Navistar Challenges EPA on SCR Technology

Truck and engine manufacturer Navistar Inc. has challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to certify heavy-duty diesel engines using selective catalytic reduction to meet the agency’s 2010 standards for emissions of nitrogen oxides.

The Warrenville, Ill.-based manufacturer has asked a federal appeals court to review EPA’s certification requirements for SCR engines and whether the agency must go through the lengthy process of amending its 2001 rule setting emissions limits for diesel engines before it certifies engines using SCR.

In its lawsuit, filed earlier this spring, Navistar said that when EPA issued its 2001 rule ratcheting down the amount of NOx 2010-model on-road diesel engines were allowed to produce, the agency “made an express ‘infeasibility,’ determination for SCR technology.”

Navistar is the only North American truck manufacturer that is not using SCR to meet the new standard of 0.2 grams of NOx per brake-horsepower hour and has publicly called for a softening of the looming deadline to allow fleets to purchase 2007-compliant technology after Jan. 1, 2010.

Company spokesman Roy Wiley told Transport Topics Friday that Navistar does not comment on “pending or active litigation.”

However, Wiley said the company’s exhaust gas recirculation technology was “ready.”

“Bring it on,” Wiley said of EPA’s 2010 standard, which Navistar intends to meet with advanced EGR and emissions credits the company has accrued.

Previously, EPA has said it will not extend or alter the deadline. The agency declined to comment on Navistar’s suit.

By Staff Reporters Dan Leone, Sean McNally and Eric Miller