREENBAUM: There also are several studies on
25 long-term epidemiology. Again, I'm not going to go over
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1 the details, as Bart just very nicely summarized. The two
2 most often cited in 1997 were the Harvard Six Cities study
3 and the Hope American Cancer Society study. And those
4 showed a larger effect, somewhat larger effect of four to
5 five percent per ten micrograms.
6 And in the next graphic that's on this page, this
7 represents the Harvard Six Cities and Stubenville, Ohio,
8 the S on the graph had about a 26 percent higher risk as
9 the highest polluted city, compared to Ported, Wisconsin,
10 the P on the graph, which was the least polluted city.
11 Next slide, please.
12 --o0o--
13 DR. GREENBAUM: These studies were the basis of
14 the action by EPA in 1997 to set a PM 2.5 as well as the
15 PM 10 standard, as well as supporting some other types of
16 studies. But there were questions that they and others
17 had at the time about the strength of this epidemiology.
18 There were questions about the importance of different
19 components of the PM mixture, which if you go to the next
20 bullet, please, which this is a very complex mixture, as
21 Deborah Drechsler said. And there are questions about
22 whether all particles are created equally or are some
23 sources more or less toxic?
24 There were also questions about what mechanism,
25 biological mechanisms, next bullet please, effect might be
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1 causing these effects.
2 Next slide.
3 --o0o--
4 DR. GREENBAUM: There's been a lot of work done,
5 and you can go through these, you can keep going on the
6 bullets until you finish the slide, please. A lot of work
7 done under way on research funded by you at the Air
8 Resources Board, by EPA, by us at HEI, by many other
9 groups. There are over 500 projects described on line.
10 At a quick inventory that we at HEI have created, at
11 www.pmra.org and if you'll hit the next button you'll see
12 what the home page looks like when you open it.
13 The next slide, please.
14 --o0o--
15 DR. GREENBAUM: So what could we do to answer
16 some of these questions?
17 Well, one of the first things that HEI did was
18 funded competitively something called the National
19 Morbidity, Mortality and Air Pollution Study or NMMAPS.
20 This was funded by HEI, but by a team led by the Johns
21 Hopkins University, and also including investigators from
22 Harvard University. And rather than going city by city,
23 this study attempted to do a systematic analysis in the 90
24 largest US cities of air pollution, mortality and weather
25 using the same techniques in every city, so that you could
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1 not only know that the results were similar in those
2 different cities, but could combine them.
3 There was a similar, although somewhat more
4 limited, analysis of elderly hospitalization in 14 US
5 cities that took part in this study.
6 Next slide.
7 --o0o--
8 DR. GREENBAUM: And as you can see these cities
9 span the continent. These regions are broken up based on
10 EPA's assessment of different general pollution mixtures.
11 And as you can see, there were a number of the cities,
12 obviously in California included, although given that this
13 map wasn't drawn on this side of the country, California
14 was divided into at least two parts, and maybe a third if
15 you count the small corner over towards the Arizona and
16 Mexico borer.
17 Next slide, please.
18 --o0o--
19 DR. GREENBAUM: I'm sorry I had not expected the
20 bullets to be here, but this study was very systematic.
21 An extensive analysis was done, and it found when you
22 looked at these 90 cities a relatively consistent increase
23 in mortality, about .45 percent per 10 micrograms per
24 cubic meter of PM 10, which was actually about half the
25 magnitude of previous US analyses, but still a consistent
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1 effect.
2 Perhaps, most importantly from this study, there
3 did not appear to be an effect of other pollutants that
4 could make this particle effect go away. And this chart
5 illustrates that the solid line represents the effective
6 particles compared to mortality and PM 10. The other
7 lines represent particles with other pollutants considered
8 at the same time. You see there's some change, but the
9 effect is still there.
10 It also looked at the question of harvesting.
11 These are day-to-day studies. Does that mean this is just
12 extremely ill people who are dying a few days earlier or
13 are there some longer term advancements of death. And
14 they found evidence that there are longer term
15 advancements in death.
16 Next bullet.
17 They looked at whether exposure was measured
18 properly and found that it was not likely to change the
19 results in these kinds of studies.
20 And finally, overall, they found greater
21 confidence in the results of these Time-series studies
22 that we have been using to identify PM as a problematic
23 air pollutant.
24 Next slide.
25 --o0o--
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1 DR. GREENBAUM: They did find when they looked
2 across regions there were some differences in different
3 parts of the country. And in southern California and the
4 northeast, they saw the largest effects, smaller effects
5 in some other regions. They attempted to try and
6 understand why that is and are continuing under our
7 sponsorship to do that, looking at things like whether
8 there may be different pollutant mixtures, other
9 pollutants that may be present in these that other
10 cities -- in these other regions, along with particles
11 either enhance or detract from the effect.
12 There may be other differences in the regions
13 that we're investigating now.
14 Next slide.
15 --o0o--
16 DR. GREENBAUM: We have extracted from that for
17 you the results in California of the 12 cities or at least
18 really the counties in California that they looked at,
19 county level data. And I will start by cautioning you
20 about this slide not to too quickly say oh, we now know
21 that there's no affected particles in Sacramento, but
22 there is an effect in San Diego or Oakland.
23 These studies were designed to say what is the
24 relative risk across all these cities, but knowing that
25 some cities are smaller and larger doing them in a
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1 systematic way so that you can combine them very
2 carefully, because no one city other than perhaps Los
3 Angeles is probably large enough to be assured that you
4 would get a positive effect.
5 Having said that, these are consistently positive
6 with the exception of a few of the smaller locations.
7 Sacramento is not. And clearly the conclusion of both the
8 investigators and our review committee of these studies
9 was that there was evidence of a consistent increase in
10 mortality per 10 micrograms per cubic meter.
11 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: How do you explain Modesto.
12 DR. GREENBAUM: Oh, well --
13 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Didi, should be here I guess.
14 DR. GREENBAUM: Well, that's why I started by
15 cautioning you about jumping to individual cities.
16 Modesto is obviously one of the smaller counties that was
17 included in the study. And we did have some percentage of
18 the cities that showed up as not showing an effect, but
19 they were so small that it was not clear that that would
20 be necessarily the effect if you had more deaths in that
21 city.
22 We are looking at other factors as we go forward
23 to see whether perhaps there was something else going on
24 in those cities, some other pollutants or other things
25 that got in the way of that.
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1 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Dr. Greenbaum, I thought
2 that I heard you say something about counties. And then
3 you backed sort of into cities, is this a county or a
4 city?
5 DR. GREENBAUM: The death rates were based on the
6 counties around which each of these cities were based, so
7 this is county level death rates.
8 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: County level death rates,
9 but you took out the city and compared the City to the
10 County?
11 DR. GREENBAUM: No. What this was is basically
12 comparing the daily air pollution levels in a particular
13 county to the daily mortality levels in that same county
14 to see whether there was a relationship, and also
15 including daily weather patterns to see, because weather
16 itself might be causing it.
17 The only reason we put the city names up here is
18 for some people, particularly non-Californians, Orange
19 County is not as well located as Santa Ana or Anaheim
20 would be for example. So those are there more for
21 identification. These are county level analyses. So it's
22 Los Angeles county for example.
23 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Thank you.
24 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Again, it's surprising that
25 you got all down in LA.
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1 DR. GREENBAUM: Right. And I think it's fair to
2 say that we -- I mean, we are using exactly the same
3 techniques in every city, so there may be some
4 peculiarities of the analysis, but there also may be some
5 differences and we're still continuing to probe that.
6 That may help us understand in the future maybe there's
7 some part of the particle mixture that's higher than in
8 these other places and maybe that's why you're seeing a
9 greater effect as well.
10 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Smoking is taken out of this.
11 DR. GREENBAUM: These are Time-series studies.
12 These are daily studies, so the smoking behavior doesn't
13 change much from day-to-day, so that one assumes that
14 that's not here.
15 Next slide, please.
16 --o0o--
17 DR. GREENBAUM: Now, the other thing that I'll
18 say here is that these investigators did try to test
19 whether as pollution went up, you saw an increase in
20 effect. That's an important question relating to the
21 causality of pollution causing these effects. And also as
22 you went down to the lowest levels of pollution, did you
23 still see an effect?
24 Overall for total mortality, they did see
25 generally a linear response, but when you broke that down
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1 what you saw is that for the bottom part of this slide,
2 cardiovascular deaths and respiratory deaths, there was a
3 quite straightforward linear relationship with no matter
4 how low you went with pollution you still have some
5 effects, this is for PM 10.
6 On the other hand, other types of deaths other
7 types of cancer, for example, did seem to show some
8 indication that effects didn't really start up until you
9 got out to about 55 or 60 particles per -- PM 10 per cubic
10 meter.
11 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: What was the averaging time
12 on these?
13 DR. GREENBAUM: These are daily.
14 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Twenty-four hour average.
15 DR. GREENBAUM: Twenty-four hour average.
16 Next slide.
17 --o0o--
18 DR. GREENBAUM: I'm going to ask you to cut me
19 off if I'm going too long. I obviously want to answer
20 your questions along the way and we can --
21 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: We didn't invite you all this
22 way --
23 DR. GREENBAUM: I'm sorry what?
24 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: We can't invite you all this
25 way and cut you off, and it's interesting stuff too, very
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1 very relevant.
2 DR. GREENBAUM: The second set of studies that
3 Bart described were the so-called long-term studies,
4 studies that looked at populations of people over a period
5 of time in their cities, knowing much more about the
6 individuals, how much they smoked, how much did they
7 drink, what was their weight which is a big indicator of
8 health.
9 And at the time in 1997, pretty much the Harvard
10 Six Cities Study and the American Cancer Society Study
11 were the two premier examples of this. There were some
12 others of this sort in existence, but these were the
13 largest at the time.
14 These studies have been the ones upon which
15 people have usually estimated the numbers of possible
16 deaths resulting from particulate matter exposure. And as
17 you can see, there's been a range of estimates made. This
18 is two examples of US EPA in 1997, then a more recent
19 estimate by the World Health Organization.
20 We were asked in 1997 to conduct an in-depth
21 reanalysis of these studies. And we had an expert panel
22 pick a team from the University of Ottawa, who had had
23 nothing to do with the original studies, to conduct that.
24 Next slide.
25 --o0o--
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1 DR. GREENBAUM: And if you could go through the
2 bullets here. This was a very extensive study. It was a
3 study which looked at -- our reanalysis looked at auditing
4 the original data. It looked at different analytic
5 approaches. It looked at different variables that were in
6 the database about the individuals, how much pack years of
7 smoking, which wasn't used in the original study.
8 It also looked at could there be -- these are
9 studies -- remember the Steubenville, Ohio had a higher
10 death rate than Wisconsin. Well, could there be some
11 other difference between those two cities other than air
12 pollution that might explain the difference in death. And
13 we needed to look at a number of things that the original
14 investigators didn't look at.
15 Next slide.
16 --o0o--
17 DR. GREENBAUM: Having done that, I think it's
18 fair to say that overall the reanalysis assured the
19 quality of the data, it replicated the original results,
20 and it was able to test those results against a wide
21 variety of alternative models and analytic approaches
22 without changing the results very substantially.
23 And let me, in this slide just briefly point out
24 that this again is a study. This was PM 2.5 and sulfates.
25 This is the American Cancer Society. And they found in
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1 the original analysis a 17 percent -- 1.17 increase in
2 risk between the most and the least polluted cities.
3 When our analysts went in, they've got every
4 other piece of individual data we put out of there that
5 might explain away those deaths. You see the results
6 under the full and the extended model and they, in fact,
7 if anything, the effects of PM 2.5 went up slightly.
8 So our conclusion was that, in general, these
9 results were very durable and didn't go way. Even though
10 we only had two of these studies at the time, they seem to
11 be very well done.
12 Next slide, please.
13 --o0o--
14 DR. GREENBAUM: There were some very interesting
15 results. One of those had to do with the risks relating
16 to education. When we broke up these populations into
17 people without a high school education, people with a high
18 school education and people with greater than a high
19 school education, we saw a marked difference in effect,
20 with the highest estimated effect on mortality being in
21 those without a high school education.
22 We do know education is a reasonably good
23 surrogate for social class for socioeconomic status. And
24 we don't know exactly what might be causing this or
25 explaining this, but some of the things that have been
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1 explored were, first of all, it may be that people who are
2 lower socioeconomic status, in general, have a difference
3 in their exposure. And we have seen some data that
4 suggests that given occupational differences, given less
5 access to air-conditioning and other things, that actual
6 exposure may be higher.
7 There also maybe a -- we know that socioeconomic
8 status results in generally -- well, worse health status
9 for a variety of reasons. And it may be that therefore
10 those people are more frail and more sensitive to the
11 effects of air pollution. So these are some of the
12 possibilities that are being explored as a result of the
13 study.
14 But it is needless to say an important finding
15 that needs to be looked at more closely, particularly for
16 some of the least protected members of our population.
17 Next slide.
18 --o0o--
19 DR. GREENBAUM: Actually, why don't you just skip
20 by this. I'm just going to say we also did some
21 additional analyses. And one of the most interesting
22 things about that was we did find some relationship
23 between sulfur dioxide and mortality as well as particles.
24 And it's interesting that that would be the case.
25 Most of the toxicology data does not suggest that
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1 sulfur dioxide would cause mortality, and so there may be
2 other examples of why that may be -- other pollutants that
3 follow along with sulfur dioxide that could be a cause.
4 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I notice you also mentioned
5 sulfate as well. So any efforts to remove sulfur from
6 fuels is going really in the right direction.
7 DR. GREENBAUM: That's correct. Well, of course,
8 sulfur dioxide when it comes out it is transformed into
9 sulfate particles. And although fuel sulfur is not the
10 largest source in most cases -- actually in California, it
11 probably is a larger source, but in other parts of the
12 country it's not the largest, but it is able to be a
13 noticeable reduction.
14 --o0o--
15 DR. GREENBAUM: So to conclude first of all, the
16 reanalysis was able to identify relatively robust
17 associations with fine particle sulfate and sulfur
18 dioxide.
19 We tested those associations in nearly every
20 possible manner within the limitations of the data set,
21 and found that mortality was associated with the
22 particles, but also maybe attributable to more than one
23 component. Some of these gas pollutants we shouldn't lose
24 site of those. And I know you haven't lined up to look at
25 those as well in future reviews.
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1 Next slide.
2 --o0o--
3 DR. GREENBAUM: I'm just going to just very
4 briefly just say that the other element here is that as we
5 go down the path of trying to control any kind of
6 effectiveness, we are going to be faced with the issue
7 that PM is a mixture. And we do not know whether all
8 particles are created equal in the sense of toxicity.
9 Are some types of particles, are some sizes of
10 particles, are some sources of particles of more concern
11 and what will be the best method for regulation. This is
12 the discussion that led EPA to move towards a 2.5
13 standards as well as a PM 10 standard. There are many
14 studies underway that test different components and
15 different characteristics. And the initial results are
16 beginning to come in.
17 Next slide.
18 --o0o--
19 DR. GREENBAUM: There are many possible culprits,
20 and I doubt we'll ever say that anyone of these is the
21 serious problem. Many of them have been associated with
22 effects not in and of themselves, though, we may be
23 looking at certain metals on particles that have more
24 effects than others. There may be certain organic
25 compounds, for example, the kinds of things that we found
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1 on diesel particles that may have that effect.
2 Next slide, please.
3 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: How do you define biogenic
4 particles?
5 DR. GREENBAUM: We have actually not done -- I
6 mean biogenic particles obviously could have health
7 effects and do have health effects. Some of them have
8 health effects in asthma exacerbation we know on a very
9 regular basis, although those tend to be larger biogenic
10 particles.
11 We have not done studies along the biogenics. We
12 have those underway currently, so we don't have results on
13 that.
14 Could you keep going with the --
15 --o0o--
16 DR. GREENBAUM: We have done a series of studies
17 trying to tease out this question of PM 10 versus PM 2.5
18 versus ultrafine versus PM 10 minus 2.5 of a particle.
19 And I think interestingly we have seen the effects
20 associated with each of those size cuts, with ultrafine in
21 PM 2.5 and the coarse fraction.
22 As this slide from the recent criteria document
23 shows, it's not clear that one of those size cuts is
24 jumping out ahead of the other one as the most
25 consistently problematic. That doesn't mean that there
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1 isn't an effect associated with one or another of those
2 size effects the PM 10 or the PM 2.5. But it's not clear
3 that we're seeing a similar kind of levels of effect for
4 all of these size cuts. I think one of the considerations
5 and certainly it was one of the EPA decisions to go to PM
6 2.5 has to do as much with if you know you need to control
7 both the coarse fraction and the fine fraction, what's the
8 best set of standards to ensure that you get at that, and
9 is the standard only for PM 10 going to be adequate to do
10 that? I think that has been part of the consideration.
11 There are also a number of studies -- we have
12 studies underway, for example, some just down the road in
13 Davis, at UC Davis and others, looking at the effects of
14 metals, of PAH's, which come on diesel and many other
15 particles and of other components.
16 --o0o--
17 DR. GREENBAUM: I'm going to actually stop there.
18 I've been going on for some period of time but just to say
19 that we do have -- in my package there is some discussion
20 about the question about mechanism, about what we're
21 beginning to learn about that, and just to say -- and also
22 the say that we have had a sizable increase in our
23 knowledge since 1997.
24 In general, it has tended to say that the
25 epidemiology studies we had then have held up under quite
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1 a bit of examination. There continue to be some questions
2 we're trying to address, particularly in two areas. One
3 is this question of portions of the particle making sure
4 of what their relative effects might be.
5 And the second is in the area of better
6 understanding the biological mechanism underlying these
7 effects, although we have started to see some of those.
8 I'll stop there.
9 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much.
10 Any questions from the Board?
11 Mr. McKinnon.
12 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: We had a workshop awhile
13 back, and a very interesting discussion around
14 environmental justice. And I was looking at kind of your
15 using education for socioeconomic, which I'm real
16 interested in not only looking at environmental justice in
17 terms of kind of an ethnic national origin questions, but
18 to some extent socioeconomic and class questions.
19 In other words, there are some neighborhoods that
20 are the hardest impacted and how do you get to evaluating
21 that. And I'm kind of interested in whether or not you've
22 done any work with kind of that combination of thinking
23 about that.
24 DR. GREENBAUM: Well, I know the issues well. I
25 actually sit on the Air and Water Subcommittee of the
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1 National Environmental Justice Advisory Committee. I
2 think you're right to focus this issue beyond just any one
3 ethnic group or racial group, because I think it is a
4 broader questions, which these data raise about
5 socioeconomic status.
6 Certain groups are obviously going to be more
7 affected, if you look at the socioeconomic status and we
8 have to look at that.
9 We actually have just started down the path of
10 some very specific studies, for example, looking at the
11 question of diesel exhaust and other particles and their
12 ability to exacerbate asthma. We do know actually we've
13 had an increase in asthma in the country. That increase
14 has been disproportionate in certain ethnic groups in
15 certain socioeconomic groups. It's been higher than in
16 others.
17 And we actually are looking at possible studies
18 where we might look at those effects specifically in some
19 of the lower socioeconomic status populations to see
20 whether the effects were high in those settings that they
21 would be in others. We're trying to get at that question.
22 This finding just pushes this even more in that direction.
23 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: Just a follow-up. Part
24 of the reason I'm real interested in that is that I think
25 we may get confronted with fairly complex sets of facts,
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1 such as neighborhoods where, in fact, there are
2 neighborhoods in Los Angeles that are largely African
3 American, where the folks in that neighborhood went to
4 work in aerospace plants and ended up with fairly high
5 levels of health care.
6 And my guess is that in studying those
7 neighborhoods we may not -- what we may see is better
8 health, but the better health is because of better health
9 care rather than the toxic exposures in that neighborhood.
10 So I think there's some variables that we're
11 going to have to really think through as we begin to look
12 at the economic justice.
13 DR. GREENBAUM: Right. And this is the kind of
14 area where you have to look at the different type of set
15 of studies. These panel studies that Dr. Ostro referred
16 to where you actually go out and you find panels of people
17 and you find out things about them, you get them to agree
18 to participate and you actually get different populations
19 and different settings of exposure and so you can actually
20 see whether or not they have better health care and
21 various other things, where they're employed.
22 The other issue you run into is occupational
23 exposure sometimes and you have to control for those as
24 well.
25 But those sorts of studies may tell us better,
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1 you know, is this a function of socioeconomic status, is
2 it a function of ethnicity, is it a function of -- or are
3 we all subject to similar risks from this exposure?
4 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Well, also your point there
5 tying what you're saying in terms of health effects and
6 education, I think you take into account the USC study,
7 which is showing that pollution affects the education and
8 the school absenteeism. And it's a little bit of a Catch
9 22 situation.
10 Are you looking at anything directly on
11 children's health work? I realize that you did an
12 extensive study. Is there anything that you could shed
13 some light to help us in what we're trying to do here?
14 DR. GREENBAUM: I don't know that I could sort of
15 quickly give you specific results today. We do have
16 underway several very key studies actually in this arena.
17 One of them is probably the most interesting. It's
18 looking at a birth cohort a population that actually
19 happens to be in Europe, but is exposed to levels of
20 particles not dissimilar to what we see in this country.
21 And they have been followed first to see whether
22 there were effects in pregnancy of the mothers or in the
23 children. Now, we'll be following them to see whether
24 there are effects in their development based on more or
25 less exposure. And that will be very important to try and
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1 flesh out more on this very effort.
2 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Last question, you know, when
3 I was over in Europe you're subject to the same thing.
4 They're putting increasing emphasis on noise pollution to
5 the impact of deaths. What do you make of that? Should
6 we be putting more emphasis on noise?
7 DR. GREENBAUM: Well, I was interested
8 recently --
9 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: In reducing noise I mean.
10 DR. GREENBAUM: Well, there actually -- you know,
11 in this country under federal law we see things as HAPS,
12 Hazardous Air Pollutants. But in the noise analyses in
13 Europe, a HAP is a Heavily Annoyed Person and literally
14 that is the kind of jargon that's there.
15 And noise has taken on a health dimension in
16 Europe that it hasn't come close to in this country. It's
17 been interesting to see that. We've been looking because
18 we do find research in Europe if that's where the
19 researchers come from, and there's a good opportunity to
20 learn something.
21 And we've been looking for whether there are ways
22 that we could bring that into this discussion because
23 there are certainly certain conditions that one would
24 expect that noise could be a contributor to and some of
25 the very same things that we look for, for instance air
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1 pollution.
2 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Have you looked at any of the
3 data over there, where they basically say, you know, noise
4 builds more in some cases than traffic accidents. It
5 seems difficult to believe, but these are credible people
6 making that point.
7 DR. GREENBAUM: Well, I think they are well done
8 studies and I think they've gotten a start. I don't think
9 that they have the numbers of studies and the numbers of
10 approaches to it than we have, for example on particulate
11 matter and mortality, so that you want to see that built
12 up some before you leap to sort of the numbers, the
13 numbers debate. But I think you can't dismiss it, and I
14 think it is a real issue.
15 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: As an ex regulator, what
16 would be your advice to us, should we, in fact, as we look
17 at some of our regulations, just address the noise issue
18 not do anything about it, but just --
19 DR. GREENBAUM: Well, certainly noise is
20 something -- I mean, it's certainly something that people
21 have dealt with probably most in this country around very
22 high noise levels, for example, airport noise has been an
23 ongoing concern.
24 But I think we will see increasing attention here
25 and something that we need to look at in certain settings.
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1 If we think -- your comment a minute go about the
2 children's health study, the children not being able to go
3 to school, certainly an effect on a child's ability to
4 hear as a result of noise exposure is at least as
5 damaging, if not more damaging, than potential future
6 growth and development.
7 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Some of that may be
8 self-inflicted with music type.
9 (Laughter.)
10 DR. GREENBAUM: I'm talking about very young
11 children.
12 (Laughter.)
13 MR. GREENBAUM: You're really not going to
14 control the music choices of teenagers anymore than I
15 would for my daughter, so that's right.
16 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much for
17 coming down. We appreciate that. And I know that you're
18 in close contact with our research staff and we appreciate
19 working with you.
20 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: And we look forward to
21 continuing to work with the whole staff.
22 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: And Dr. Prasad back there as
23 well.
24 Thank you.
25 Is this the end of the presentation?
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1 HEALTH AND EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT BRANCH CHIEF BODE:
2 It's the end of our presentation.
3 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Any other questions from the
4 Board?
5 Thank you very much. I guess there's no action
6 required on this particular item.
7 HEALTH AND EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT BRANCH CHIEF BODE:
8 I think we have one person signed up?
9 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Oh, we do. Thank you very
10 much. Thank you. We do have one person, thank you very
11 much. Brian, I saw you back there earlier and I forgot,
12 but I'm sure you would have reminded me.
13 Brian Lamb from the Great Basin Unified APCD. I
14 know they're greatly concerned about a particular town in
15 that area. And you've made great progress I understand.
16 MR. LAMB: Thank you, Chairman Lloyd. You know
17 if you've got particulate matter on the agenda, then I
18 will bundle into my car at 4:00 in the morning and get
19 down here, and say a few words. Next time just put
20 unspecified pollutant and I'll stay home.
21 Chair and Members of the Board, I am the District
22 Counsel for Great Basin Air Pollution Control District.
23 Many you know Dr. Ellen Hartebick our PPCO. She sends
24 here regards. We are the home venue, Southern Inyo County
25 in the home venue for Owens Dry Lake, which is the largest
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1 single source of particulate matter air pollution in the
2 country. We have an inventory of about 100,000 to 300,000
3 tons of particulate matter emitted directly every year.
4 We have several 24-hour average concentrations in
5 excess of 10,000 micrograms per cubic liter, measured at
6 the ambient air. In fact, just this year EPA had to add
7 another digit to its data field in the Ayers Database to
8 put our figures in there, because it wasn't big enough.
9 We have a serious air pollution problem. It
10 affects the surrounding communities in that area. It
11 affects indian reservations. It affects military
12 installations, so I'm here to support and encourage your
13 review of the particulate matter standard.
14 We think this is an important pollutant. We
15 don't have epidemiology -- Owens Valley we don't have the
16 numbers to do that, but we have very persuasive anecdotal
17 evidence that concentrations of particulate matter at
18 chronic health effects that are very deleterious.
19 We want to encourage your staff to be looking at
20 the setting standard, look at the monitoring methods, and
21 try to work with EPA in having methods for monitoring that
22 are consistent. I've raised with your board before that
23 the current State standards specified a certain method of
24 monitoring. And in our case, it requires us to have
25 separate really obsolete monitors that are maintained just
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1 to measure pollutant for the State standard.
2 We'd really like to see the monitoring methods
3 coordinated with EPA, so that we can use the same monitors
4 for both the State and federal standards.
5 We do support continuous methods of air pollution
6 monitoring. We use the Continuous T.O. method at Owens
7 Lake. And we do sea concentrations on our high days as
8 high as 20,000 micrograms per cubic liter over an hour
9 averaging period. So it really does give you a picture of
10 the space. And since a lot of the evidence on PM 10 is
11 that the effects are chronic related to peaks and exposure
12 that kind of information could be very useful both from
13 the standard and for health effects advice.
14 So I encourage you -- we intended the district to
15 participate in this process. If you're looking for a
16 community that's interested, I might recommend a workshop
17 at Ridgecrest, which is downwind of Owens Lake. And all
18 of our workshops in Ridgecrest are standing room. It's a
19 community that feels the effect of particulate matter
20 pollution very dramatically.
21 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Does anybody look to the day
22 to day hospital admissions on these high particulate days?
23 MR. LAMB: I don't know that they have. When
24 this issue has come up before -- our population in Inyo
25 County is so sparse especially the southern Inyo County,
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1 the population of all of southern Inyo County is probably
2 less than 10,000 people. You have a self selected
3 population to a certain extent of the people that live in
4 the area of Owens Lake with the notable exceptions of the
5 indian reservations that are near and also the military
6 installations that are near are not self-selected.
7 When we visited this issue last time, there was a
8 tremendous amount of anecdotal evidence from the Navy Base
9 in Ridgecrest that storm events were connected with like
10 where you go to the bas hospital, sick days.
11 We had in our administrative record a commanding
12 officer of the Navy base asked people to send in E-mails
13 about sick days or family health incidents connected with
14 storm events. He got like hundreds of E-mails of people
15 anecdotally seen in direct connection between the storm
16 events on Owens Lake and hospital emissions or sick
17 children who are not being able to work.
18 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: So you came up with that.
19 I'm glad you've looked at some of the data down in the
20 Coachilla Valley.
21 DR. OSTRO: No, the only thing -- I mean, there's
22 been a couple of studies on wind blown dust in the Utah
23 Valley and in Spokane and mortality, and they have not
24 found associations between the really high windy days and
25 excess mortality. And that could be either because
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1 particles are so big that they don't get inhaled or it
2 could be that just people are averting on those days and
3 not spending that time outside, but that's the only
4 evidence that's there.
5 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Brian, just a quick
6 question, where would people go, other than military,
7 where would the people go at Ridgecrest for hospital care?
8 MR. LAMB: In Ridgecrest, there is a hospital.
9 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Is there a hospital there?
10 MR. LAMB: Yes. Ridgecrest is pretty well
11 provided for medically. They have hospitals and medical
12 staff there. And, of course, the military at the base
13 hospital.
14 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: It would be good to get
15 some data from that.
16 MR. LAMB: Like I said, it's in anecdotal, but
17 we've been told before is we don't have the numbers for an
18 appropriate study that would come up with significant
19 findings, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that we
20 find persuasive.
21 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: On this measurement issue, I
22 know we talked to you about that when I was down there a
23 year ago, and I guess I'm still a little bit confused on
24 the issue why we have not had any resolution on that.
25 MR. LAMB: Well, the current standard, just to
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1 recap, the current standard says a standard is 50
2 micrograms per cubic liter as measured using a high volume
3 size selective inlet monitor according to method B, which
4 is a secret method, but it's basically hard to get
5 somebody to provide with method B, but it's basically a
6 description of the Anderson Monitor that was in effect in
7 1982. So the standard adopted a monitor to go with it
8 monitoring technology in advance and --
9 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: So we have an opportunity to
10 change the measurement method? Do we intend to do that?
11 HEALTH AND EXPOSURE ASSESSMENT BRANCH CHIEF BODE:
12 That's actually definitely one of the things we're looking
13 at. And we've been talking with the Monitoring Laboratory
14 Division, and they're very interested as well. And I
15 think right now they're actually conducting a study
16 looking at continuous monitoring methods versus some of
17 the other ones.
18 MR. LAMB: One of the research proposals that you
19 adopted today was putting those low-temperature methods in
20 Los Angeles to use those for continuing monitoring. We
21 use the standard ones at Owens Like because the
22 temperature issue is not -- we don't have volatile
23 particulate matter, it doesn't matter for us, but we found
24 those to be very useful and accurate.
25 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: Mr. Chairman.
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1 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Yes.
2 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: Yeah, I think we talked
3 about this subject about a year or so ago. And why don't
4 we set a time today for hearing back on it.
5 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Maybe a visit from the
6 Executive Officer.
7 EXECUTIVE OFFICER KENNY: We'll be happy to
8 follow up on this and basically put something together so
9 the Board actually gets a report on what is happening with
10 regard to monitoring.
11 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you.
12 MR. LAMB: My final comments.
13 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I think, you know, again I
14 think the work you talk about with the monitoring
15 division, I'd like to understand, because when I was down
16 there, I know obviously we worked with one of your
17 technicians there. It seems to be pretty compelling to do
18 that, but on the other hand there's clearly some issues
19 with respect to the standard of what's required, et
20 cetera.
21 So what was the last issue?
22 MR. LAMB: I just wanted to mention as an
23 information point that we are making progress on the work
24 at Owens Lake. We're expecting by the end of this
25 calendar year to have at least ten square miles of the
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1 Owens Lake flood, which is about roughly a third of what
2 we originally identified as needed to control will be
3 controlled by the end of this year with shallow flooding.
4 It will be a significant historic and technical and
5 emotional event to see water from the Los Angeles aqueduct
6 released back on Owens Lake.
7 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Can you let us know when that
8 happens?
9 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Are you going to invite us
10 to serve?
11 MR. LAMB: We'll invite you all.
12 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: And I presume you're
13 agreement was with LADWP and not Mr. Freeman?
14 MR. LAMB: It was with LADWP, yes and it's
15 completely legal and binding. That's my opinion.
16 (Laughter.)
17 MR. LAMB: So I really thank you, Dr. Lloyd and
18 your staff and the entire Board for helping us make the
19 progress that we have. It's only because we are making
20 timely progress against the federal standard that we are
21 really engaged at looking at what the State standard is.
22 This wouldn't be an issue with us if we didn't think we
23 would get past the federal standard in the foreseeable
24 future.
25 So thank you.
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1 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much.
2 So with that, anymore comments?
3 And with that, I would like to close this item
4 and thank the staff very much and thank Bart and Dan and
5 Bob very much.
6 Okay. So we're going to move to the next item,
7 which is 01-5-3, public meeting to consider the net
8 effects of education on air quality. The presentation is
9 in response to questions raised by the public on the
10 effects of tree planting and vegetation on air quality.
11 Many of us are familiar that the Air Resources Board past
12 research and the effects of air pollution on plant health
13 in crop years.
14 However, we have heard less about the opposite
15 consideration, the effect of trees and other plants have
16 on the quality of the air we breathe. So I look forward
17 to hearing about how plants influence air quality and any
18 practical applications that might help us achieve cleaner
19 air.
20 Again, I'd like, at this point, to reintroduce
21 Mr. Kenny and begin staff presentation.
22 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR KENNY: Thank you, Mr.
23 Chairman and Members of the Board. Over the years, the
24 staff has put considerable effort in the hydrocarbons that
25 come from plants. These emissions and other processes
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1 that we will hear about in the presentation related to air
2 quality, and thus they can influence the overall
3 effectiveness of our clean air strategies.
4 With that, I'd like to turn the presentation over
5 to Jim Pederson who will make the presentation.
6 MR. PEDERSON: Thank you, Mr. Kenny. Good
7 afternoon, Dr. Lloyd --
8 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: You've got to chew on it
9 otherwise it doesn't get you.
10 That's better.
11 (Thereupon an overhead presentation
12 was presented as follows.)
13 MR. PEDERSON: Thank you Mr. Kenny. Good
14 afternoon Dr. Lloyd and members of the Board. This
15 presentation is in response to interests shown by members
16 of the Board and the effects of plants on air quality.
17 We know that there are important anthropogenic
18 emissions related to plants for example, from agricultural
19 activities or tree maintenance. But today,we will focus
20 on the ways that the plants themselves affect air quality,
21 and the affects of plants have an impact on ARB's efforts
22 to achieve clean air for all Californians.
23 Understanding these effects has been and
24 continues to be a long-term effort. It is fundamental to
25 the emissions inventory used in our air quality modeling.
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1 Thus understanding the effects of plants is part of
2 predicting how hair quality will change as a mandate
3 emissions change.
4 And surprisingly we can have a positive influence
5 on air quality by the use of plants.
6 --o0o--
7 MR. PEDERSON: I will briefly cover four broad
8 topics, how vegetation affects air quality, what ARB is
9 doing in this area, the information gaps that remain, and
10 what each of us can do to help improve air quality by
11 using plants.
12 --o0o--
13 MR. PEDERSON: First, let's look at the way
14 plants influence air quality. I will cover four main
15 effects. The first two are positive, the effects of
16 cooling and pollutant removal. And two are negative, the
17 emission of pollutants and release of allergens.
18 The shaded evaporative cooling provided by trees
19 can improve air quality in two ways, cooling reduces the
20 pollutant emissions from many sources, and slows chemical
21 reactions in the air. A different type of benefit is that
22 that plants speed up removal of some air pollutants.
23 Removal of pollutants by surfaces is called deposition.
24 But trees and other vegetation also emit
25 pollutants biogenic volatile organic compounds. The
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1 biogenic gases studied to date are highly reactive,
2 meaning they are especially efficient in reacting to form
3 ozone and PM 2.5.
4 Another negative effect is that many plants
5 release allergens that can initiate asthmatic responses in
6 sensitive individuals. Over 2 million Californians suffer
7 from asthma. For many of those individuals, the effects
8 of allergens is a major health concern. In the next
9 several slides, I will cover each of this in more detail,
10 beginning with the air quality effects from cooling.
11 --o0o--
12 MR. PEDERSON: This slide shows the cooling
13 provided by Sacramento's urban forest. The colors
14 represent surface temperature in late June at 1:00 p.m.
15 The coolest surfaces are blue. The Sacramento River flows
16 from north to south, and the American can be seen in the
17 top right corner. The areas of green are the urban
18 forest. These areas are about 50 degrees cooler than the
19 rooftops shown in white which are about 140 degrees
20 Fahrenheit.
21 So how does temperature affect emissions?
22 --o0o--
23 MR. PEDERSON: Lower air temperature reduces
24 emissions from many different sources. Cooling reduces
25 evaporative emissions of volatile organic compounds, for
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1 example, shaded parking lots can reduce evaporation of
2 gasoline from vehicle fuel tanks.
3 In addition potential emission reductions are
4 available from lowered electrical power demand. Over the
5 last decade, the Sacramento Utility District has invested
6 over $20 million dollars to supply free shade trees and
7 educate their customers regarding how to place trees from
8 maximum cooling.
9 This investment has been formally evaluated and
10 determined to be fiscally sound. The conclusion is that
11 well sited shade trees can provide a substantial energy
12 savings for individual customers and collectively reduce
13 power demand. In the extreme, properly placed shade trees
14 can lower individual residential air-conditioning bills by
15 more than 40 percent. But the average savings are also
16 substantial.
17 The average mature tree in this program cuts the
18 cooling air energy load by 153 kilowatt hours per year.
19 Thus ten mature trees safe the energy needed to power one
20 air-conditioner.
21 When mature, the 300,000 trees planted by SMUD
22 customers will provide energy savings equivalent to 16
23 megawatts of new power generation. In addition to
24 reducing emissions, lower air temperatures slow chemical
25 reactions, so that even less ozone is formed from those
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1 reduced precursor emissions.
2 --o0o--
3 MR. PEDERSON: In addition, to reducing emissions
4 and slowing reactions, we also know that under some
5 conditions, plants help clean the air and in some cases we
6 can predict how the rate of pollutant removal will be
7 influenced by new plants that are present.
8 Removal pathways depend on the specific pollutant
9 and the environmental conditions. For example, how they
10 react to the pollutants, such as nitric acid, are quickly
11 removed by any surface. So the limited factor is usually
12 the amount of atmospheric mixing. In other words, as the
13 pollutant concentration close to the surface is quickly
14 depleted, the bottle neck for removal will come from any
15 limitation in small turbulent motions needed to transport
16 air with high pollutant concentrations into contact with
17 the surface.
18 Thus, for those pollutants, the presence or
19 absence of plants will have relatively little effect on
20 removal rates. For PM 10, deposition rates depend on
21 complicated relationships between particle size,
22 meteorological variables and surface shapes. Plants may
23 increase the deposition of some sizes of particles, but
24 this is difficult to quantify.
25 On the other hand, we know that moderately
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1 reactive pollutants, like ozone and hydrogen dioxide are
2 removed mainly by uptake into the pours the plant pollutes
3 called staminodium.
4 So their removal rate is mainly determined by the
5 amount of leaf area and whether the staminodium are fully
6 open, which is fairly predictable. As you might expect,
7 deposition rates vary over a wide range.
8 --o0o--
9 MR. PEDERSON: This slide shows relative amounts
10 of ozone deposition to various surfaces. Note the range
11 of values given for each plant, and the wide range between
12 the different types of plants. Various air quality model
13 simulations have suggested that the deposition of all
14 pollutants occurred in both the San Joaquin Valley and
15 Upland areas could be decreasing ozone concentrations in
16 some areas of the valley by more than 10 to 30 parts per
17 million.
18 The two aspects of vegetation that I covered so
19 far have positive effects on air quality. Unfortunately,
20 plants can also have a negative effect by emitting VOCs
21 that form ozone fine particles.
22 --o0o--
23 MR. PEDERSON: This slide shows approximately
24 biogenic emissions for different plants. The values are
25 Calculated assuming average temperatures and light
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1 intensity for the month of July in the central valley. If
2 the assumed temperatures were 18 degrees warmer, reaching
3 a max up 170 degrees, that the estimated biogenic
4 emissions would more than double.
5 Thus, although, a single number is shown for each
6 species, in fact, the amount emitted can vary widely,
7 perhaps by more than a factor of 10, due to seasonal
8 differences.
9 Despite the range of values that must be
10 considered for each species, it is also clear that
11 biogenic emissions can vary with the type of plant. The
12 biogenic VOC emissions are a large portion of the VOC
13 inventory in most California air basins.
14 For example, in the South Coast Air Basin, during
15 ozone episodes, biogenic emissions may be 1/4th of the
16 total VOC inventory. And they are also more reactive than
17 most anthropogenic emissions.
18 Based on sensitivity simulations, again, using an
19 air quality model, the effects of zeroing out all of the
20 biogenic emissions in the San Joaquin Valley is the
21 reduction of ozone concentrations by about seven parts per
22 billion in the urban plume down wind of Fresno.
23 For concentrations were about 140 parts per
24 billion. And by three to seven parts per billion over a
25 fairly wide area where concentrations were somewhat
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1 lowered.
2 In areas with more nitrogen oxide emissions, we
3 expect the BBOCs to have a larger effect on ozone
4 concentrations. Similarly in future years, as the
5 anthropogenic emissions are further reduced, the biogenic
6 emissions will likely have more affect on ozone
7 concentrations.
8 Thus characterizing biogenic emissions is
9 important to our understanding of atmospheric chemistry
10 and our ability to predict future air quality.
11 But the massive emissions alone cannot tell us
12 how much ozone will be formed. The timing and the
13 location of the biogenic emissions are also important. We
14 needed inventory that describes that time and location, in
15 addition to the mass of emissions.
16 --o0o--
17 MR. PEDERSON: Over the last two decades, the ARB
18 has made a great deal of progress in constructing such an
19 inventory and could be considered a pioneer in this area.
20 However, the ARB is still working to improve that
21 inventory of biogenic VOCs used for air quality modeling.
22 Obtaining the inventory of biogenic emissions
23 requires a great deal of supporting information. For
24 example, emission rates vary widely between different
25 plant species. We know that many high emitter species
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1 release 10,000 VOC compared to low-emitting plants.
2 Measuring or estimating emissions rates for over
3 6,000 plants species is a difficult task.
4 Additionally, because emission rates need to be
5 multiplied the biomass to get the total emissions, we also
6 need to know the leaky biomass.
7 The first step is to identify plant species and
8 where they grow throughout the State.
9 --o0o--
10 MR. PEDERSON: In this inventory database, the
11 different colors that represent different types of land
12 use for plant communities.
13 The data base had a few of the dominant species
14 in each natural plant community, but their relative
15 numbers, biomass and other species present are usually
16 undefined. The many climates of California support over
17 6,000 new species. We have measured emission rates for
18 less than ten percent. Emission rates for the other 90
19 percent are inferred from measured rates of the related
20 species.
21 Biogenic emissions are calculated by multiplying
22 the plants emission rate times the mass of its weeds. So
23 we also need a way to figure out the mass of leaves.
24 For that, we use a parameter called Leaf Area
25 Index.
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1 --o0o--
2 MR. PEDERSON: These satellite images go straight
3 even within the Ozone, season. The leaf area there is
4 great. Areas of Brown representing areas with very low
5 green vegetation. Yellow and green and blue representing
6 increasing leaf area. The special patterns of leaf Area
7 are complex.
8 The special atoms of leaf area are complex and
9 cannot be characterized based on simple categories, such
10 as agriculture or forests. For example, note the
11 variability within the central valley during July. Also,
12 you see decreased leaf area in October for many areas,
13 including the coast range, agricultural areas and the
14 higher elevations in the sierra.
15 We use maps of plants species and leaf area index
16 to estimate the mass of location of emissions because both
17 factors help determine the amount of ozone that will be
18 formed. But we also set the timing of emissions was
19 important to ozone formation. You may be surprised at the
20 size of tempo variations and biogenic emissions.
21 --o0o--
22 MR. PEDERSON: To illustration the timing, this
23 slide shows the emissions for three principal types of
24 biogenic VOCs expressed in tons per hour, over a five-day
25 ozone episode. The largest emissions are isoprene. The
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1 reason the emissions change from hour to hour and from day
2 to day is because they respond to light and temperature.
3 Because August 5th was the hottest day biogenic
4 emissions were much higher on this day. As The
5 temperature in Azusa rose from 99 degrees on August 3rd to
6 106 on August 5th, the biogenic emissions over the greater
7 southern California area increased by nearly 40 percent.
8 The hotter days also tend to be days with higher ozone
9 concentrations.
10 The amount of ozone formed is also affected by
11 hourly aeration in emissions. For example emissions late
12 in the day will have less impact, because they have less
13 opportunity to participate in photochemical reactions.
14 --o0o--
15 MR. PEDERSON: The last effect I want to mention
16 is the allergens released by plants. Pollen from grasses,
17 weeds shrubs and trees is an important source of
18 allergens. Vegetation is also a factor for propagation Of
19 some moulds. But there are also many other allergens that
20 not related to plants, for example, pet dander and dust
21 mites.
22 For sensitive individuals, allergenic responses
23 can range from discomfort to misery to life-threatening
24 respiratory problems. Allergens are a factor for about 90
25 percent of asthmatic individuals. Although, plant
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1 allergies are an important contributors to asthmatic
2 responses exposure to these allergens is seasonal, since
3 most people spend the majority of their time indoors.
4 Indoor allergens, such as dust mites and moulds
5 which are present year-round are more frequent triggers of
6 asthmatic responses. We've examined both positive and
7 negative effects in plants, each of which is quite complex
8 and subject to many assumptions and uncertainties.
9 --o0o--
10 MR. PEDERSON: So as the ARB develops plans to
11 further improve air quality in California, our key
12 question is can we actively predict the effects of trees
13 and vegetation on air quality? We do know enough to draw
14 several conclusions.
15 The total air quality effect of vegetation
16 depends on the plant's species and it's placement on the
17 microscale. For example, with respect to a house a
18 microscale meeting its location relative to other sources
19 within our region. We also know that biogenic emissions
20 are an important part of the emissions inventory.
21 But how do the positive and negative effects of
22 vegetation balance out? The analysis performed by Dr.
23 Hidre Taha of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
24 suggests that in certain cases, low-emitting trees can
25 reduce ambient ozone by removal of pollutants and emission
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1 reductions associated with cooling.
2 However his analysis also suggested that for high
3 emitting trees, the beneficial cooling air cleaning
4 effects are offset by the ozone formed from the VOC
5 emissions. Thus such trees may actually increase ozone.
6 It is important to remember that these results should be
7 interpreted with caution, because of the uncertainties of
8 large number of barriers.
9 ARB recognizes the importance of understanding
10 the effects of vegetation on air quality and so we have a
11 number of ongoing efforts.
12 --o0o--
13 MR. PEDERSON: Lawrence Berkeley National
14 Laboratory ARB is consulting with that group.
15 As a partner, in the central California ozone
16 study, we are working to organize and raise funds for
17 study of the deposition of pollutants other than ozone.
18 ARB has several research projects who help to
19 address biogenic biomass, biogenic emissions and
20 deposition. These efforts have resulted in significant
21 improvements in the budget inventory over the last decade,
22 especially in the South Coast Air Basin.
23 We also formed the biogenic working group five
24 years ago to enlist cooperation of academics and other
25 agencies.
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1 Through the coordination with other agencies, the
2 group has acquired vegetation maps and leaf biomass
3 databases.
4 --o0o--
5 MR. PEDERSON: As part of our efforts to
6 investigate the health effects of exposure to air
7 pollutants, we also consider the combined effect of
8 allergens and air pollutants acting together. Our most
9 recent efforts also include outreach For the web page and
10 directly to tree advocate groups.
11 --o0o--
12 MR. PEDERSON: Some of the advocacy groups we are
13 working with include the Sacramento Tree Foundation, The
14 Tree People and municipal utility districts. We'd like to
15 thank the Sacramento Tree Foundation for joining us today.
16 It's too late now to stop by the booth but they
17 came with expert advise and expert help with tree
18 selection and placement for maximum energy conservation.
19 Within the greater Sacramento Area the Tree
20 Foundation can arrange delivery for free shade trees
21 attached to your planning site and your individual needs.
22 Through partnership with tree groups, we can provide
23 information to the public regarding tree selection and
24 placement to improve air quality.
25 These groups are especially well equipped for
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1 public education. They already provide valuable guidance
2 on actions we can take as communities and as individuals
3 to better our environment.
4 --o0o--
5 MR. PEDERSON: But what information do we still
6 need and what are the highest priorities? The most
7 critical need is to improve estimates of biogenic VOC
8 emissions to allow us to better predict future year ozone
9 concentrations. To do this, we need more complete
10 inventories of the spacial distribution of plant species.
11 We also need to measure emission rates for more plant
12 species.
13 Our models of deposition require better
14 supporting information for making ozone precursors. And
15 lastly we can improve our emissions inventory by more
16 fully considering the effects of local temperature
17 variations on energy use and emissions.
18 Filling in these information gaps is important if
19 ARB is to design the best strategies to achieve clean air.
20 Despite the information gaps, at this time we can identify
21 many types of species that are clearly desirable or
22 undesirable from an air quality perspective.
23 So an action we can take now is to inform and
24 influence the public to make planning choices to improve
25 air quality and avoid choices that would degrade air
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1 quality.
2 There are effective actions that individuals can
3 take. These actions are fairly simple and in the long
4 term are very cost effective.
5 --o0o--
6 MR. PEDERSON: The key ideals which we invite
7 people to be aware of are listed on the slide, achieving
8 the potential benefits of energy savings and improved air
9 quality requires planting the right tree in the right
10 location. The very biggest improvements will come from
11 planting large fast-growing trees in areas that have
12 little coverage at present and planting to shape the west
13 and south sides of buildings and roofs.
14 Shading parking lots or other sources of
15 evaporative emissions also reduces VOCs. However, for a
16 positive net effect on air quality, it is important to
17 choose species that emit relatively small amounts of VOCs
18 and avoid species that release allergens.
19 The difficulty in promoting use of low emitters
20 and less allergenic species is that these effects are not
21 visible to the public and they are only two of over 40
22 tree characteristics that might be considered in deciding
23 what to plant. Clearly, influencing consumers directly
24 would be very difficult.
25 Because tree advocacy groups are active and
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1 effective in public education, that again is our primary
2 target audience.
3 The choice of the best tree for a specific
4 location is not simple, but it is possible to choose trees
5 with the positive characteristics I talked about today.
6 The Sawleaf Zelkova on the left is a good example. It
7 grows relatively quickly to large size. It is a low
8 emitter. Additionally, it has know known health effects
9 with respect to allergens or irritants. From an air
10 quality standpoint, this is a better tree choice than the
11 tree on the right.
12 The Liquidambar is quite popular. Unfortunately,
13 in addition to requiring maintenance due to litter drop,
14 it is a very high emitter of VOCs. There are alternative
15 low emitter species that also provide fall color that emit
16 far fewer volatile organic compounds.
17 A great resource for finding the best tree for a
18 particular location is the database Selectree that is
19 available on the web. Selectree describes over 40
20 characteristics for each of over 1,400 species of trees.
21 Searches can be based on any combination of
22 characteristics.
23 Cal Poly State University at San Luis Obispo
24 developed and maintains this database. It incorporates up
25 to date information regarding biogenic emissions.
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1 We have focused on the effects of vegetation on
2 air quality. That is only part of the larger picture in
3 addition to decreasing energy use, trees and vegetation
4 have other important benefits. They provide well
5 quantified watershed benefits, both in urban and nonurban
6 areas. For example, by increasing rates of water
7 percolation, it creates reduced runoff and increased
8 groundwater supplies.
9 Other benefits are also well documented.
10 Controlled studies have clearly demonstrated very
11 significant social and psychological benefits from trees
12 in residential areas. Trees also store carbon in their
13 woody biomass as they grow. Thus, large long-lived
14 forests can help produce carbon dioxide concentrations.
15 With the carbon storage even for large forests is
16 a relatively small effect compared to other global
17 processes. Additional, the storage is temporary. As a
18 tree dies and decays, most of the carbon will be released
19 back to atmosphere, as carbon dioxide.
20 So we cannot rely on urban trees to handle global
21 warming directly. However, those same trees if properly
22 placed to shade buildings can indirectly help reduce
23 carbon dioxide emissions by reducing the demand for
24 electrical power.
25 To recap we have examined the ways vegetation
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1 affects ozone and fine particle concentrations both
2 positively and negatively. The largest air quality
3 benefit comes from shade evaporative cooling that reduce
4 emissions and slow the chemical reactions, but with
5 removal is also important.
6 Biogenic emissions of old compounds have a
7 negative effect and needs to be well quantified to
8 understand and predict future year concentrations of ozone
9 and fine particles.
10 We also mentioned the effect of allergens on
11 sensitive individuals including asthmatics. Plus they may
12 make some practical recommendations regarding how to use
13 plants, how the use of plants can help us to improve air
14 quality.
15 Now, we now there are going to be core day with
16 other groups to help influence planning decisions.
17 In conclusion we know a great deal about the
18 affects of vegetation on air quality. In particular we
19 see the low emitting plants can have many positive effects
20 on the environment and can even improve air quality.
21 I hope that we have demonstrated the developments
22 and importance of ARB programs of accurately quantifying
23 the effect of vegetation on air quality.
24 Thank you for your time and attention. We would
25 appreciate and questions or direction.
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1 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much.
2 Ms. D'Adamo.
3 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: This is very interesting
4 presentation. How far off are we from data whereby when
5 we look on a chart listing various tree species and come
6 with any determination on similar to the information you
7 had about temperature, freeze, the shade that's generated
8 from temperature of trees would enable of one air
9 pollution removal et cetera et cetera go out in
10 production?
11 How far off are we from getting information
12 similar to that in terms of emissions data?
13 MR. PEDERSON: Michael Benjamin is our expert on
14 biogenic emissions. He's done a lot of the research that
15 went into the database.
16 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: And if you could direct
17 your question not just to the negative effects but also to
18 the positive effects reduction of ozone, et cetera.
19 MR. PEDERSON: Shall we start with the negative
20 of the positive?
21 EMISSION INVENTORY SYSTEMS SECTION MANAGER
22 BENJAMIN: Thank you.
23 As Jim mentioned, our understanding of biogenic
24 VOC emissions is not that well known. It would be
25 approximately 6,000 plant species in California. We have
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1 measured emission rates for something on the order of 500
2 of those species.
3 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Job security.
4 (Laughter.)
5 EMISSION INVENTORY SYSTEMS SECTION MANAGER
6 BENJAMIN: Measuring these is extremely complex, very
7 resource intensive, plants are biological systems. In
8 many ways it's like the PM studies that we heard earlier.
9 It's like epidemiologic studies. It takes a lot of
10 resources and time to measure these biogenic VOC
11 emissions.
12 However, we do feel like we have a fairly good
13 understand of the relative emission rates of different
14 plant species.
15 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: Well, what I'd be
16 interested in seeing and maybe others on the Board would
17 disagree, but it seems like a relatively easy way to
18 achieve some benefits.
19 If you have an idea of good trees versus bad
20 trees. And not having to go through all of the scientific
21 processes for every single of the 6,000 trees, if you had
22 a general idea that that -- that there are probably around
23 50 different species that would get us in that ballpark
24 where the negative aspect are quite minimal and the
25 positive aspects are quite great.
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1 I would be in favor of exploring and perhaps
2 we're just a long ways off of that, but I would be in
3 favor of exploring some sort of incentive based program
4 either run by the State of California or some similar to
5 the Carl Moyer Program. It sounds easy, but if we can
6 help local air district retrofit, they why can't we
7 encourage a program of additional treatment, and maybe
8 expand that a step further.
9 I remember when I got the staff briefing I had
10 asked this questions, and I don't know what the answer is,
11 but where I live there are -- every year there are
12 hundreds if not thousands of acres of orchards that lack
13 production and they get paved over so that houses can be
14 built. I suspect that the result of that is that the
15 result of that is that we've got in certain areas more
16 cars and addition emissions.
17 However, there may be -- it may be a wash when
18 you look at the PM impacts of say an almond orchard that
19 is not longer there and reduce the agricultural activity.
20 I don't know, but in my gut it tells me that something
21 should be done in order to encourage -- if those trees are
22 in fact, good overall, if something should be done in
23 order to encourage agricultural production of certain
24 types that are on balance positive to air quality.
25 I don't know that. I'll just open it up for
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1 discussion. I don't know how far off we are from getting
2 that data so that we can put a program of that nature
3 together.
4 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Of course, I assume, Didi,
5 that while they're are 6,000, you'll put those in classes
6 so it's not as onerous as one might think. I would agree
7 with you Didi.
8 The other question that I'd like to ask along the
9 line the Didi was asking, presumably since we're talking
10 about shade trees in some ways deciduous trees would be
11 better, because that would allow you to reduce cooling in
12 the summer and heating in the winter? Would that be true?
13 MR. PEDERSON: One of the important things that
14 really the energy savings hinge on is the location. And
15 SMUD has some great materials on that, the truth audition
16 is also actually come to a siting and looked through that.
17 Planting on the west side is where the big
18 savings is. The local effects of deposition are
19 important. We have done some measurements of deposition
20 and we know differences between many species, but we've
21 measured fewer species than on the biogenic side.
22 However, there's probably a smaller range between
23 species on deposition than there is for biogenic
24 emissions.
25 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Maybe, if you could, Mr.
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1 Kenny, if staff could respond to Ms. D'Adamo with some
2 suggestions, whether, in fact, that such a program makes
3 sense.
4 EXECUTIVE OFFICER KENNY: We'll be happy to do
5 that. I think actually there's a couple of things we can
6 do. We can look at least subsidy programs, and we can
7 also look at least publications that have highlighted
8 those kinds of trees that are essentially more beneficial
9 and also highlight those kinds of tress that we just as
10 soon not see and try to essentially put that out there as
11 information so that people actually are educated and make
12 the right choices.
13 But we'll be happy to follow up on this and we
14 can make a report to the Board on what me are able to do
15 and how We can implement this kind of a program. And I
16 guess, you know, I don't think it's goofy. I think this
17 is actually something that's actually very valuable so I
18 think it's something we really do want to put some effort
19 into it.
20 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: If staff could also when
21 it comes back before the Board, include, I know that the
22 Governor's has included in his budget a central valley
23 agricultural assessment. I've spoken with Ms. Terry about
24 it. And I think the idea is to get the Air Board, along
25 with the various other resources agencies involved to put
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1 together a database that the idea or the vision would be
2 to plug in information about the example that I gave an
3 almond orchard going out of product of what that means in
4 terms of air quality, water, et cetera, economics. So I
5 would hope Trade and Commerce is involved in the economic
6 piece, so if staff could report back on that piece as
7 well.
8 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Mr. Chairman, I've got to
9 assume that Cal Poly San Luis Obispo at Pomona they've got
10 a lot of information I would think and I appreciated
11 having the reference of the trees.
12 The partnership with some of these foundations,
13 there's TreePeople in LA. I'm not sure your group up here
14 that you mentioned. Certainly we need to involve
15 ourselves with them. They are the true workers. And Ms.
16 D'Adamo, I don't know if you've met any of them. They are
17 so dedicated. And if we were to really make a difference,
18 I think we need to somehow associate ourselves with them
19 and support them, because they're the ones that would go
20 out and really sell the program, once you've developed the
21 information, and they're really a dedicated group.
22 You also need to work through -- I'm trying to
23 think of the program with the cities where they're
24 designated as -- sacramento is one of them, where you're
25 designated as a tree city, and there's some recognition
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1 of -- I not -- I think I'm correct when I say this, you're
2 recognized, but also the City makes a real effort to do
3 street trees and some really good things that maybe
4 littler cities may not have undertaken not knowing of the
5 strong benefits.
6 But, you know, some of those kinds of linkages
7 are very important if you really want to make it work
8 well.
9 RESEARCH AND ECONOMIC STUDIES BRANCH CHIEF COREY:
10 Board Member Riordan, Richard Corey. I wanted to respond.
11 It think that's an excellent suggestion and make the point
12 that we have begun those efforts to reach out to a number
13 of the tree organizations who have -- many of them have
14 well established educational programs and they're very
15 perceptive to including within those educational programs
16 information on air quality and emissions that we've
17 discuss with you and expand those efforts and have
18 established a web page that includes links to those
19 organizations as well, and also looking -- and also
20 coordinating with educational programs, landscape
21 architect education programs, as well as others.
22 So we see that linkage as an opportunity to build
23 on it in terms of the vehicle to funnel this information
24 through.
25 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Thank you.
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1 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you. I think before we
2 conclude this item, I thought that the Board would get
3 some free samples of trees we should plant, but what
4 happened to them?
5 MR. PEDERSON: You took a little too long on the
6 earlier item.
7 (Laughter.)
8 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: You didn't tells us there's
9 an incentive clause in there.
10 (Laughter.)
11 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: The trees are already
12 planted.
13 MR. PEDERSON: I'll just make a comment that the
14 fact that a lot of the tree organizations are cited where
15 there's already a program going on, and the place where
16 the biggest change can occur, is where there isn't a
17 program. So some of the areas that aren't well treed and
18 particular schools, in our cities, could occur.
19 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Well, thank you. That
20 concludes that item, and thank you very much, staff.
21 We will take a ten minute break now to 4:30 while
22 we change the court reporter an then we'll continue on the
23 smoke management guidelines item.
24 (Thereupon a brief recess was taken.)
25
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1 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I'd like to restart the board
2 meeting.
3 As you'll notice that, contrary to what I stated
4 before the break, we're going to hold the item on rice straw
5 phase-down in deference to some of the farmers we may have
6 here to speak on this item.
7 So the next item on the agenda today is 01-5-5,
8 public meeting to consider the 2001 biennial report to the
9 Legislature on the phase-down of rice straw burning in the
10 Sacramento Valley region.
11 State law requires the Air Resources Board and the
12 California Department of Food and Agriculture to report to
13 the Legislature every two years on progress in reducing the
14 amount of rice straw burning in the Sacramento Valley.
15 This report focus on activities occurring since
16 the 1999 report.
17 The ARB is also required to submit a report
18 presenting findings regarding the air quality, public
19 health, and economic impacts associated with the burning of
20 rice straw through the years 1998 to 2000, when the
21 phase-down schedule was paused at 200,000 acres. And the
22 pause report is incorporated in the 2001 biennial report.
23 I would now like to ask Mr. Kenny to introduce the
24 item and start the presentation.
25 MR. KENNY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members
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1 of the board.
2 As we reported two years ago, the phase-down
3 requirements are being met. The key issue continues to be
4 the status of alternatives to burning. Primary alternative
5 is still soil incorporation, and we recognize we need to
6 pursue increased opportunities for off-field uses of rice
7 straw.
8 Although the diversion rate is still too low,
9 there are a number of alternatives which are showing
10 promise.
11 Staff will present an update on existing and
12 promising new projects for the use of rice straw, both in
13 the short and longer term.
14 An additional $1 million in funding for the rice
15 straw grant program will be available in July 1st,
16 hopefully.
17 This funding will provide further support and
18 incentives for the use of rice straw, as alternatives other
19 than soil incorporation become more widely available.
20 With that, I'd like to turn the presentation over
21 to Theresa Najita, of the Planning and Technical Support
22 Division.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: In relation to the last item,
24 what about straw trees?
25 MR. KENNY: We'll look at that.
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1 MS. NAJITA: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and
2 members of the board.
3 As the chairman and Mr. Kenny stated, we are
4 presenting an update on the phase-down of rice burning in
5 the Sacramento Valley Basin.
6 Based on comments received, we have made revisions
7 to the proposed report. A handout showing these revisions
8 is available in hard copy on the table outside this room and
9 is included in your packets.
10 The requirements for the phase-down of rice straw
11 burning have been met. Beginning this fall, burning will be
12 allowed only for disease control purposes.
13 The availability of alternatives to burning of
14 straw, however, continues to be of critical importance.
15 Air quality impacts are being minimized, but other
16 environmental impacts are mixed.
17 Finally, the cost of incorporating straw back into
18 the soil impacts grower profits, along with other factors.
19 Although the goal to divert 50 percent of the
20 available rice straw to off-field uses has not been
21 achieved, projects are being developed which may improve the
22 long-term outlook. The most promising projects currently
23 underway involve the use of rice straw for construction
24 material, export, animal feed and compost.
25 Based on discussions with project proponents, our
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1 best estimate is about 447,000 tons could be used off-field
2 by 2005, which would represent about 40 percent of the
3 available straw.
4 In an effort to help overcome some of the barriers
5 to burning rice straw, ARB staff planned a forum to showcase
6 rice straw products and to promote market availability of
7 rice straw as a commodity.
8 The Rice Straw Expo will provide an opportunity to
9 show demonstration projects, expand contacts for the
10 handling of rice straw, and to provide information on the
11 many incentives to use straw.
12 We will be inviting participation from many
13 governments and private stakeholders.
14 We anticipate this event will be held in February
15 or March of 2002.
16 The rice fund was established in 1997 to support
17 development of new rice straw technologies. Since then the
18 ARB has awarded grants for many demonstration and
19 commercialization projects.
20 A high percentage of the anticipated rice straw
21 usage in 2005 is through projects funded by the rice fund.
22 The proposed state budget for 2001-2002 includes
23 one million for the rice fund. If this money remains in the
24 budget, we anticipate bringing new applicants to the board
25 for approval this fall or winter.
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1 The current criteria for the awarding of the rice
2 fund grants limits to funding to projects that directly
3 utilize rice straw.
4 We believe that increased opportunity will result
5 from an expansion of the criteria to include infrastructure
6 and marketing program development.
7 In conclusion, ARB staff recommends that the
8 Legislature continue efforts to provide financial and
9 technical support to develop alternatives to the open field
10 burning of rice straw through the use of grant programs, tax
11 incentives and the rice fund, and to encourage the use of
12 rice straw by state agencies for environmentally sound
13 purposes such as erosion control, weed suppression, compost
14 and sound mitigation.
15 This concludes my presentation. Thank you.
16 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Big incentive bonus there.
17 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Mr. Chairman.
18 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: No wonder I couldn't follow
19 this.
20 Thank you very much.
21 Any question from the board?
22 No. Thank you. I guess we'll open --
23 MR. KENNY: There are witnesses.
24 MS. WALSH: The first witness is Supervisor
25 William White.
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1 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Supervisor White.
2 FROM THE AUDIENCE: He had to leave.
3 MS. WALSH: Kati Buehler.
4 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Is the witness list coming
5 along?
6 MS. BUEHLER: Good afternoon, Chairman Lloyd and
7 members of the board. My name is the Kati Buehler,
8 representing the California Rice Commission.
9 We appreciate the opportunity to testify to you
10 today.
11 The California Rice Commission is a statutory
12 organization representing approximately 2500 California rice
13 growers.
14 Earlier today we submitted 25 copies of a letter
15 to the chairman, and I would like to just briefly summarize
16 the points presented within that letter for you today.
17 The commission has appreciated the willingness of
18 your staff to work with us in the development of this report
19 and to have our input and concerns reflected.
20 In particular we would like to thank the hard work
21 of Ms. Theresa Najita, who did most of the heavy lifting to
22 coordinate with commission staff on this project.
23 Ms. Najita has made herself accessible to commission staff
24 and has worked hard to incorporate our comments.
25 The report reflects a few broad themes that have
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1 become apparent through the progress of the phase-down.
2 First, growers have worked in good faith to adjust
3 their farming practices to replace their historical levels
4 of burning with other management practices.
5 Second, as a result of those activities, regional
6 air quality has generally improved.
7 Third, recent levels of burning coordinated within
8 the framework of a smart smoke management program can be
9 accommodated while resulting in few exceedences of the
10 particulate matter standards.
11 And finally, significant alternative uses for rice
12 straw have not yet been developed.
13 This lack of uses for rice straw continues to be
14 an economic burden to growers.
15 As the report indicates, the industry is now
16 spending more than $15 million annually for the management
17 of its rice straw.
18 About one million tons of straw is generated each
19 year. And we remain hopeful that a demand for this straw
20 will help offset our significant disposal costs.
21 The commission requests that your board, the
22 Department of Food and Agriculture, and other state agencies
23 provide strong support for any measures that will help
24 incentivize and stimulate increased demand for rice
25 straw-based products.
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1 We hope that your understanding of this dilemma
2 will enable you to support our goals to increase rice straw
3 utilization and help make this issue a priority here in
4 Sacramento.
5 Again, thank you for the opportunity to address
6 the board today, and the commission looks forward to
7 continued work with your staff to address future challenges.
8 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much indeed.
9 And again look forward to working with you on this expo.
10 Seems like a good idea.
11 MS. BUEHLER: Thank you. We are looking forward
12 to working with you on that expo. I think that will provide
13 a great opportunity to showcase some of these new
14 technologies.
15 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much.
16 Next we have Mr. Joe Carrancho, then Jerry Maltby,
17 Kurt Rasmussen and Jeremy Murdock.
18 MR. CARRANCHO: Chairman Lloyd, members of the
19 board.
20 First off, I'd have to apologize for most of my
21 colleagues who were supposed to testify, walked off, and I
22 came in here with nothing in hand, and I was voted to talk.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: We can attest from previously
24 we feel you can hold your end up very well.
25 MR. CARRANCHO: I've been before you many times as
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1 a private citizen, as a member of Family Water Alliance, as
2 a member of the Farm Bureau, which I speak for the rice in
3 Colusa County. I was past president of Rice Producers of
4 California. I addressed you then.
5 I am with the -- also with the commission. I'm on
6 the executive board. I've been here a couple times backing
7 them.
8 Today I'm wearing a different hat.
9 Today I'm with California Straw Supply Co-op.
10 This is a group of farmers who have gotten together. We
11 closed our membership at 130, and we have people waiting to
12 get in and we will probably open our membership.
13 One of the main problems we have is due to the
14 burn program and most recently our lack of price on rice, we
15 don't have any money.
16 We need an infrastructure. We have no way of
17 doing it.
18 And we are trying to pursue grants, anything we
19 can get to get this thing going.
20 Our main goal is to reduce the cost of the
21 producer to get rid of his rice straw.
22 We are also collecting emissions credits that we
23 will be releasing for whoever needs them for pollution
24 credits.
25 I've watched all of these reports from the
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1 Legislature come down over the years. And I will give you
2 the credit, that this is one of the only ones I've seen
3 that's been a little fair, in my opinion.
4 There is thousands and thousands, or least
5 hundreds, of studies made, and if you look down at the
6 bottom of the report they always reference a study. You can
7 reference any study you want. You can get studies to say
8 anything you want them to say. It's always slanted, in my
9 opinion, against the farmer.
10 The farmer has done everything he can. He's
11 been -- what he's been asked to do he's exceeded in every
12 way, shape and form.
13 I think that's demonstrated by the number of
14 complaints you've had. We fought for and got 318, a pause.
15 Look at your complaints.
16 The ARB chose to not use just Sacramento as their
17 complaint. They went and also started counting ones in the
18 county. Before they used to just count Sacramento. Now
19 they put them all together, because Sacramento didn't have
20 any complaints.
21 A lot of this was done because with 318, even with
22 our 38 percent level, we were able to move burn from east to
23 west, taking it away from Sacramento.
24 Now that we're down to safe harbor that is not
25 possible.
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1 There are many of my fellow farmers who have never
2 had to incorporate. They have buying burn. This is going
3 to hit home.
4 This report, as you've just heard testified, 40
5 percent by 2005. I would love that to be true. God, I
6 would like that to be true.
7 But I think you're looking at pie in the sky.
8 If we were to go back to where this started six,
9 seven years ago, we would have been looking for rice straw
10 from other states, according to what everybody said they
11 were going to use. Yet we're using less than one and a half
12 percent of the rice straw.
13 Everything that's been tried has used maybe a
14 little bit of rice straw.
15 One gentleman here that probably alone uses more
16 rice straw than everybody. He's going to be up here
17 testifying.
18 Some of the ones that would have made it, have
19 they got a grant, but they do not know how to write grants.
20 Didn't get it. And they're still hanging on. Without those
21 grants, the money is just wasted.
22 I want you to know, if you don't know already,
23 farmers are not people who want to burn. We burn out of
24 necessity. None of us want to pollute. We breathe the air
25 too.
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1 Lord knows, when I come to Sacramento I damn near
2 choke in this smudge you got down here.
3 I have to go back to the rice country to breathe
4 clean air.
5 Speaking of that, you heard testimony today here
6 how good it is to plant trees. Cleans the air. That
7 doesn't only apply to trees. That applies to any green
8 crop.
9 Take the rice out of the Sacramento Valley and
10 ship our water south and see what kind of pollution you're
11 going to have here. We will be sweltering in it.
12 Rice cleans your air all but 30 days out of the
13 year.
14 I'm not going to go into detail on each one of
15 these little items that are in this report, because there's
16 other people here that have done it and can do a lot better
17 job than I can.
18 But over the last few years you should know
19 farmers are being regulated out of business, mostly due to
20 the burning of the rice farmer.
21 We have tried everything.
22 What we really need is relief so that it is tied
23 to the use of rice straw. Something that phases down as the
24 rice straw uses become available. Promises of rice straw
25 that's going to be used aren't going to get it.
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1 I'm going to refer to one of the last pages here
2 in your report, and I will just read it.
3 Staff have estimates that economic effects for
4 potential yield loss of ten percent. The potential revenue
5 reduction was estimated at about 19 million valley wide with
6 Colusa County suffering the greatest loss at almost five
7 million.
8 I am from Colusa County.
9 $19 million per year in the name of clean air, and
10 we are less than two percent of the problem.
11 I know government talks about millions and
12 billions like I talk about a dollar and a half, but believe
13 me, folks, $19 million to the rice community is a lot of
14 money.
15 I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you.
16 And if there's any way the ARB can see ways of
17 using rice straw or helping fund rice straw benefits, we're
18 all for it.
19 However, we do need a pause. We need our pause to
20 continue that we had with the 38 percent until some of those
21 uses can be found.
22 Don't just regulate us out of business. We're
23 almost there now.
24 And we would find a use for it, but when you lead
25 us down so bad that we don't have any extra money to find
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1 alternative uses or to fund alternative uses, there isn't
2 much hope.
3 Thank you very much.
4 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much.
5 Yes, Ms. D'Adamo.
6 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: In general I don't know if
7 it's possible to generalize, but for the rice farmers that
8 for whatever reason choose not to plant for economic
9 reasons, whether it's because of rice straw burning or other
10 economic factors, what happens to the field? They go into
11 other crops, is it fallow?
12 MR. CARRANCHO: Very good example of that is just
13 came up. They offered us in my area $165 an acre if we
14 would let our water go south.
15 They were only offering that after most of us were
16 planted or most of us would have probably been interested.
17 There was a no brainer. I mean, it's much better to just
18 not plant. And a lot of us did it.
19 I didn't particularly do it. I have a hard time
20 with it. I almost feel like I'm selling my daughter into
21 prostitution doing that. I mean, it's just not the thing.
22 We should be planting and we have to support our third-party
23 impacts in our counties. Our counties would go down.
24 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: In order to participate in
25 that you have to fallow your field?
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1 MR. CARRANCHO: You fallow your field until
2 October 1. No water.
3 Now I've heard about a couple of irrigation
4 districts who are worried about giving us water for de-comp.
5 Not in my area. So far we're fortunate.
6 But I feel that's probably going to be one of the
7 first things they're going to cut off. If we lose our water
8 to de-comp, then we have nothing.
9 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Your comment earlier about
10 grants and, you know, not being able to -- not knowing the
11 grantsmanship, I guess, is there anything that we could do
12 to help that? I have some sympathy there, how do you apply
13 for them or whatnot and writing grants.
14 MR. CARRANCHO: I've tried for a few of them.
15 And, you know, unless you -- everything is dotted and t'd
16 and in the right order and if one of the main things is you
17 have to have money. If you don't have money to match it,
18 and it's awful hard to get started without money.
19 And farmers are to the point where if you go out
20 and you get a $100 donation from a farmer, you're doing
21 good.
22 You know, ten years ago you go out and you ask
23 them for a thousand dollars, and it was there.
24 Today, I mean, we're all hurting. We're trying to
25 keep our nose above water and that's it.
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1 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: The question is to staff, when
2 you talk about uses, you say that 20,000 tons unchanged for
3 the last three years and yet by the next five years you
4 expect that to go by a factor of 20. It seems really
5 optimistic estimate.
6 MR. FLETCHER: Bob Fletcher.
7 I think it is optimistic, but we're not certain.
8 And in discussions that we've had, many of the end users and
9 many of the people that are under grants right now, we do
10 think that this is, if everything fell into line, if we were
11 able to deal with the export situation and resolve issues
12 associated with, you know, exporting the rice to Japan, then
13 we could open up 150,000 ton a year market.
14 Similarly, some of the construction materials that
15 we've been looking at, there are huge markets around the
16 world, and if some of the people that are producing some of
17 this fiberboard and construction material can develop these
18 markets where they're building essentially prefabricated
19 homes and then they ship these homes in essentially a way
20 that can be sent overseas where they really need housing,
21 they can do it relatively inexpensively, the construction is
22 simple, if that were to happen, you're looking at another
23 150,000 ton a market.
24 But there's no question things have to align
25 properly for that to happen. So it is not out of the realm
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1 of possibility that these markets could open up.
2 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Again, that puts a lot of
3 hope, and I think I agree in terms of this export, that
4 would be very helpful in stimulating the market and getting
5 the advertising out. I think it's an excellent idea.
6 MR. CARRANCHO: Chairman Lloyd, in that light, we
7 all know how many forest fires we have. I have been trying
8 desperately with the Forest Services and Caltrans and what
9 have you, we have found a way that we can chop our rice
10 straw, bale it so it could be put in for erosion control and
11 actually add the seeds that they need to replant the area.
12 We figure they can drop it from a helicopter.
13 Now, this is one area that we could use multitude
14 of ton, but there is no help.
15 If the state would somehow mandate rice straw is
16 an aquatic plant, you will get no star thistle, you will get
17 no plants that you won't need up there. It's high altitude.
18 These weeds that we have in rice will not grow there.
19 It would be the perfect erosion control. It would
20 be the cheapest way to get it into those canyons and so on
21 that they're inaccessible to take it to now.
22 But, there's no incentive. They have been selling
23 wheat straw and other things for years, and it's hard to
24 make them change. It's just like taking a woman that's
25 going to the grocery shore and she's been buying Del Monte,
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1 she's going to buy Del Monte until she can get it real cheap
2 or something.
3 It's hard to change the trend. Even though we
4 know we have a better product.
5 MR. FLETCHER: I think we would agree with
6 Mr. Carrancho on that, and one of the recommendations that
7 we have to the Legislature is really to encourage state
8 agencies to do that.
9 We wouldn't have the authority, obviously, to do
10 that, but the Legislature would.
11 And I think the other consideration, you know,
12 what we can do through the Rice Straw Expo is really work on
13 Caltrans and some of these other agencies to get to the expo
14 so that we can show them the products and we can work with
15 them, and I think we intend to do that as well.
16 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Again, I think the director of
17 Caltrans, Jeff Morales, is a good person, maybe we can
18 approach him directly and make him aware of this, at least
19 look for a percentage of use to start off. I think it's an
20 excellent idea.
21 MR. CARRANCHO: We are ready to supply it, if we
22 can just get some orders. All we need to orders.
23 You can get us a way to get rid of this rice
24 straw, we can do wonders. But we need somewhere to get rid
25 of it. We can't just pile it up in the corner.
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1 Thank you very much.
2 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I guess you could pile it in
3 the corner if Mr. Rasmussen goes to work as well.
4 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: Mr. Chair.
5 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Yes.
6 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: I had a question, it's
7 both you and staff, either one, or the Rice Straw
8 Commission.
9 You alluded to trade. And I've been concerned the
10 last several months from agriculture, we've heard a number
11 of times, and also forest products, where prices have just
12 dropped through the floor.
13 And I'm wondering if we're having difficulty with
14 trade agreements that have set up a price system where
15 people can manage to operate, and then I think you alluded
16 to trade barriers on rice straw. Is it rice or rice straw?
17 And I'm interested in maybe if that's an area
18 where we should be pushing.
19 MR. FLETCHER: I think it's not trade barriers is
20 probably the wrong word. We didn't really realize the
21 connotations associated with that.
22 We think it's a barrier and we think it's
23 associated with the Japanese government putting restrictions
24 on rice straw coming in. And they have been one of our
25 contracts, one of our grantees is actually working with CDFA
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1 and the United States Department of Agriculture to try to
2 get a protocol in place that essentially assures that the
3 rice straw that's being sent over is free of pests,
4 basically.
5 So the question for us becomes can we get that
6 protocol in.
7 Now, the difficulty with getting that protocol,
8 there may be other political reasons that are impacting the
9 ability to do that, but we're looking at a niche market in
10 Japan that's sort of a specialized market, and that's the
11 market we're trying to tap.
12 So I'm not sure that it falls under the
13 traditional trade barrier concept. It's more just a
14 barrier.
15 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: And then it's the price
16 piece of this also a fair -- that prices have been driven
17 down to the point that --
18 MR. CARRANCHO: In Japan I know I've heard that
19 rice straw sells for as high as $280 a ton. But we can't
20 get it into them. There's been some gone into Japan by way
21 of Taiwan.
22 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: What about the price of
23 rice? Has it been driven down given the trade situation?
24 MR. CARRANCHO: Well, we have to look up to find
25 the bottom.
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1 BOARD MEMBER McKINNON: Yeah. That's what I
2 thought.
3 Thank you very much.
4 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much.
5 Mr. Jerry Maltby, Chris Churchill, Kurt Rasmussen,
6 and Jeremy Murdock.
7 MR. MALTBY: Thank you, Chairman, board members,
8 for allowing me to speak today. My name is Jerry Maltby,
9 the owner of the Broken Box Ranch, which received your grant
10 last year.
11 I thought it behoove me to come up and give you a
12 little report on how we're doing and to answer some
13 questions.
14 I would like to make some comments on a couple of
15 questions that you asked to Joe.
16 And kind of give you my perspective of where I
17 think things need to go as far as the industry and as far as
18 the grant process and basically the money flow.
19 Broken Box has gone ahead with its project. We
20 might be -- we're couple of months behind schedule only due
21 to some machinery problems that we had with the bagger that
22 we were actually putting the compost, which was composed of
23 50 percent rice straw and 50 percent cattle manure, and
24 basically the machine didn't work. But we've got another
25 one coming and we innovated our own little crib system,
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1 which actually has worked just as well, and actually better
2 than some of the bag deal at a lesser cost.
3 So sometimes out of adversity comes a shining
4 light.
5 We have produced and sold compost this year
6 already. We have some now that we are trying to get into
7 the nursery field, as well as several other horticulture
8 avenues that we're looking into.
9 And it's been fairly well accepted. Right now we
10 just got back our E. coli and salmonella tests, which were
11 nontraceable elements, and in today's day and age of parts
12 per billion, that pretty well says it all.
13 And so we have been approved by the CCOF as an
14 organic product.
15 The process, basically, to refresh your memory
16 puts the compost in a container and/or vessel of some sort
17 and forces air through it, therefore bringing the heat up
18 and keeping it there for a length of time to dissipate any
19 pathogens, as well as turn the product into a hundred
20 percent nitrogen compound that can be put on without any
21 nitrate runoff. That's especially important in water
22 quality.
23 And we feel as though the process we're using also
24 keeps down the methane production and keeps it within the
25 vessel and actually works to our benefit.
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1 So we have done some trials with Chico State that
2 are working out very well.
3 We're on the road to doing some trials with some
4 strawberry plants, and hoping that the initial study that we
5 did, which when I came before you before we knew nothing
6 about, but sometimes you stumble on something. You know,
7 even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while.
8 We feel as though we might have something that
9 could be quite important in the methyl bromide problem in
10 the fact that there is a fungus that comes out of this
11 compost that is mainly because of the rice straw that is
12 getting rid of one of the main funguses that hurts the
13 strawberry production.
14 So by probably September we will have the final
15 results back from that on the trials. The plants are in
16 their final stages now, and Chico State will have a report
17 that I will certainly pass on to Bruce Oulrey, and I know
18 that he's aware of it. We've tried to keep him as involved
19 as my contact in letting you know what's going on.
20 The compost situation has worked out very well.
21 The feeding of the rice straw has worked out very
22 well. We've sold several thousand tons already this year
23 within the last 12 months for feed. In fact my stacks are
24 pretty well completed. I've had to cut off my -- the last
25 two sales simply because I needed enough to get me until the
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1 September harvest for the feedlot that we built.
2 And we are feeding a ration right now that
3 consists of about 40 percent rice straw. Working very well,
4 as we knew it would, simply because we have fed rice straw
5 before.
6 However, when putting other cannery wastes in the
7 pod system and holding them throughout the year and then
8 mixing them with rice straw, it has a very advantageous
9 effect on the rice straw in helping it to make it more
10 digestible.
11 We have recently been working -- I'm not going to
12 steal this man's thunder who is coming up behind me, but we
13 really hopefully have found a product called EM that we have
14 in our water, are injecting it into the water that it lowers
15 the methane production in the rumen of an animal, which is
16 good for the environment.
17 It also starts the decomposition of the silica and
18 lignin within the plant before it actually gets out to the
19 back end of the animal and into our manure piles.
20 So there are some things that have happened here
21 that give us some encouragement.
22 We've also developed an injector to inject
23 molasses and a liquid feed supplement within the bale and
24 then sell the bale that way. That way we can put the
25 product that was of marginal quality as by itself and make
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1 it quite acceptable and quite close to alfalfa in actual
2 feed production.
3 Now this is going to be quite interesting this
4 year, and I think that the board and the State of California
5 has a real opportunity with the travesty that's going in the
6 Klamath Basin, the Tule Lake Basin on the actual stealing of
7 the water, and I'll use that term very very proudly, in the
8 sense that that's exactly what they have done.
9 And what they have also done is they have put a
10 tremendous amount of alfalfa and oat acreage of production.
11 That is going to drive hay prices up to anywhere from 125 to
12 $175 a ton by this fall.
13 And it has added even additional expenses to the
14 ranching community.
15 But even worse than that, the livestock industry
16 in the Tule Lake basin and the Lower Klamath Basin is going
17 to be without its winter forage stock.
18 Now, you know, it's horrible to live off of
19 somebody else's adversity, but in this case it is a possible
20 avenue to get some of the ranchers to try it.
21 I've shifted over to 12, 15 hundred tons into what
22 I call the high country, high country is anything above 3500
23 foot elevation, and that's where they do feed a lot of
24 forage in the wintertime.
25 Rice straw will not, and I repeat, will not, carry
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1 an animal at the high elevation through during the winter by
2 itself, but it will add bulk and it does add some nutrients
3 than when supplemented can.
4 And I've had people up there for the last two
5 years and have already contracted with me for the third year
6 to ship rice straw up. They mix it with their native hays,
7 their alfalfa hays, and the liquid feed and they make it
8 work.
9 We're getting more reception to this.
10 The $15 credit I would think, I think, and I don't
11 have any way of knowing, but just by the numbers that you
12 put in here in your report, I would say two-thirds of that
13 came from straw that I sold, because we send out that form,
14 every time we sell a bale of straw, we send out that form.
15 We send them to the timber, the lumber companies of which we
16 sold 1100 tons last year for erosion control. We send it to
17 them. We send it to anybody who uses it on the highway
18 construction. The construction companies we send it to
19 them.
20 We just took your form, copied it and when we send
21 them the bill, said here it is, apply for it.
22 They haven't used it all from last year, you need
23 to, if we want -- if you want to continue this thing, you're
24 going to have to get it used, so please apply for this
25 credit.
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1 I as a grower, Joe as a grower, cannot apply for
2 that credit, because we are the person who raises it and
3 even I as an end user if I raise my own thousand acres of
4 rice and use my own rice straw, I can't get that credit.
5 So I think there's a little something in there
6 that needs to be tweaked. It shouldn't matter who the end
7 users is, whether it be a farmer or a timber man or a cattle
8 man, whoever uses it should be able to get it. The $20 a
9 ton that came out of Helen Thompson's bill, of which the
10 regulations, knock on wood, will be done by the first of
11 this month, I think is one of the key points of getting the
12 domestic usage of the straw up.
13 I think it's key and it's cheap key, a very very
14 cheap key.
15 I know a lot -- I can probably -- I don't want to
16 say something I can't live up to, but I think I can probably
17 sell to 5 to 10 thousand tons of straw myself this year if I
18 can tell those guys that I can get them $20 back. Because I
19 can charge them a lesser -- I can make a little and they can
20 apply for the straw, for the $20 rebate. You know, the
21 Governor in the infinite wisdom cut it from ten million to
22 two.
23 It really didn't make any difference, because the
24 agency didn't get the rates out in time and still haven't
25 got them out.
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1 So hopefully they'll be able to have that out by
2 the first of the July.
3 I know two million to my operation alone that's
4 $50,000.
5 Now on my budget, my banker likes that real well,
6 but he happened to bring that up, as I reapplied for my
7 operating loan this year and he says I don't see any income
8 off that. I said all I can tell you it's coming. And I
9 used the fact, and being an ex-county supervisor, I think I
10 have the right to do this, I said, you know how counties,
11 how the government works, a little slow sometimes.
12 And I said so just, you know, the law is there,
13 and unless they cut the funds out, you know, it's going to
14 be a good thing, and I think it needs to go back up to that
15 $10 million. I think especially this year. I think there's
16 a tremendous potential of usage of that.
17 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Let me understand your point
18 there. Are you saying you haven't received money from whom?
19 MR. MALTBY: We haven't received it from the
20 Department of Agriculture under the grant program for the, I
21 can't remember, the AB 2586, I think it was, which stated
22 that there would be a rebate back on the usage of rice
23 straw.
24 And in the cattle industry, both dairy and beef, I
25 can make a review, because I've been approached by a couple
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1 of dairymen now that they've seen the way that I chop the
2 straw, they say can I use that for bedding. I said, well,
3 can I use that for bedding and get my $20. And I said if
4 the regs ever come out and say you can, yes, you can, but
5 technically that wouldn't be the case.
6 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: How long have you been waiting
7 for this money?
8 MR. MALTBY: Nine, ten, 11 months. It was passed
9 in September, wasn't it? August, September. So.
10 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Maybe Catherine can help out.
11 You tried to ignore me.
12 MR. MALTBY: And not to be totally critical, the
13 person who is writing this has been under the gun to do
14 quite a few other things.
15 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I understand.
16 MR. MALTBY: Agriculture was shoved at him and
17 said, here, you do this and those ten things over here.
18 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Dan Webb was going to be
19 coming over, I think, but he was unfortunately not able to
20 come. I'm not trying to pick on him.
21 MR. MALTBY: I'll cut them a little slack for a
22 few more days here, then see what happens.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Do you have much -- I'm
24 getting concerned about the time, Jerry. I know we have a
25 few more witnesses here.
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1 MR. MALTBY: Sure. I'll try to elaborate just a
2 little bit.
3 I spent quite a bit of time in China, five
4 different trips, over there putting a cattle project
5 together. I spent a lot of time in the rural areas. I know
6 how rice straw they use and what they use it for. They use
7 it for most of the cardboard boxes that you get that come
8 from China are all made out of rice straw. All their paper
9 is made out of rice straw. There's a very good chance that
10 if the funding were available, most of the paper in
11 California a lot of the newspaper would be made of that rice
12 straw. I think there's some real things you can do there.
13 And I would just like to say that I think the feed
14 is not the total answer, by any means, but it is something
15 that can be done immediately.
16 The erosion control and Joe has already covered
17 that, but the newspaper thing is big tonnage, is big
18 tonnage. The feed export could be half a million and
19 million tons a year.
20 Korea was blocked from coming into China because
21 they carried hoof and mouth disease in the rice straw. That
22 was four million tons. Four million tons.
23 It is a trade barrier. He's trying to be nice.
24 I'm not going to be nice. It is a trade barrier. I fought
25 it all my life with the cattle industry. I fought it with
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1 the rice industry going in. We've had the stuff sitting on
2 the docks and to have them say, no, we won't accept this,
3 but if of course if you lower your price down to a hundred
4 dollars a ton, sure, just bring it on in, then they'll grind
5 it, but they don't want to do it.
6 So it is a trade barrier and they're doing the
7 same thing with the rice straw.
8 But again if you have any questions about my
9 project or other things, I would just like to say I hope
10 that you raise the grant up, and I hope that you do
11 something into the phases of the domestic marketing and
12 allow your grant to take that in, so we can give some of the
13 stuff away. If I can give a thousand tons of my compost
14 away, and get some sort of compensation just to cover the
15 costs on the first deal, just my cost, all I'm asking for,
16 but me or anybody else, we can get the people to use it and
17 then we will hook them, because this compost is better than
18 commercial fertilizer. I'm a commercial fertilizer person.
19 I farm a thousand acres of rice and 90 percent of it is that
20 way.
21 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Maybe we can have some free
22 samples at the expo.
23 MR. MALTBY: Absolutely. Not a problem.
24 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Mr. Chairman, if I can just
25 ask about that compost, is it something that could be
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1 applied to just regular landscaping? And what I'm thinking
2 is it's always been my opinion that Caltrans really ought to
3 use more compost where they landscape, but my question is
4 maybe it couldn't be used on every type of plant.
5 MR. MALTBY: Yes, it can. In fact we have
6 qualified for which is a quite extensive list, you just
7 don't call Caltrans up and ask them do you have this. You
8 have to do all this testing, which we have done, and we have
9 passed, and it's getting Caltrans to use it. Because they
10 have said, well, we have to cut back on our budget and we
11 don't put as much of that on there as we used to.
12 But yes, the answer to your question is yes.
13 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Because that's a great use.
14 That's just one of many agencies that ought to be using it.
15 MR. MALTBY: We've used it for the commercial as
16 well as the landscaping.
17 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Thank you.
18 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much.
19 Chris Churchill, Kurt Rasmussen, Jeremy Murdock.
20 MR. CHURCHILL: Good afternoon, members of the
21 board. My name is Chris Churchill and I'm president of
22 Fiber Tech USA.
23 We were one of your grant recipients in 1998.
24 In 1998 the board approved a grant for $750,000
25 for Fiber Tech to build a rice straw particle board plant in
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1 Colusa that would use between 20 and 40,000 tons of rice
2 straw a year.
3 With that money and other private investment, we
4 have been able to build a plant that we project will use
5 between 40,000 and 80,000 tons a year depending on which
6 products we produce.
7 Unfortunately, as with an establishment of any new
8 technology and introduction of a new product in the market,
9 it takes a little longer than you might anticipate.
10 In our case, it took us a little longer to build
11 the plant than we originally anticipated, and then the
12 start-up of the facility took longer than we originally
13 anticipated.
14 One of the major reasons was we're one of the
15 first large-scale industrial users of rice straw, and so
16 when there was a problem, there's no one really to call to
17 say how do you have solve this problem, because nobody had
18 had that experience.
19 So solving the problems was a series of trial and
20 error, and unfortunately trial error is not the fastest way
21 of solving problems and that extended the start-up.
22 However, now we do have the plant operating
23 successfully. We are now in production. We are filling
24 orders for customers. The product we're producing meets all
25 the market requirements. It's been tested by recognized
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1 third-party agencies.
2 We're ramping up our production. We're not in
3 full production right now. We're producing a couple of days
4 a week, but we will be ramping up over time and we'll be
5 producing 24 hours a day and seven days a week. It's at
6 that point we'll still be using significant amounts of
7 straw. You know, we are still -- we're still in business
8 and people are taking our products. Hopefully the long road
9 of starting the plant and getting it up to full production
10 is nearly over.
11 We appreciate the faith that the board put into us
12 for granting us the money. The money significantly helped
13 us not only in paying our bills, but also in gaining some
14 credibility and raising additional funds.
15 So just wanted to say thank you.
16 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Congratulations.
17 MR. CHURCHILL: Thank you.
18 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Kurt Rasmussen and Jeremy
19 Murdock.
20 MR. RASMUSSEN: Dr. Lloyd, thank you for letting
21 me come up here and talk to you. It's been a little over a
22 year ago that I told you I think we could solve all the rice
23 straw problems. And I don't know if we can solve them all,
24 but we can give you a long way in the right direction.
25 And I would like to pass you out a couple of
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1 things that we have done with rice straw. Here is two
2 different items, if you want to pass one from each bag.
3 So what we've been doing is, and I thank you,
4 Jerry, for your comments. We've been working with Jerry
5 Maltby and we've been working with Chico University and we
6 believe that we can enhance rice straw in the field or off
7 the fields, so that it will become worth using it again, you
8 can either use it as a fertilizer and you can use it for
9 composting.
10 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: You can use this for
11 fertilizer or composting?
12 MR. RASMUSSEN: Yes. It can used for bedding. It
13 can also be used for cattle feed.
14 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Bedding?
15 MR. RASMUSSEN: For bedding. The dry stuff.
16 There's two bags there. One is wet and one is dry.
17 The wet one would be one you could use for cattle
18 feed or you can plow it in as a fertilizer. It can be used
19 either way.
20 The dry one would be very good for bedding for
21 dairy farmers and if you -- so in other words what the thing
22 is that we can check the rice grower and he can solve all
23 the environmental problem for the dairy farmer and here's
24 basically how you would do it. You would take the rice
25 straw there and give it to his dairy cows at about ten
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1 percent, and then you would take the other rice straw and
2 put down as bedding. You will now be able to eliminate most
3 of his methane gas out of the rear end of the cow and when
4 the cow manure drops down in the other kind of bedding, you
5 will take care of the ammonia, most of the ammonia problem.
6 So now it makes something like this and then if you will
7 scoop it off and put it into an air bag and compost it, you
8 get a better compost than you can buy at Home Depot.
9 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Did Mr. Maltby verify that
10 there is less methane? Did you verify that there was less
11 methane from the cow?
12 MR. MALTBY: I have no way to prove that.
13 MR. RASMUSSEN: We have no proof of that or how
14 much it is, we just know that it reduces and make the cow
15 healthier. This is one thing we do know.
16 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: How do you know?
17 MR. RASMUSSEN: There's other research we've done
18 around the world, and many other places, and I don't have
19 all the answers right here, but EM is used in about a
20 hundred countries. It's not a new thing. It's a new thing
21 in the United States, but it's around the world in about a
22 hundred countries and it's an national farm policy in about
23 six or seven countries where they use it as a policy.
24 So if you took this and put it into the dairy
25 farms, now you can reduce his emission and odors to the --
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1 up to there -- up to -- you won't have all this and all
2 these things coming down so you can help reduce the air
3 pollution, and make a healthier cow and get rid of the rice
4 straw and the same time he won't need all of his ponds and
5 so forth, he won't need it as much, because the straw will
6 absorb the liquids.
7 If you read it in the report there you will see
8 that we can enhance the rice straw by using the EM
9 implementation, we enhance the nutrition value of it and it
10 will enhance the value and there's more studies being done.
11 But again we need to apply for some funding if we
12 can get some for -- we need more help in funding for data.
13 So, Jeremy, you want to come up?
14 I brought my expert along here, who has been
15 running the program more than I have. Ask him all the
16 questions.
17 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Okay.
18 MR. MURDOCK: Thank you for this opportunity to
19 speak.
20 I'm the president of EM Living Soil Systems. And
21 we've started to work on some of these alternatives to rice
22 straw burning.
23 We feel like the EM culture can be applied to help
24 some of the incorporation problems, and help develop some of
25 the commercial off-field usages of rice straw.
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1 Basically because of the unique aspects of EM
2 culture having both anaerobic bacteria and aerobic bacteria,
3 we can apply it in incorporation methods in both non-flooded
4 and flooded fields, so some of the problems associated with
5 non-flooded fields incorporating rice straw is heavy
6 mechanical or high mechanical energy needed because of the
7 high fiber content to work it in.
8 And through preliminary research we have already
9 found that EM is highly effective at breaking down a lot of
10 the lignin rich fiber that creates that barrier for
11 decomposition.
12 So we feel like there's a lot of possibilities
13 with spraying EM into non-flooded fields and then greatly
14 reducing the mechanical soil straw preparations, which would
15 then decrease energy inputs, and as well as particulate
16 matter emissions.
17 And then with flooded -- the problems associated
18 with flooding, well, they found that flooding is a more
19 effective way to incorporate rice straw, but there is all
20 sorts of putrefactive anaerobic volatile gases coming off
21 the top, large amounts of methane especially.
22 And because there's so many anaerobic bacteria if
23 we spray the rice straw prior to flooding and colonize it
24 with anaerobic bacteria we'll eliminate those gaseous
25 emissions greatly during the winter flooding period.
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1 We're also working on developing alternative
2 commercial industry for rice straw. People have been
3 talking about RNE. One of them that has not grown in
4 popularity or grown in tonnage used is bedding, and we feel
5 like that bedding has a lot of potential, especially in
6 poultry industries, because it eliminates the ammonia.
7 And you are talking about proof of that. We do
8 have data now that proves through fermentation we're able to
9 reduce ammonia levels in ammonia levels 77 percent, and
10 that's from preliminary data. We're still getting more
11 data. That's the first point of data collection.
12 And there's many points there after that we're
13 waiting for to come up with the full data analysis.
14 But, we feel like from international research,
15 methane reduction will be parallel to ammonia reduction.
16 I've not been able to find methane research done in America
17 and we hope to do some soon.
18 The other industry is cattle feed. We're hoping
19 to really expand that and make it a highly affordable price.
20 And we're doing research in the straw burning
21 industry.
22 The material that you have, that straw, it's
23 called bokashi. And it might become very popular in the
24 next five years, hopefully.
25 But that you alluded to the fact of using it as a
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1 compost, and the system of agriculture that I've done in the
2 last two years, called nature farming, uses that as a
3 compost replacement. It's a much more efficient method as
4 far as energy inputs, the mechanical inputs and time inputs,
5 when compared to making compost, and the results are equal
6 or greater than using compost.
7 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: But the dry sample that we got
8 that's not treated with your material?
9 MR. MURDOCK: It is. It's stabilized by drying.
10 It's just the wet and dry. It's two different products. In
11 fact you can't use bedding wet. You know, you need to apply
12 the bedding dry, but yet if you were to --
13 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: For example, but like when you
14 use that as a -- in the landscaping as a compost as a mulch?
15 MR. MURDOCK: You could. You can use it wet or
16 dry as a mulch, because it gets rained on, dries out, so you
17 can use that wet or dry. For shipping costs it might be
18 more useful to dry it.
19 You want to, let's say, you're tilling in a cover
20 crop, you would want to apply the bokashi wet into the cover
21 crop and then just --
22 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: How do you spell that?
23 MR. MURDOCK: B-o-k-a-s-h-i. Bokashi. And in
24 Japanese it simply means fermented organic matter.
25 And you can make bokashi out of anything.
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1 The company I founded last year essentially takes
2 byproducts, takes agricultural wastes and we remediate it
3 with EM. We'll remediate anything. We've done projects
4 where we remediate a brewery with this and turn it into
5 cattle feed.
6 So we remediate waste material that people have to
7 spend money in hauling off, and we turn it into a
8 value-added product that they can use on a farm or sell as a
9 commodity.
10 So we're working with these different -- trying to
11 develop these different alternative usages, off-field usages
12 for bokashi, and basically EM is highly effective at
13 breaking down the surface tension of rice straw, and that's
14 kind of the barrier to incorporation into using it as feed.
15 It's not palatable, it's not soft, it's not easy to
16 incorporate.
17 And just to sum it up, EM is highly effective at
18 breaking down, as you can tell, if you just feel the
19 material, it doesn't feel anything like rice straw
20 untreated. And if you look at it, the fibers are kind of
21 being pulled apart, and that -- and the data collected is
22 indicative of what one can observe.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thanks very much.
24 I must say, when I -- Mr. Rasmussen first brought
25 this to our attention, I was a little bit skeptical,
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1 although hoping that it would pan out, but to hear some
2 independent verification today that things are working and
3 seeing this, that's great.
4 MR. MURDOCK: It's working out great. And, you
5 know, we installed, I was out a few weeks ago installing an
6 injection system into Jerry's feed lot to inject EM into the
7 drinking water, and see just vertically integrating EM
8 allows Jerry to make a higher grade compost easier.
9 If you insert it earlier into the chain, then the
10 byproducts, the manure created from those cattle will be
11 more conducive into making a higher quality compost.
12 So it's just kind of the chain reaction, and then
13 year after year the populations establish in those
14 environments and EM becomes more and more effective over
15 time, kind of an a logarithmic curve, you know.
16 So whenever you're dealing with something
17 biological on a microbal level, you know, it just takes time
18 to see results. A lot of times we're used to just putting
19 some highly soluble fertilizer or something just to see
20 results of the plants getting green instantly. We're seeing
21 results now, and we just have to keep in mind we're dealing
22 with EM, things aren't overnight, but the gains are really
23 large in the long term, especially environmentally, and we
24 just feel like using EM we can just do a lot of things using
25 less energy and creating less volatile gas emissions.
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1 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you.
2 Mr. Kenny, we have EM Systems working.
3 MR. MURDOCK: Thanks.
4 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Any questions from the board
5 or comments?
6 Ms. D'Adamo.
7 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: I had a couple of comments
8 about the report.
9 I think that it would be most helpful if in the
10 section regarding environmental assessment of the
11 phase-down, page 21, I think that it should include, my own
12 opinion is that I think it should include the use of water
13 and the impact that that has on our resource base, and I
14 realize that's not utilized in all instances, but as far as
15 the impact, I think it should be included in the discussion.
16 And then in addition earlier, Mr. Carrancho, am I
17 pronouncing your name right, indicated that in some
18 instances where fields are left fallow, well, in many
19 instances, in instances where a farmer, for whatever reason,
20 is not able to continue production, the result may be that
21 the field gets left fallow.
22 What sort of an impact does that have
23 environmentally?
24 And I haven't been out to these areas, I don't
25 know if the result is increased PM from the dust. I don't
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1 know. Just some of the -- something to throw out there.
2 On the ethanol section, page 15, I just like to
3 throw it out there that I think it should be more aggressive
4 and perhaps there should be a discussion of ideas that where
5 we can -- further along in this report, I realize the
6 discussion here indicates the difficulties in ethanol
7 production, but I think we need to have a little bit of a
8 responsibility in light of the fact that we adopted the RSG.
9 So I don't know if it would be in this report or
10 just elsewhere where it could be a little more aggressive on
11 this topic.
12 The credit that one of the witnesses raised, that
13 the credit is not available to the producer, could staff
14 speak to that? Is that something that is a limitation in
15 statute or is it in regulation?
16 MR. FLETCHER: If you're dealing with the $20
17 credits and the $15 credits, those are accounts that are
18 administered by CDFA, and they are statute in terms of
19 limitations on the ability to provide them to the growers
20 themselves.
21 Now, the emission reduction credits, that was also
22 referred to, is a similar situation in terms of there are
23 credits available. They can capture them and they are using
24 them.
25 BOARD MEMBER D'ADAMO: I don't want to take up a
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1 bunch of time on this today, but maybe if staff could be
2 directed to pursue this, perhaps a recommendation through
3 Mr. Ogilvie's office for possible -- there you are.
4 Clean-up legislation in this area.
5 And then, lastly, this has just been fascinating
6 to see the evolution in this area. I can see great
7 progress. I know some of the other board members mentioned
8 that as well.
9 I'm just kind of wondering if the witnesses
10 benefit when they come before us periodically to talk about
11 how they've progressed.
12 And it almost seems to me that if they do, if they
13 utilize this as an opportunity to engage in an information
14 exchange, is there something that we can do to further that
15 process along by way of holding workshops or perhaps putting
16 together some sort of a committee or an information exchange
17 of an informal nature, because it seems to me that there's
18 tremendous potential here for additional uses.
19 And as board members, we're fascinated to hear
20 about it, but we're probably not going to be utilizing that
21 information directly. It just seems that if there were more
22 of you in the room that it would be more useful for you all.
23 So I don't know. Ms. Terry.
24 MS. TERRY: Certainly that's our goal with the
25 expo is to really get the word out. And I think we have
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1 enough time here, we have planned it during the season where
2 that the farming community will be available so we will do
3 our best to have really extensive outreach and bring people
4 together.
5 That combined with the changes to the criteria to
6 allow consideration of projects that involve marketing the
7 infrastructure, we think it's time to move in that direction
8 now that we're seeing some success with fundamental concepts
9 like bedding and particle board and manufacturers, and so
10 on, so we think we can move a little bit more in the
11 marketing stage to bring perhaps Trade and Commerce and some
12 other agencies in more active process.
13 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Good. Thanks.
14 And your comment on the ethanol, I notice there we
15 did get an e-mail from a Joan Lee, the Gray Panthers,
16 encouraging us to also push on that issue.
17 With that, I guess we -- brings this item to a
18 close. No need to vote on this, it's not a regulatory item.
19 Thank you very much, staff.
20 And thank you for the presentation from the
21 farmers and the colleagues out there. Very informative.
22 We'll take a five-minute break before we go into
23 our last item.
24 We're not going to hear the enforcement item
25 today. We're going to hold that over until the next meeting
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1 in San Francisco.
2 So the next item and the last one will be the
3 smoke management program.
4 So let's take a five minute break.
5 (Thereupon a short recess was taken.)
6 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Last item on the agenda today
7 is 01-5-4, public meeting to consider the smoke management
8 guidelines program implementation status.
9 In March 2000 our board adopted revisions to the
10 agricultural burning guidelines and established the smoke
11 management guidelines for agricultural and prescribed
12 burning. The revisions enhance the smoke management program
13 by improving data collection and evaluation, augmenting
14 smoke management planning, increasing burner/air agency
15 communication and collaboration and strengthening the
16 burning authorization decision-making process.
17 When the board adopted the guidelines, we also
18 recognized the need for air district support in implementing
19 the new revisions of the guidelines.
20 The board directed staff to work with the air
21 districts and other stakeholders to assist with a variety of
22 programmatic needs, including smoke management forecasting
23 and planning, program costs and environmental impact
24 assessment.
25 While not included as part of the guidelines, the
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1 board also directed staff to report back on how to address
2 the issue of smoke from backyard residential burning.
3 Today staff will provide us with a update on the
4 status of these efforts, as well as report on air district
5 progress in implementing the provisions of the guidelines.
6 Again, I would like to turn this over to Mr. Kenny
7 and the staff presentation.
8 MR. KENNY: Thank you, Dr. Lloyd and members of
9 the board.
10 Smoke management guidelines adopted by the board
11 last year established a statewide framework for more
12 standardized smoke management planning and decision making.
13 At the same time, they provide air districts with
14 flexibility to design and implement their programs to meet
15 their unique needs.
16 The guidelines established July 1st, 2001, as the
17 deadline for air districts to develop a revised program and
18 submit them to the ARB for approval.
19 In response to the board's direction to work with
20 air districts and other stakeholders on program development,
21 we coordinated with the California Air Pollution Control
22 Officers Association to create nine smoke management working
23 groups.
24 The working groups are made up of a variety of
25 stakeholders, including federal and state land managers,
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1 fire protection agencies, air districts and the ARB.
2 The working groups have provided a forum for
3 discussion of issues and have sponsored the development of a
4 number of products to assist in development and
5 implementation of effective smoke management programs.
6 Today staff will provide an overview of the
7 working group effort, and highlight a number of the
8 products.
9 With that, I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Bruce
10 Oulrey, who will make the staff presentation.
11 MR. OULREY: Thank you, Mr. Kenny, Mr. Chairman
12 and members of the board.
13 In the interest of time, my presentation will be
14 brief.
15 I will provide with you a quick status update on
16 the implementation of the smoke management guidelines for
17 agricultural and proscribed burning.
18 I will also share the results of an analysis we
19 performed on the need to address residential garbage
20 burning.
21 As you will recall, the board amended the
22 guidelines in March 2000. The purpose of the guidelines is
23 to reduce smoke impacts and accommodate increases in
24 prescribed burning through strengthened smoke management
25 programs and improved coordination and communication among
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1 burners and air quality managers.
2 Implementation of the guidelines is going very
3 smoothly. Air managers and burners are work well together
4 on program development and day-to-day operations.
5 The guidelines are resulting in strengthened air
6 district programs in a number of areas, including
7 utilization of smoke management plans for prescribed
8 burning; the requirement for burners to obtain local daily
9 burn authorization no more than 24 hours prior to a burn;
10 the incorporation of marginal burn days to allow for limited
11 burning in specified areas; and the development of smoke
12 management tools for improving the ability to make burn
13 decisions.
14 We formed numerous working groups to assist with
15 meeting the California Environmental Quality Act
16 requirements, public education and outreach and sharing of
17 real time data resources.
18 As a whole, we are very pleased with the progress
19 that is occurring and we are committed to providing
20 additional assistance to air districts for the
21 implementation of their programs.
22 With regard to residential garbage burning,
23 working with stakeholders we identified the following
24 concerns.
25 There is a potential for dioxin emissions from
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1 this type of burning and we know that seven air districts in
2 the state do allow for it to occur.
3 300,000 households reside in these districts with
4 about 150,000 households that do not have collection and
5 disposal services.
6 Information on the actual amount of burning and
7 definitive data on emissions is still limited.
8 To address these concerns, we propose the
9 following.
10 We think educating the public on potential health
11 risks, as well as providing information and alternatives to
12 residential garbage burning is an important first step.
13 We plan to work with air districts and other
14 stakeholders to carry this out.
15 We also propose to work with stakeholders and
16 local agencies to collect more information about residential
17 burning emissions and to encourage improvements to waste
18 collection disposal services.
19 Additionally, we plan to work with air districts
20 and fire protection agencies to investigate options for
21 improving enforcement in areas that don't allow garbage
22 burning.
23 We have added residential garbage burning to ARB's
24 clean air plan and we are committed to further evaluating
25 potential for developing an air toxics control measure.
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1 We recognize some air districts believe this is a
2 local issue and we plan to work with them and other air
3 districts as we go forward.
4 In conclusion, the implementation of the smoke
5 management guidelines and air district smoke management
6 programs are proving to be a success. Communication and
7 coordination between burners and air agencies has been
8 essential.
9 We are appreciative of the cooperative efforts
10 that have been taking place with stakeholders through the
11 working group process, and we're committed to providing
12 continued support for program development and
13 implementation.
14 Thank you. That concludes my presentation.
15 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you very much, Bruce.
16 Questions from the board?
17 Questions from the board?
18 No.
19 With that, I think we have two people signed up to
20 testify. I recognize that Barbara and Wayne were not just
21 here for the -- Wayne Morgan from North Coast AQMD is here,
22 and as well as Barbara Lee, president of CAPCOA.
23 Wayne.
24 MR. MORGAN: Ladies first.
25 MS. LEE: Good evening, Mr. Chairman and members
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1 of the board.
2 I'm happy to have an opportunity to talk to you
3 this evening about CAPCOA's efforts to work with ARB staff
4 implementing the enhanced smoke management guidelines.
5 I want to start off by acknowledging the extent of
6 efforts staff have taken to involved air districts in this
7 phase of the implementation of the program. We're very
8 happy with all of the efforts they have done in that area.
9 There are two specific implementation issues that
10 I would like to draw your attention to.
11 The first is that at the hearing where you adopted
12 this program last year, the board committed to help us
13 secure long-term and full funding for this enhanced smoke
14 management program.
15 We have been working on that over the past year
16 with ARB staff. I know that you've included in your budget
17 last year a proposal to help districts in their funding
18 efforts for this program.
19 That was not a successful effort on all of our
20 parts.
21 I would like to urge you to make this a top
22 priority in the coming year's budget. This program is
23 costly to implement. Many of the efforts are intensive on
24 the part of the district, and the equipment and other
25 infrastructure issues involved are costly for us, and we do
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1 need some help in funding the program.
2 So I would like to ask you to please make that a
3 top priority.
4 The second issue is that last month the California
5 Air Pollution Control Officers Association voted
6 overwhelmingly to ask the ARB board to please move ahead in
7 adopting an air toxics control measure to ban burn barrels.
8 We want this to be take top priority for you as well, and
9 this is because of the high exposure many people receive
10 from uncontrolled emission of garbage in the burn
11 barrels.
12 Unfortunately after we took this vote we heard
13 from three CAPCOA members that they have some significant
14 concerns about hardships this action might create in their
15 areas because they lack sufficient garbage service. We
16 think these are valid concerns and we urge staff to consider
17 that and address them in the development of the ATCM, so
18 that the public in those areas is not harmed by your actions
19 going forward.
20 But again I want to reiterate CAPCOA's support for
21 an air toxics control measure banning burn barrels and
22 addressing the issues of uncontrolled garbage burning.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Maybe express my ignorance
24 here, but why doesn't the local district have the authority
25 to ban these without relying on ARB to send them an ATCM?
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1 MS. LEE: Many districts have gone ahead and done
2 this. Some districts are restricted in their ability to do
3 it, either statutorily in a couple of cases, or for
4 political reasons in other cases And,
5 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: In those cases you'd like us
6 to bear the heat and use us to --
7 MS. LEE: The districts don't have specific
8 authority to adopt air toxics control measures in the same
9 way that the ARB does have, and this is a significant source
10 of air toxics emissions, and we think it's a viable approach
11 to addressing it.
12 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: What's the status of our work
13 in this area?
14 MR. FLETCHER: Well, over the last year we have
15 been working with one of the numerous work groups we've
16 formed on smoke management over the last year, but one of
17 them was specifically targeted at residential burning and
18 specifically garbage burning and we have actually collected
19 quite a bit of information about the scope of the problem
20 and that's the slide up there indicated that there is about
21 300,000 households we think that are in areas that still
22 allow garbage burning. About half of those are in areas
23 where we think that there is residential service to pick up
24 the garbage.
25 The issues that we're looking at is really trying
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1 to quantify what the dioxin and benzene, which are probably
2 the two toxic air contaminants that we're dealing there are.
3 US EPA has done work to do testing on this for under a
4 couple different scenarios and that's basically the only
5 testing that's been done on there.
6 I think the issues that we need to look at is
7 working with the fire agencies there is some question about
8 whether it's better to burn stuff on the ground or burn it
9 in burn barrel from fire safety perspective, so those are
10 areas I think we need to look into.
11 We need to get a better handle on what the
12 exposure actually is from the combustion of this material.
13 I think the 150, from our perspective, from what
14 we know right now, may be an upper, you know, an upper
15 level. We just don't know how frequently this occurs.
16 In conjunction with the testing and monitoring
17 we're now going to be doing and we're starting up in the Bay
18 Area and shortly thereafter in the South Coast to start
19 assessing what the ambient levels of dioxin are. I think it
20 will start giving us a baseline to evaluate what the
21 incremental impacts of this are.
22 Quite frankly, we're going to proceed with a
23 continued collection of the information to try to get a
24 better handle on what the exposures are and what the
25 emissions are and we may end up having to do some of our own
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1 testing to see what the impact is, but I don't think there's
2 any question that there are dioxin and benzene emissions
3 from this source and it's pretty widespread in some of these
4 areas.
5 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: So that Barbara can go back to
6 her members and Wayne can go back, and I don't get a call
7 from Bob Reynolds, when do we expect to bring something to
8 the board?
9 MR. FLETCHER: Well, it usually takes us, our rule
10 of thumb for an airborne toxic control measure it takes
11 about three to five person years and roughly two -- sorry,
12 three to five person, people to develop it and it takes
13 about two years to develop an ATCM.
14 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: The clock started when?
15 MR. FLETCHER: The clock started probably about
16 six months ago. So I think if we were able to do it in 18
17 months we would probably be okay.
18 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: So we're into 2002.
19 MR. FLETCHER: I think that would be about right.
20 Yeah. Or what's next year? 2002. Yeah. End of 2002.
21 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Good.
22 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Mr. Chairman.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Yes.
24 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: I just have a comment.
25 When the staff briefed me, I asked them for some
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1 of the areas that were still allowing the burning, and I
2 found it very interesting because I expected very remote
3 little areas to be -- and rural, very rural, to be on that
4 list.
5 Reality is they are not necessarily those areas.
6 In fact there are some areas that I was really shocked that
7 they were allowing this residential burn.
8 And in thinking about representing the largest and
9 the most rural of counties, when you think of the distances
10 of San Bernardino, and we were able to provide either
11 transfer facilities and albeit some of our waste disposal
12 sites might be thought of in jeopardy today for what we know
13 about those sites, but what we knew and when we established
14 them, we were able to provide to 22,000 square miles some
15 sort of waste disposal.
16 Now, some of it had to be obviously driven a
17 tremendous distance.
18 So it concerns me that there are some counties,
19 and I will name a couple of them. One was Monterey,
20 correct. Now you tell me about Monterey. San Luis Obispo.
21 Santa Barbara. I consider those absolutely -- that's
22 unacceptable.
23 And so I'm a little concerned about what areas
24 we're allowing this burning in. I mean, I'm a generous
25 person, but I'm not real generous when I think of what our
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1 areas are doing and those areas are allowing that burning.
2 It's just not realistic.
3 MS. LEE: The three areas that I spoke of that
4 expressed concerns about hardship were very rural areas.
5 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: That may be.
6 MS. LEE: Lassen, Siskiyou and --
7 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: Sure. And those would be
8 the ones that I would expect and be understanding.
9 But some of the others, I'm just not understanding
10 of that at all, because you can do transfer facilities.
11 Very easy to do. I mean, we do it in massive desert areas
12 that, you know, I've represented, so it can be done.
13 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I think we can --
14 MS. LEE: In the case of the Monterey, I don't
15 know all of the circumstances of all of the areas, but I do
16 know in the case of the Monterey district that when the
17 district was formed, one of the things that went into their
18 charter was that they were unable to ban garbage burning.
19 So.
20 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: That's a very strange one.
21 MS. LEE: It's a circumstance where as much as
22 they would like to address the situation they can't.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I think you should alert Bob
24 Carr that if he doesn't come next month to testify about
25 transport of ozone from the Bay Area to San Luis Obispo, we
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1 are going to ask him why does he allow exposure to dioxin
2 from open burning. So has he done that trade-off there. So
3 just alert Bob, if he's not retired by then.
4 MS. LEE: I will.
5 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: But you can see what I'm
6 saying. I mean there are some counties that I truly
7 understand it, but those others, there's not a reason they
8 should be having residential burning.
9 MR. FLETCHER: Just to clarify, if I might, some
10 of these areas it's not the entire county.
11 BOARD MEMBER RIORDAN: And I recognize that.
12 But even if you planted their footprint, for
13 instance, on San Bernardino County, you'd see why I have
14 that concern, because it just don't make sense. It doesn't
15 compute.
16 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I think this paper that was
17 attached to Bob Reynolds' letter here was pretty
18 interesting. I think it just adds to the case.
19 Thank you very much, Barbara.
20 Wayne.
21 MR. MORGAN: Dr. Lloyd, members of the board.
22 Good to be here.
23 I have a much greater appreciation for this board
24 because of all the topics that you discussed today.
25 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I appreciate that.
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1 MR. MORGAN: All way from cow mature to electric
2 vehicles. Quite a challenge.
3 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Let Bob also know that we
4 covered it.
5 MR. MORGAN: I will do that.
6 The questions are raised here by Ms. Riordan is
7 absolutely right on target. It's really hard to understand
8 why some of the urbanized areas still allow residential
9 burning.
10 I can speak a little bit on behalf of Bob Carr,
11 because I know a little bit of his situation is that his
12 residential burning ban is being phased in over a period of
13 about three or four years and it's designed for various
14 communities.
15 So there is an effort underway.
16 But I think it points to something that is I would
17 like to stress and you probably will never hear this from me
18 again and that is at times it is needful for the Air
19 Resources Board to take the leadership. It really is. And
20 at times we can help support you in a lot of leaderships,
21 but this is a real delicate political issue when it comes to
22 residential burning.
23 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I recollect when we first
24 started with these regulations, your reactions were not
25 quite the same.
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1 MR. MORGAN: Right.
2 I would also like to thank the Air Resources Board
3 for approving our smoke management plan. As you know, we
4 were the first to go through the process, and we're the
5 first to receive full approval, and I would really like to
6 thank Mike Kenny, Lynn Terry, and Bob Fletcher for their
7 effort in working with us to make that happen.
8 As you know, we've had our smoke management
9 program, it's been working for about 10, 11 years now. As I
10 said before, it's not perfect, but it works. It's a
11 cooperative program working with those that do the burning
12 of forest slash and so forth.
13 And you were speaking earlier with the rice
14 growers and so forth about incentive programs.
15 One of the things that I would like to suggest
16 that maybe the Air Resources Board investigate, and that
17 would be alternatives and maybe incentive programs for
18 alternatives to avoid the need for burning forest slash.
19 Some of that now is being used because of the economics are
20 right to use it in biomass fuel, but there are incentives at
21 times that need to be applied in order to encourage more and
22 more of that to develop markets and so forth for chipping or
23 for using it for biomass fuel.
24 And so I would like to suggest that if you can
25 think of some financial incentive ways to bring that about,
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1 that would be very helpful.
2 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Would that qualify also for
3 some of the biomass to ethanol?
4 MR. MORGAN: That's true. That's down the road, I
5 guess.
6 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Not really far.
7 MR. MORGAN: Not too far?
8 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Yeah.
9 Your comments, by the way, also, Wayne, really
10 appreciate that, because I know, Lynn, when we went up
11 there, see how far we've come, and so I really would
12 congratulate Mike and Lynn and Bob in their effort. To hear
13 you say that, it came from a position of not necessarily
14 seeing eye to eye to where it is today. So that's great.
15 MR. MORGAN: And it is appreciated and our board
16 especially appreciates it, as well as you folks coming to
17 the North Coast to see it firsthand.
18 So again thank you very much.
19 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: The owl picture is still with
20 us.
21 MR. MORGAN: Do you still have the owl picture?
22 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Yes.
23 MR. MORGAN: One of the things I wanted to mention
24 and one of the main reasons I wanted to come down was to try
25 and support the Air Resources Board in setting a high
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1 priority on burning -- banning the burn barrel in
2 residential areas.
3 As you probably have been made aware is that the
4 federal EPA and the New York State Department of Health
5 performed a study to determine the emission of dioxin,
6 furans and several other organics.
7 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: This was the paper that was
8 attached to Bob's letter?
9 MR. MORGAN: That's part of it. That's part of
10 the study, yes.
11 But they equated the emissions from burn barrels
12 with that of a municipal waste incinerator and it showed
13 that a 200 ton per day municipal waste incinerator equated
14 to four households burning in their burn barrels. So you
15 can see the magnitude of dioxins, furans that go into the
16 community.
17 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: They're uncontrolled burns.
18 MR. MORGAN: They're uncontrolled. They're
19 emitted at low levels at close proximity to people breathing
20 it, so the impact from it I think is very considerable.
21 And then Bob's letter it showed that three burn
22 barrels equating it again to hospital incinerators, which
23 this board has adopted a control measure for dioxin with
24 hospital incinerators, and in this case I think it was 1700
25 pounds of hospital waste being burned, equated to 500 pounds
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1 per year of residential waste in a burn barrel, and both of
2 those it took three burn barrels to equate to the same
3 dioxin emissions of the hospital incinerator burning that
4 1700 pounds per year. 1700 or 17,000, I think it was.
5 So again it kind of shows you the magnitude of
6 what we're stating here and what the data has shown.
7 The largest number of complaints that we receive
8 on the North Coast are from burn barrels, residential
9 burning.
10 It's a significant part of our workload and
11 responding to these, as well as the fire departments in
12 responding to the smoke complaints, and a lot of them are
13 people burning unapproved materials.
14 And in my opinion it's a real poor use of our
15 resources in that area that it could be better used in other
16 areas if they weren't being diluted in to these particular
17 complaints.
18 There are alternatives available is the other
19 important factor, I think. Garbage service is available in
20 most areas in California.
21 And as Ms. Riordan said, there are transfer
22 stations in areas that are outlying that allow us proper
23 disposal.
24 In some areas on the northern part of California,
25 I understand there's not garbage service available.
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1 What I would propose to you is that it could
2 easily, residential burning from burn barrels could easily
3 be banned with a proviso that if there is not garbage
4 service available, then maybe you have to wait until
5 alternatives catch up a bit.
6 But where garbage service is available, there's
7 recycling services available, there really is no need to
8 burn.
9 The other issue I would just like to bring out is
10 that I know that you, Dr. Lloyd, are committed to
11 environmental justice issues and making sure those are dealt
12 with.
13 And I'm sure that the other board members here are
14 also committed to environmental justice issues.
15 I believe this is an environmental justice issue.
16 It's occurring in poor and low-income areas, and I think
17 it's something that you can use the board can do about it by
18 asking staff to set a high priority on developing a control
19 measure that will eventually ban or eliminate the dioxin
20 exposures through this route.
21 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: I think you heard Bob's
22 response to my question, what you heard was that we are
23 going to set a high priority and we'll go as fast as we can
24 here and Bob had committed to get this to the board towards
25 the end of next year.
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1 MR. MORGAN: Thank you very much. I appreciate it
2 very much.
3 CHAIRPERSON LLOYD: Thank you.
4 Other questions or comments from the board?
5 This is informational. We don't have to take any
6 action here.
7 So thank you. Thank you, staff. Thank you for
8 cooperating.
9 We don't have -- we have no one signed up for any
10 other business here open comment period.
11 So with that, I would like to officially bring the
12 June 28th meeting of the Air Resources Board to a close.
13 Thank you all very much.
14 And thank you, staff.
15 (Thereupon the meeting was adjourned
16 at 6:20 p.m.)
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