How Cleaner Fuel Standards Actually Work

 Vincent J. Curtis


11 July 2019
  
The Liberal government, as a means of reducing Canadian CO2 emissions, is proposing to impose something like California’s ‘cleaner fuel’ standards on Canadian motorists.  This can’t possibly work for the stated purpose of reducing CO2 emissions.

The key element of the standard is the adulteration of motor fuel with oxygenated components, like ethanol.  Canada already includes ethanol to the extent of 10 percent in motor fuel, so perhaps Trudeau plans to increase the requirement to 15 percent.

One reason why increasing the amount of ethanol, or adding some other oxygenated adulterant, to gasoline won’t work to reduce CO2 is that you have to manufacture the adulterant.

To make ethanol, you have to plant corn, grow corn, harvest corn, ferment corn, separate and purify the ethanol, dispose of the waste, and then transport the ethanol to market.  All this takes fossil fuel.  Whatever CO2 might be saved coming out of the tailpipe of a car is more than made up in CO2 emissions from having to make the ethanol in the first place.

But it is far from clear that oxygenates in fuel even reduce CO2 output from the tailpipe.  Substituting an oxygen for a carbon in the fuel reduces the energy content of the fuel.  So to get the same amount of power from the engine, you need to burn slightly more fuel – and putting out the same amount of CO2.

There are well-known ways of reducing CO2 emissions from fuels.  One method is to use natural gas or propane as the fuel.  These have a higher ratio of hydrogen to carbon than gasoline does, and so will produce less CO2 per unit of power.

Another method is to increase compression ratios in engines.  In Europe, where gasoline costs $5 to $6 per litre, cars use small, high compression engines and 98 octane fuel to maximize efficiency.  And greater efficiency means less CO2 output per distance travelled.  But if you travel more because fuel costs you less, then those benefits to CO2 emissions are lost.

The Europeans also use diesel engines in cars much more than in North America.  The reason those fuel-efficient diesel cars are not sold in North America is to protect the North American car companies.  They don’t make those engines in North America.  The excuse for keeping them out is the allegation that these diesels are too “sooty” for North American air quality standards.  Diesels do produce soot, but if the aim is to reduce CO2 emissions, the prohibition against cleaner diesel engines needs to be relaxed.

Yet another method of reducing tailpipe CO2 emissions is to use hybrid engines or out-and-out electric engines.  Apart from the high capital costs of these engines, the problem here arises from how the batteries get recharged.  If, in the case of hybrids, they get recharged by idling the car in the driveway, then the only benefit of CO2 reduction comes from driving a lower powered car.  If the electric car is recharged from power produced by a coal-burning power plant, then the CO2 reduction benefit is also illusory.

There are no free lunches when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions from the tailpipe.  What you seem to gain at one point is lost elsewhere.  And anti-smog air quality standards, such as those pertaining to NO_x emissions, can get lost in the shuffle.

The only way out is to force a reduction in the distance driven by Canadians.  Higher taxes on fuel are an obvious way of doing this, but raising taxes for the sake of climate change is not popular.  This is why Trudeau is trying to back-door an effective tax increase though the higher costs of a “cleaner fuel” standard, and why Andrew Scheer is calling the cost effect of such a standard a tax.

The use of fossil fuels is essential to the running of the Canadian economy and to feeding her people.  Addressing climate might be important, but it is only one important thing among many.
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