EPA Seeks to End Truck-Grant Program

This story appears in the March 10 print edition of Transport Topics.

President Obama’s fiscal 2015 budget includes a request by the Environmental Protection Agency to eliminate funding for a program that, for the past six years, has helped truckers buy equipment to reduce diesel emissions, Administrator Gina McCarthy said last week.

A review of the proposal by Transport Topics found a number of other programs from agencies that could affect trucking. The Department of Transportation’s budget included more than $73 billion for surface transportation.

The proposed $7.9 billion for EPA is a 3.7% decrease from last year.

“Domestic spending constraints have really challenged EPA’s ability to operate within our budget numbers,” McCarthy said at a March 4 telephone news conference.

It is the second year in a row the Obama administration has attempted to discontinue the Diesel Emission Reduction Act, or DERA program, which last year allocated $20 million for emissions technologies and cleaner-burning vehicles.

Last year’s attempt to cut the DERA program, which requires matching dollars by grantees, was rejected by Congress.

Meanwhile, the Energy Department’s proposal called for a 2.6% increase to $27.9 billion, including $359 million for “cutting-edge vehicle technologies,” and $253 million to develop advanced biofuels such as “drop-in” replacements for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

Also included in the Energy Department budget is an extension of tax credits to support cellulosic biofuels, and new tax incentives for heavy- and medium-duty trucks that run on alternative fuels such as natural gas and for the fuel infrastructure needed to deploy them.

Specifically, the proposal would allow a $40,000 tax credit for manufacturers of alternative-fuel vehicles weighing more than 26,000 pounds that could be extended to either a dealership selling the vehicle or the purchaser, according to a Treasury Department analysis of the budget.

In addition, the proposal would lower the current 24.3 cents per gallon excise tax on liquefied natural gas to the diesel equivalent of 14.1 cents, the analysis said.

Also, EPA’s budget includes a request for an additional $7 million to support the e-Manifest program that provides information on hazardous waste shipments electronically. When fully implemented, the e-Manifest program will result in annual savings of $75 million, EPA said.

But it was the effort to end the DERA grants that upset transportation officials last week.

“It’s déjà vu all over again,” said Allen Schaeffer, executive director of the Diesel Technology Forum. “It’s a perplexing kind of thing because the agency has some very significant focus and priorities on things like ports. It’s hard to square that up with the idea that this highly successful bipartisan program has been zeroed out again.”

Schaeffer said his organization and others will work aggressively to persuade Congress to continue the program.

“I know that there have to be some tough decisions all the way around,” said Glen Kedzie, energy and environmental affairs counsel for American Trucking Associations. “But it kind of surprises me that the president would zero out the program.”

Kedzie said that ATA supports the DERA program, but that in the past, trucking fleets have mostly not been very successful in winning the competitive grants.

Kedzie said the reason is that the weighting system is more geared toward companies that consume diesel, but operate within a certain geographic area, typically those areas that have not met federal air-quality standards.

“Trucks by their nature are mobile,” Kedzie said. “We go in and out of non-attainment bubbles. So we’re kind of penalized in the ranking system because of our mobility.”

Also contained in Obama’s budget proposal:

• The Department of Homeland Security would get money to hire 2,000 new Customs and Border Protection officers to work at the nation’s ports of entry, bringing the number of officers to a record 25,775.

• The Department of Labor is seeking nearly $14 million to combat what it calls the misclassification of employees.