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US Appeals Court Says California Can Set its Own Low Carbon Fuel Standard:
Late last week, the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit published an opinion (PDF) stating that California's regulation of fuel sales based on a lifecycle analysis of carbon emissions did not violate federal commerce rules.
Since 2011, California has had a Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) program, which requires fuel sellers to reduce their fuel's carbon intensity by certain deadlines. If oil, ethanol, or other fuel sellers can't meet those deadlines, they can buy credits from companies that have complied with the standard.
California measures "fuel intensity" over the lifecycle of the fuel, so oil extracted from tar sands (which might require a lot of processing) would be penalized more than lighter oil that requires minimal processing. Ethanol made with coal would struggle to meet its carbon intensity goals more than ethanol made from gas.
Plaintiffs representing the ethanol and oil industries have challenged these rules in the court system. Most recently, they challenged California's 2015 version of the rules. (In September 2018, the state's Air Resources Board announced new amendments to the Low Carbon Fuel Standard rules, but those are not discussed in the 9th Circuit's most recent opinion.)
[...] The opinion noted:
The California legislature is rightly concerned with the health and welfare of humans living in the State of California... These persons may be subjected, for example, to crumbling or swamped coastlines, rising water, or more intense forest fires caused by higher temperatures and related droughts, all of which many in the scientific communities believe are caused or intensified by the volume of greenhouse gas emissions.
(Score: 5, Informative) by insanumingenium on Thursday January 24 2019, @11:00PM (1 child)
We can even go further than that, we can take a "fairly" accurate historical comparison.
a 1964 1/2 Mustang has a base price of $2,368 or according to usinflationcalculator.com $19,181.33 today
a 2019 Mustang has a base price of $26,395
In those 55 years we have seen the rise of robotic manufacturing (which by all accounts lowers costs), and the rise of safety and emissions tech.
The Mustang is still a compact FR sport coupe. More or less equivalent to what you would have gotten in 64 1/2. It is true the base is now an i4 making 310hp/350ftlb on 21/31mpg, vs an i6 (or bigger) at 105hp/156ftlb on let's just say considerably worse fuel economy. You also get airbags (and airbags for your airbags almost anymore), ABS, aforementioned environmental controls (platinum in every car), AM/FM radio (no simple AM for me), better crash survivability, better handling, LED lights. But it really is the same car we are talking about. Sources are wikipedia for gen1 Mustang and ford.com for modern.
In that same 55 years, we have went from having "smog days" where you didn't go outside if you could help it, to such a thing being unthinkable again in about a generation. We went from 5.36 fatalities per million vehicle miles in the US to right around 1 (latest stat shown is 2017 at 1.16) according to the stats on wikipedia.
It is trivially obvious that emission controls add significant expense (hence why we have people chopping catalytic converters off cars to harvest that platinum). The question then, is 55 years of tech progress, and safety equipment, and environmental equipment worth a ~30% price increase (based on CPI)?
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Sunday January 27 2019, @06:58AM
I was talking about the cost of safety measures being negligible. Emissions control is not what I had in mind, but as you pointed out, it is unlikely that emission controls are the main element driving the increased cost of a new car.
You are still welcome on my lawn.