Here’s an unexpected health risk due to vehicle pollution – three studies have linked lead emissions from leaded gasoline to violent crime. The kicker – the crime, in this case aggravated assault, lags lead pollution by 22 years. The implication – children poisoned by lead may grow up to commit more crime.

The researchers compared the amount of lead released in six cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, New Orleans and San Diego, during the years 1950–1985. This period saw an increase in airborne lead dust exposure due to the use of leaded gasoline. There were correlating spikes in the rates of aggravated assault approximately two decades later, after the exposed children grew up.

After controlling for other possible causes such as community and household income, education, policing effort and incarceration rates, Mielke and Zahran found that for every one percent increase in tonnages of environmental lead released 22 years earlier, the present rate of aggravated assault was raised by 0.46 percent.

“Children are extremely sensitive to lead dust, and lead exposure has latent neuroanatomical effects that severely impact future societal behavior and welfare,” says Mielke. “Up to 90 per cent of the variation in aggravated assault across the cities is explained by the amount of lead dust released 22 years earlier.” (Source: Environmental Protection Magazine).

This result combines theories in neurotoxicity research and self control theory in criminology. In short, the papers posit that lead poisoning in children alters the pathways in their brain, resulting in poor self control and increased impulsiveness (a finding that’s supported by juvenile detention records). Self-control theory connects impulsiveness and anti-social behavior to crime. This leads to findings like the chart below, for New Orleans pollution and crime from 1950 to 2005:

(Source: H.W. Mielke, S. Zahran 2012)

Obviously, I’m oversimplifying a complex and nuanced issue. For more information, check out:

·         Mielke & Zahran, Environment International, 2012

·         Nevin, MPRA 2012

·         Nevin, Environmental Research 2007

There's no doubt that rising gas prices causes real pain to families trying to live on a budget. As a recent transplant from San Francisco to Southern California, I'm shocked by how my transportation costs have spiked. Worse, every time the price of gas shoots up, it defines a "new normal" - I remember being outraged when gas went to $2.50 a gallon, but now I'm relieved when it drops from $4.00 to $3.50. 

Politicians and pundits have opined on how to lower gas prices, from President Obama to Newt Gingrich to Bill O'Reilly. But the truth is, there may not be much the government can do in the short term to lower gas prices. Robert Rapier writes in Consumer Energy Report :  

So what then is the president’s role as far as gas prices or oil production? At best we can say that the policies a president puts in place today can make some impact on the markets in a few years. So five years from now we may be lamenting or praising President Obama’s energy policy decisions. We can of course speculate on how they may turn out. His policies may ultimately hurt supplies and raise prices, but they have no bearing on today’s gas prices. In reality, due to the increasing importance of consumers in developing countries, even long-term there isn’t a lot that a U.S. president is going to be able to do to impact prices. Obama could put policies in place that increase supplies, but that won’t necessarily result in cheap gasoline.

To understand how President Obama’s policies could lower oil prices but raise gas prices, or vice versa, it’s necessary to understand what drives the price of each. In this post we’ll focus on oil prices, and tackle gasoline prices in a future post. Oil is a global, largely fungible commodity. To a large extent, it doesn’t matter if you buy oil from Canada or Saudi Arabia – the price is set by global supply and demand, and won’t change by choosing where to buy it.   

Given these limitations, what can the President do?    

*    Boost global oil supplies by removing barriers to domestic oil production - the "drill baby drill" option. But it would take several years for any new domestic supplies to reach market, so there would be little impact on today's oil prices.

*    Boost oil supplies today by opening the spigot to the strategic oil reserve. This would shock prices down, but is only a temporary solution. 

*    Work to stabilize the OPEC geopolitics (e.g., by cooling down the conflict with Iran over the straits of Hormuz). This would reduce the "risk premium" built into today's price of oil.

*    Use American might to force a new equilibrium in oil politics. This is the "Desert Storm" option, and would increase oil costs today, with the hope that it would lower costs in the future.

In short, when presidential candidates excoriate Obama for inaction on oil prices, consider that his short-term options are few. T same would likely be the case if a Republican were in office. However, in the long term there is one more option:    

The most sensible thing that governments can do is to encourage a move away from gasoline dependence. In that case, even if prices continue to rise, the economy won’t be as susceptible to the price shock. In fact, when people ask me what they should do to protect themselves against high gas prices, the first thing I ask is “What do you drive?” Do your part to limit gasoline’s hold on your life, and you won’t have to hold your breath that a politician is going to solve this problem for you. They have been making empty promises for decades, and there are very good reasons why they (both Democrats and Republicans) have failed. So you should stop looking to them for the answer.

 Did I miss any oil strategies? Overstate an ineffective option? Please correct me in the comments.

At the 2011 State of the Union, President Obama pledged “a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015”:

Unfortunately, the General Services Administration is not on his side – from FY 2010 to FY 2011, GSA cut its EV and HEV purchases in half, from 6,500 vehicles to 2,600. Bloomburg reveals through a FOIA request: 1,380 hybrid Fusions (12% of the 2011 production), 145 Volts, 101 Insights and just one Prius.

This doesn’t mean that GSA hasn’t gone green: the agency purchased 32,000 ethanol flex-fuel vehicles, accounting for 60% of the 2011 fleet. In total, 7 out of every 8 alt fuel federal vehicles are flex fuel. In total, there are over 8 million FFVs on the road, but only 2,500 stations, most concentrated in the Midwest.

To be fair, the selection of BEVs is much smaller than the selection of FFVs – there are no mass-market BEV pickups or SUVs, for example. Limitations in range and charging infrastructure are additional concerns.

GSA’s large purchasing volume gives it the opportunity to truly jump start the EV market. Hopefully, as number and type of EVs grow, the government’s EV fleet will grow as well.

Via The Truth About Cars.

At the recent ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in Washington, D.C., Larry Burns, former GM R&D director and current professor at Columbia, spoke on the unexpected effects of a mass adoption of alt fuel vehicles, and how it would impact our energy resources.

He proposes a hypothetical scenario: if we were to wean ourselves off of OPEC oil by replacing gasoline cars with natural gas cars, how much natural gas would we need? In total, we’d need 5.9 quads of natural gas annually to power 80 million vehicles by 2025. This is 22% greater than the entire current US production!

The problem with natural gas vehicles is they aren’t much more efficient than gasoline vehicles, well to wheel. Instead, the combination of grid electricity production and EVs is much more efficient – if we used natural gas powerplants to power BEVs in the above scenario, we’d only need 3.3 quads of natural gas. Further, by relying on the grid mix of fuel sources – natural gas, coal, nuclear, renewables – the demand for each fuel type and the burdens placed on our energy resources are smaller.

However, while technology choices are relevant to the questions of sustainability, Larry emphasized the need for holistic solutions to the transportation Gordian Knot, in place of technological silver bullets:

The automobile is unsustainable without transformational change. There is a transformation opportunity surfacing. When we take the new DNA—electric drive, diverse energy sources, self-driving and driverless, connected and coordinated, vehicles with a specific purpose—we can put them all together to rethink the entire system.

 via GreenCarCongress

When the Volt rolled off the line in 2011, it was hailed as the future of green transportation. That is, hailed by everybody but the California Air Resources Board, which denied the Volt a coveted "green car" carpool sticker.

The green sticker program gives alternative fuel vehicles access to the carpool system, even if just one occupant is present. This is a huge benefit in Southern California especially, where both carpool lanes and congestion operate all day long. For those who commute long distances, the green sticker program can literally save them 5+ hours a week of sitting in traffic.

ARB's program traditionally awards EVs and CNG vehicles, although as recently as 2010 conventional hybrids like Prius were valid as well. So what was wrong with the Volt? When the battery was depeted and the vehicle was operating in gasoline mode, its emission profile was not much different than other gasoline vehicles, and the emissions crossed thresholds that the ARB set. 

To combat this, Chevy is releasing a special California version of the 2012 Volt, with stringent pollution controls. Via GreenCarCongress:

Chevrolet engineers modified the Volt’s engine and exhaust components—specifically the catalytic converter—by adding a secondary air-injection pump that streams ambient air into the exhaust stream to increase its ability to remove pollutants. The additional oxygen helps the catalytic converter remove even more pollutants.

The controls mean that the Volt qualifies for the green sticker program. While the Volt program is only available for the first 40,000 vehicles that register, this shouldn't be too much of a constraint - GM is projecting 45,000 Volt sales nationwide this year. Even better, the 2012 model qualifies for the $1,500 California rebate through ARB's Fueling Alternative Rebate Program, on top of the $7,500 federal credit.

Time Magazine and many others have written breathless articles based on research Chris Cherry is doing at UT Knoxville. The thrust of Chris' message is that the environmental benefits of EVs depend on how and where the electricity is generated. But this has been interpreted in the popular media as:

It’s unspoken, but every driver gliding around town behind the wheel of a Prius is thinking the same thing: “I’m saving the planet. What are you doing, you dirty-fossil-fuel burner?”

But, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, it turns out that the use of electric vehicles may not be that clean after all, particularly in the world’s most populated country, China.

In the study, Christopher Cherry, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at University of Tennessee, and his colleagues found that in terms of air pollution, electric vehicles were more harmful to public health per kilometer traveled than gasoline-powered cars. That’s right — the electrically powered cars turned out to be dirtier than those with internal combustion engines.

Of course, the results aren't this sensationalist. In China, where coal plants belch uncontrolled emissions near population centers, the electricity generation has an especially large impact on residents. However, in the US and other countries, the situation is the opposite.

First, the fuel mix in US is markedly different than China. Coal, while still popular, is dwarfed by other fuel sources, including natural gas, nuclear, and renewables. Further, coal plants have stringent emission standards to capture harmful pollutants before they exit the smokestack. Lastly, in California at least, coal plants are located far away from population centers, largely in the Nevada desert. So the impact of EVs (and electricity generation) is much lower.

Further, while electricity plant pollutions can be emitted far away from population centers, vehicle tailpipe emissions by definition occur where people live and drive. Because of this, all vehicle pollutants, especially cancer-causing diesel particulate matter, have a direct impact on human health.

Chris' work, which is much more nuanced than the articles suggest, recognizes and addresses all these factors in his analysis. Hopefully, while this news story makes for a good headline, cooler heads will prevail once the news cycle moves on to another topic.

Besides automatic air circulation control, which is activated, for example, in increased concentrations of fine particulate and exhaust gases in tunnels or behind heavy-duty trucks, the standard air conditioning unit featured in the new BMW 3 Series employs an additional filter system that also becomes effective when switched to the air circulation mode.

As a result, says BMW, unpleasant environmental odors are almost entirely eliminated. The interaction between the automatic air circulation control and the filter system noticeably enhances air quality inside the BMW 3 Series. Even when the air conditioning is not in use, the additional filter remains active.

• When examining the level of vehicle pollution, scientists typically measure the air quality at the nearest residential receptor near the roadway. The exposure of commuters on the roadway are overlooked, and are likely much higher than that of nearby residents.
• Recent studies have shown that ultrafine particles are most concentrated at the roadway, and quickly drop off within 100m. The brunt of ultrafines are felt by commuters! There's conflicting information on the dangers of ultrafines, but it can't hurt to shield motorists from exposure.
• Americans spend on average more than almost an hour in their car commuting each day, which can add up to a lot of exposure.

The New York Times reports that a US team is gunning for the world land speed record for steam-powered cars. They're aiming to top the current record of 148 MPH set in 2009.

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