Trucking group unveils Canadian enviro-truck plan

OTTAWA — Now that the new Conservative government has ditched Ottawa’s commitment to the flawed international Kyoto protocol in favor of a made-in-Canada solution, the Canadian Trucking Alliance has some suggestions as to how the feds can clean up the environment and help carriers at the same time.

In a document entitled Trucking: A Made-in-Canada Clean Air Act, the CTA outlined 14 proposed measures to reduce smog and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the freight transportation sector, including legislating speed limiters on all trucks in Canada — a plan the carrier group has been pushing since last year.

The Province of Quebec last week included adoption of speed limiters set at 105 km/h in its own action plan on climate change. The concept is still being studied by Ontario policymakers and by Transport Canada.

The industry, as CTA CEO David Bradley points out, is already out of the gates in tackling environmental responsibilities. Beginning Jan. 1, 2007 new truck models will be virtually the cleanest vehicles on the road as EPA-regulated engines will cut particulate matter (PM) — a major contributor to smog linked to respiratory illness — by 90 percent.

Speed limiters, tax incentives, and wide-base tires
would save tones of GHG from trucks, says CTA

The diesel fuel required for those engines will also have its sulfur content reduced from 500 ppm (parts per million) to 15 ppm. In fact, most older model trucks would have to fill up with the ultra low sulfur diesel as well.

Furthermore, by 2010, the emission of the other major precursor of smog, nitrous oxides (NOx), will be reduced by 95 percent from today’s equipment.

To boost vehicle trade cycles, the CTA is urging the government to offer tax incentives to carriers that adopt the new technology right away. “The key will be to accelerate the penetration of these vehicles into the total fleet,” Bradley said.

CTA’s proposed plan also points to a host of other opportunities, such as increasing the installation of auxiliary power units to reduce truck idling. Besides APUs and speed limiters, the group also calls for liberalizing size and weight rules to increase the use of single, wide-base tires, which offer significant fuel economy savings, but which are presently limited by restrictions on truck weights standards developed in the 1980s. The same standards also act as an obstacle to incorporating non-payload aerodynamic improvements and other vehicle design enhancements, CTA says.

While boutique fuels such as biodiesel have been an attractive proposal for politicians in recent years, CTA reiterated its warning that government’s be extra careful in researching biodiesel.

CTA wants governments to clearly define which biodiesel blends are being considered for trucks; to run joint pilot programs to ensure that operational concerns associated with using biodiesel in the new smog-free trucks in Canadian conditions are addressed; and to introduce and enforce stringent biodiesel quality, manufacturing and testing standards, before considering a mandate for biodiesel use in commercial trucks.

Finally, CTA suggests other freight modes — rail, marine and air — should be subject to the same type of stringent fuel and engine emissions standards as trucks, given that they too affect air quality and produce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Trucking is the dominant mode of freight transportation in Canada and will continue to be so. As such we have a major role to play in ensuring that air pollution and GHG emissions are minimized,” Bradley says. “We have been and will continue to play a leadership role and are calling upon the federal and provincial governments to work with us to achieve this.”

The CTA claims that implementation of the measures contained in a document would have the equivalent impact — in terms of air quality and GHG — of removing over 200,000 heavy trucks from Canadian roads.