The new all-electric Nissan Leaf. (Photo: Josh Cassidy)

This week, California officials are voting on the toughest new regulations in the country to promote cleaner cars. If passed, by 2025, 15% of new cars and trucks sold in the state would have to be powered by batteries, hydrogen fuel cells or other technology that produces little or no air pollution.

These kind of tough mandates have been tried before and they failed. But officials are confident that era of electric vehicle as finally arrived in California. That’s becoming the case in the Bay Area, which has been a strong market for advanced cars since the first Prius came out a decade ago.

“This is a Prius V,” says Joe Testa at Downtown Toyota in Oakland, showing one of several new Prius models that Toyota is releasing this year. “It’s the longer, wagon style, so it has a little more room.” Testa says there’s already a waiting list for the new Prius Plug-in, which comes out in March.

Toyota came out with hybrids ahead of other carmakers, maybe because the company anticipated changes in the market. Or, as some believe, it was due to a California state agency.

“We have been at the forefront of encouraging, and some would people would say forcing, new technologies. The Prius hybrid electric vehicle is an example of that,” says Tom Cackette. Chief Deputy Director of the California Air Resources Board.

California’s Clean Car History

Cackette says to see California’s legacy of shaping national car policy, you have to go back to 1975. The state had a growing smog problem, so the air board required cars to have catalytic converters. The federal government followed. California then tightened air pollution rules for cars. And tightened them again. “And almost in every case, the federal government would follow two, three, four, five years later.”

Today, new cars emit 99 percent less smog than cars did in the 1960s. “It’s probably the most successful environmental program in the world,” says Cackette.

Now, California has a new goal: dramatically cutting greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change. Transportation accounts for 40% of the state’s emissions. “The number one strategy to reduce greenhouse gases is these car standards,” he says.

The proposed standards would cut greenhouse gas emissions from new cars in half by 2025. “We actually worked very closely under the federal government under the Obama Administration and we’ve jointly developed the standards. So they won’t just apply in California. But they’ll apply nationwide.”

Meeting these tougher standards will raise car prices by about $1900, but Cackette says those costs would be offset by fuel savings.

Jumpstarting Electric Car Sales

On top of that, California is taking an even bolder step, requiring automakers to sell increasing numbers of clean cars in the state. By 2025, they’d have to sell almost a million and half vehicles that run on electricity or hydrogen fuel cells.

The thing is – California has tried this before. And it didn’t work. “I guess I would call it a little too visionary perhaps,” says Cackette. In 1990, the Air Resources Board mandated that 10 percent of new car sales be “zero emission” cars by 2003.

“Obviously that didn’t happen. The price of gas was cheap in those times. The price of the technologies were high,” he says. The air board loosened the rules to include hybrid cars and cleaner gasoline engines, which he says drove carmakers to develop them faster.

Now, Cackette believes that technology has come of age. Nissan is selling the all-electric Leaf and Chevy is selling the Volt, a plug-in hybrid. And there’s another big difference.

Automakers Onboard

“The car manufacturers were adamantly opposed to the concept of government telling them they needed to build a new type of technology. That’s changed.”

“You are seeing more agreement between automakers and California and the federal government,” agrees Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers in Washington DC.

“Automakers have invested billions of dollars in these technologies. And so in some ways we have similar interests. Our interest in recouping our investment is now aligned with the societal imperative to get more of these vehicles on the road,” she says.

Bergquist says meeting the mandate calling for carmakers to sell a certain number of clean vehicles will ultimately depend on consumers. “There’s still a concern about what the consumer acceptance of these technologies is going to be and that can make a mandate very scary.”

Groups Push for Tougher Rules

“We think California could be bolder,” says Don Anair is with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit group that supports even stronger clean car rules.

“We need that technology to advance for the technology cost to come down and make these vehicles accessible to more and more consumers. By having a more aggressive standard, that gives more certainty to investors that California is committed.” Anair wants to see tougher standards sooner rather than later, since it takes 15 years on average for the entire fleet of cars on the road to turn over.

If the new rules are successful, electric cars could be adopted at a much faster pace. Tom Cackette of the Air Resources Board says they’re doing all they can to encourage consumers to buy them, including funding a popular rebate program and working with companies to build an electric car charging infrastructure.

“Right now, you’ve got to sort of have a jumpstart to this whole process and in the absence of a jumpstart, there’s a chance that it will fail,” he says.

A projection of how zero emissions vehicles like electric cars will be 87% of all cars on the road in California by 2025. Source: California Air Resources Board.

A tree branch covered in nitrogen-loving lichen. (Credit: Martin Hutton)

Pollution from cars and trucks blows into the Sierra Nevada mountains, where it can have a dramatic impact on the ecosystem. In Yosemite National Park, researchers are trying to gauge that impact by using an unexpected tool: a fungus called lichen.

Yosemite Valley is known for its granite landmarks: Half Dome, El Capitan and the sheer walls that surround the valley. But according to botanist Martin Hutton, the granite isn't really visible.

"Basically what we’re looking at is lichens. We barely even see this rock. It’s all lichens."

Listen to the QUEST radio story Lichen Point to Pollution.

The southern walls of Yosemite Valley are covered in black crust. Last year, Hutton repelled hundreds of feet down the cliffs to survey the species living here. "All sorts of different colors. All sorts of different shapes. They're really special. There are no trees up there. There's no shade." Hutton says there are more than 500 species of lichen in Yosemite and many grow where few other plants can.

Lichens Connected to the Air

Despite looking tough, lichens are some of the most sensitive organisms in the ecosystem. Hutton uses a fallen tree branch to point out the species living there. "I see really deep saturated orange and that is Caloplaca. And there's just this beautiful just deep saturated yellow and that is the yellow of the Candelaira."

The yellow lichen, Candelaira, is warning sign for Hutton. "If you were to go to place with very little air pollution, then you would not be seeing this many of these Candelaria species," said Hutton.

While most plants get nutrients from the ground, lichens get much of what they need from the air. "They are basically directly connected to the atmosphere. They're connected to all of it. They see all of it. It’s one of the reasons they’re so sensitive," said Hutton.

Lichen are sensitive to changes in the air, especially from air pollution. That makes them an indicator of bigger ecosystem changes. Hutton and his team are taking lichen samples at 300 sites around the park and analyzing them to see what story they tell.

Measuring Pollution in the Ecosystem

Further into a nearby pine forest, Hutton and his team have set up funnels that collect air pollution samples. But it's clear something else has gotten there first. Hutton's equipment is strewn across the ground, the victim of a curious black bear.

"Yeah, basically a bear grabbed this funnel and plucked it off the stake. They just want to make sure that there's no food associated with this plastic funnel," said Hutton.

This is one of 12 sites where researchers are measuring a key ingredient of air pollution: nitrogen. Nitrogen oxides are produced by car and truck exhaust. In Yosemite, nitrogen pollution isn’t only from nearby cars. It also arrives from elsewhere in the state.

"We all have experienced the westerly winds that happen that blow stuff essentially from over the ocean, across the Central Valley and up into the mountains," said Lee Tarnay, Air Resource Specialist at Yosemite National Park.

Air pollution from urban areas is blown into the Sierra Nevada mountains by those westerly winds. And the problem is: nitrogen pollution is sticky. "That gas likes to stick to pine needles and just about anything else. And these trees act as a giant collector for the gases that stream through the air," said Tarnay.

When it rains, the nitrogen pollution is washed off the pine needles and deposited on the ground. As any backyard gardener knows: nitrogen is a fertilizer.

"All plants need nitrogen to grow. And some plants need a lot of nitrogen and some need only very little. And so in Yosemite, we already had enough nitrogen to begin with," said Hutton. Sierra Nevada forests are adapted to low levels of nitrogen.

Impact of Nitrogen Pollution in the Ecosystem

"We're worried that additional fertilizer in Yosemite could have effects that we might not anticipate. We think that the Yosemite is system as is it should be now. So we want to make sure that if there's something harming or changing that balance, then we want to know that," said Hutton.

Hutton says that balance is already under threat by invasive plants and many respond to higher nitrogen levels. Nitrogen can also encourage more ground plants to grow, a major concern in fire country. "If you increase the amount of nitrogen, you have plants that basically fill up the space in between these natural patches. And so that means that fires can spread a lot better."

Reducing car traffic in Yosemite could help cut air pollution. It will also depend on regional air districts across California, several of which, like the San Joaquin Valley, exceed federal air pollution limits. Hutton says he's hopeful that research in Yosemite will help them identify pollution hotspots and manage the changes in the field.

37.756313 -119.59716

Have you heard about the 1-800-Exhaust program?

One interesting little sidetrack I got stuck on while I was reporting this story was the 1-800-Exhaust program. Maybe you've seen the billboards along I-80 near the Bay Bridge? If not, you will soon. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (the same people who bring you Spare the Air days) has kicked off a new campaign to promote the program. In a nutshell, it allows you to call in (or go online) and report the license plate numbers of cars that seem to be spewing more smoke than they should be.

Then what happens?

Well, some people might be disappointed to hear that there are no punitive consequences for these drivers. No fines, no demand that they report to the nearest smog check station, stat. Instead, the car's registered owner gets a letter in the mail – one BAAQMD spokesman I talked to called it an "informal survey" — asking, among other things, whether the car has been repaired. The response, so far, has been pretty underwhelming.

Last year, just over 10,000 cars were reported, and 10,000 letters sent out. Less than a hundred came back. Twelve people said that their cars had been repaired (it's not clear how many of them had already repaired the cars, and how many did so after receiving the letters).

Air District officials stress that reply rates aren't really the point here. The goal, they say, is to get people to realize that their cars don't operate in a vacuum. How well you maintain your car has real and measurable effects on people's health (including anyone sitting in the back seat).

The letters also let people know about a program that doesn't get a lot of coverage elsewhere, although it should. It's called the Vehicle Buy Back Program, and it's worth $1,000 to anyone who owns a registered car 1989 or older. It's kind of like a local version of Cash for Clunkers. Not hard to see why these programs make so much sense: some of those old cars pollute ten or even a hundred times as much as a new one. That 1966 Volvo I had when I was 17 seems a little less wonderful, in hindsight.

Listen to Smog Checks Made Easy radio report online.

38.4558449 -121.407106

When those fumes combine with sunlight, along with other emissions, they form ground-level ozone, an air pollutant which acts as a greenhouse gas, contributing to global warming much like carbon dioxide does.

Take a look at this nifty, infra-red video footage from the California Air Resources Board, showing how fumes disperse from the gas pump when they aren't properly collected.

Ground-level ozone is also a real problem for human health, especially for people with asthma and respiratory disease. Just this week, UC Berkeley released a study finding that people living in areas with high ozone levels, like Los Angeles and the Central Valley, have a 25-30% greater risk of dying from respiratory disease than those in less ozone-heavy parts of the state, like San Francisco.

By the way, if you're wondering what "ground-level ozone" has to do with that ozone hole we used to hear so much about, here's the short answer: Turns out ozone does different things, depending on where you find it. In the atmosphere, ozone's a good thing. It forms a protective layer that shields the Earth from the sun's radiation – a layer that's been steadily eroded by chlorofluorocarbons, found in aerosol sprays and other places. Here at ground level, ozone's much less likable: a toxic air pollutant, as I said above.

If every station in California installs the new, hi-tech "enhanced vapor recovery system" they'll collectively cut back statewide, ground-level ozone emissions by ten tons a day – that's roughly equivalent to taking 450,000 cars off the road, according to CARB.

Listen to the Changes at the Pump radio report online.

37.981081 -122.56678