EPA Puts Money into West Coast Ship Projects

The Environmental Protection Agency is putting $4.6 million into four diesel emission reduction grants affecting freight transportation using “emerging technologies,” mostly for projects that curb pollution from ships and port areas on the West Coast.

The agency said the new awards are “part of a summer-long rollout of $120 million in clean diesel grants, some of which put “cutting-edge technologies in the marketplace.”

The largest grant in the latest batch from the EPA is $1.5 million to California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District, for an exhaust capturing mechanism used on ships while in port.

Another, $1.2 million to the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency in Washington, goes for a seawater scrubber that removes pollution from large ship engines.

The Los Angeles Harbor Department is getting $731,000 for a hybrid crane used at ports, which uses a small diesel generator combined with a battery.

One grant will go to the California Air Resources Board, which will tap nearly $1.2 million from the EPA to reduce locomotive engine exhausts of nitrogen oxides.

EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said that with these awards her agency is “promoting innovations that will not only create jobs, but also keep dangerous pollution out of the air we breathe.”

The summer-long grant program aims to help lower emissions from the existing fleet of 11 million diesel engines. The agency also has new heavy-duty highway and non-road diesel engine standards taking effect over the next decade to reduce emissions from new engines.

But since those new rules only apply to engines built in 2007 or later, the EPA says “the 11 million diesel engines in use today will continue to pollute unless emissions are controlled with technology and/or cleaner fuels.”

-- Contact John D. Boyd at jboyd@joc.com.