Murky Progress Reported With Clean Air Action Plan

The twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach did their best to put a positive spin on the progress of their joint Clean Air Action Plan at the 11th quarterly Implementation Stakeholder Advisory Meeting, hosted online on Jan. 27. 

They highlighted new and ongoing demonstration projects — for trucks, vessels, and cargo-handling equipment — noted the difficulties created by the COVID-19 pandemic, and touted progress with the Clean Trucks Program, including the March 9 approval of a $10 per 20-foot equivalent unit fee, projected to generate about $90 million per year to provide incentives for buying zero- or near-zero-emission trucks.

“Despite setbacks and delays due to COVID, the ports have been busy managing existing demonstrations rolling out new port equipment and trucks as well as planning for future demonstrations and deployments,” said Rose Szoke, environmental specialist for the Port of Long Beach.

But the aforementioned fee is still being worked on, and won’t be implemented until the second half of this year, according to Chris Cannon, director of Environmental Management at the Port of Los Angeles. 

“The zero emissions trucks will always be exempt from the rate, we’re working on exemptions for low NOX trucks,” Cannon said. “We’ve been talking to different stakeholders and trying to come up with a program of exemptions and incentives that will be helpful, and so that still is being discussed. 

“A rate collection mechanism contract is close to being finalized. We hope to bring that to our boards within the next month, add six months to that, and that’s when we can begin collecting the rate. … We will be developing incentives and other program elements, the exemptions I referred to.”

“What we’ve seen over the past several months, since the pandemic started is that the ports have been really focused on economic uncertainty as a reason to delay their environmental initiatives,” Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Heather Kryczka told Random Lengths News afterwards. “But we’ve seen over the couple of months that the ports of LA and Long Beach have had record-breaking cargo volumes.” 

Long Beach finished with a record-breaking yearly total, after being “significantly down in the first half of 2020,” said Long Beach Director of Environmental Affairs, Heather Tomley. 

“We had a big surge in the second half of the year,” Cannon said, though not quite enough to set an annual record.

“At the same time, this increasing cargo means there’s more activity around the ports and more air pollution in communities and that results in real public health impacts for community members,” Kryczka said. “Of course, this is in the context of a global pandemic where studies are showing that exposure to air pollution corresponds with increased COVID-19 complications.”

Emissions numbers are still being crunched. But beyond container volume there were contrasting trends and complications described by Cannon. The tanker activity at the Port of LA was down 42% from the year before, while transient activity — tankers in the bay not calling at either port (essentially used as floating storage) — was up 25%. But the latter is only included in the state’s emissions inventory, not either port’s. 

“[With cruise ships, our passenger volumes went through the floor,” Cannon said, but high anchorage activity “caused the overall omissions to be similar.”

The issue of incentivizing near-zero trucks was also a concern Kryczka cited — and the only significant cause of stakeholder disagreement. Kurt Pruitt, vice president of Pacifica Trucks, called renewable natural gas “the only technology that’s feasible today,” but said his company’s investments were on hold “because we have no real clear idea of what the ports’ position is. Is it EV [electric vehicle] only? Or is it actually low emissions?”

In contrast, long-term activist Richard Havenick, who now serves on the board of the Harbor Community Benefits Foundation, graciously dissented. 

“I love all natural gas myself,” he said, but “3% by volume leaks as methane” and “we must keep that foremost in our minds.”

“I understand the excitement and hope regarding more immediate transition to natural gas because of immediate significant benefits, until you consider the potential longer term damage that may result from increasing greenhouse gas,” Havenick told Random Lengths News afterwards. “We should not invest in a solution that results in worse damage [in the] longer term.

“I’ve reviewed countless papers on the subject in the past year and I support caution regarding natural gas until we can prevent methane slippage, otherwise resolve natural gas’s actual contribution to greenhouse gases, or go directly to zero emission.”

Kryczka agreed, calling natural gas, “a false solution.” 

“There is both the problem of natural gas having additional impact throughout the lifecycle of the fuel, as well as the problem of it detracting from the zero emission goal,” she said. “We don’t have the time or resources to have two transitions, first to natural gas and second to zero emissions. So, from our perspective it’s important to be investing in the long-term zero emission goal that the community has really been asking for. And for a long time and it’s also what the ports have committed to. And the mayor and the governor as well.”

The ports could tell a more clear-cut positive story when it came to demonstration projects, fighting adversity, but still making progress.  A presentation slide on the COVID-19 impacts it faced listed the following:

•   Labor shortages.

•  Technology manufacturers operating at reduced capacity, which have contributed to a slow-down in equipment production and schedule delays.

• Limited access to terminals and facilities for equipment and emissions testing.

• COVID travel restrictions.

But their deployed demonstrations include:

• Two Tier 3 ships

• Two zero-and two near-zero emission on-road trucks

• 26 zero-and 20 near-zero emission port equipment

In addition, Szoke noted the ports have “funded the deployment of over 20 on-road trucks that are currently in service within the South Coast air basin.”

Jacob Goldberg, environmental specialist at the Port of Los Angeles, discussed these in more detail. 

“The first of two ERTG cranes conversions was successfully placed into revenue service at SSA, Pier J, in the third quarter, 2020,” he reported. “The port’s receiving positive feedback from operators.” 

Preparations are underway for the second one.

“Both ports have projects demonstrating zero-emission Taylor-built top handlers,” Goldberg said, with POLA’s “coming up on the one year mark.” On the plus side, “Overall operator feedback is generally good, as they performed the services expected, operating roughly one shift on the whole charge.” However, “Both sides [ports] have had charging infrastructure issues, on and off again throughout the entirety of the demonstration, but on the POLA side we’re hopeful to have made some breakthroughs recently as we’re coming to the end of this demonstration.”

Regarding electric yard tractors at POLA, “The terminal is overall satisfied with their performance, and will continue using them going forward,” he reported, though a second generation, with new charging technology is already being developed.

Goldberg went into more detail about the challenges encountered, but Kryczka directed attention to a broader, bigger problem.

“It’s difficult to assess their progress because they haven’t established any interim milestones for what they need to do to be on track to meet their cargo handling equipment goal,” Kryczka said.

Quantifying progress has been problematic since before the beginning of the No Net Increase Plan that preceded the Clean Air Action Plan. But now that specific zero-emission target dates have been set, it’s become imperative for that problem to be solved.