From 2GreenEnergy Supporter Gary Tulie: Can Volkswagen Repair the Damage?
Gary Tulie (pictured), my brilliant colleague who contributed so greatly to Bullish on Renewable Energy, suggests ways in which corporate criminal Volkswagen can atone for what it’s done to the people of the world and the environment in which they live. They all seem like decent ideas to me, though I’m still so seething with anger that I may not be capable of evaluating them properly at this point. –ed
Volkswagen looks set to face fines and costs of many billions of dollars for its criminal behaviour in tricking both the public and regulators into thinking that its diesel vehicles comply with NOx emission regulations, and will be required to carry out possibly the largest recall in vehicle history.
Up to 11 million vehicles are affected, and for those of you who have not been keeping up with the news, Volkswagen deliberately programmed their emission control system to operate during rolling road testing, and then to switch off when the vehicle is used on the road.
What then are the consequences and solutions?
NOx is damaging to both human health and the environment, and is a factor in smog, acid rain and a host of medical issues like asthma attacks, nasal irritation, respiratory problems, and increased risk of adverse cardiovascular events. As a result of criminal acts, we are all breathing air which is dirtier than it would have been with full compliance.
NOx is produced during fossil fuel combustion as a result of high temperature chemical reactions between atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen. For this to occur requires both high enough temperatures, and excess oxygen – both of which tend to be present in a diesel engine. In order to reduce NOx output, there are two main strategies.
Strategy 1.
Reduce NOx production by reducing combustion gas temperature – this is achieved by re-injecting some exhaust gas into the intake (which also reduces excess oxygen). As a consequence the engine will operate a little less efficiently increasing fuel consumption (and CO2 emissions) by 3 to 5%, and probably reducing performance by a similar factor. There appears to also be some uncertainty as to whether the emissions control system built into affected vehicles can be made to operate continuously without compromising reliability.
Strategy 2.
Use a substance such as Urea to break down NOx into harmless nitrogen and oxygen. This technique is typically used on larger vehicles, and is difficult to retrofit in smaller vehicles due to space constraints. What’s more, the vehicle owner / keeper would be required to repeatedly purchase urea concentrate to operate the system.
Taking into account what is now known about NOx emissions from tampered with vehicles goes a long way to explaining why European NOx emissions have been higher than target – see below.
What of compensating society in kind for past excess emissions?
If you look into the history of emissions trading, the process started in the USA as a result of U.S. Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. A trading program was started in order to reduce SO2 and NOx emissions by the largest amount possible for the fewest dollars of emission abatement cost.
Might it be possible for Volkswagen after fixing the affected vehicles to carry out other actions to reduce NOx etc. from other sources as a form of restitution?
http://www.rff.org/files/sharepoint/WorkImages/Download/RFF-DP-09-40.pdf
How might this work?
Possibly Volkswagen might do some of the following
- There are still significant numbers of older vehicles in regular use with “grandfather rights” to emit higher levels of pollutants as a result of being built before the regulations came in.
Fund a scheme to buy up and dispose of some of the worst polluting clunkers.
- Provide some funds to support cleaner public transport – possibly covering the extra cost of hybrid, LPG, and electric busses and taxi cabs.
- Fund enhanced emission controls for shipping (regulations for bunker fuel and ship emissions are far more lax than for land vehicles).
- Buy NOx and SO2 emission certificates and retire them – so funding faster removal of these pollutants from industrial sources.
- Compensate society in general by providing funds to support and treat sufferers of pollution related conditions.
While it is inexcusable that this deception has taken place, the one thing I have been unable to find so far is the number describing exactly how much more NOx is being emitted over what the vehicles would emit with fully functional controls. The only mention I have seen of how far over the limits this failure puts these vehicles is “up to 35 times more than the limits” but not what those limits are. I found this on Wikipedia which I tend to verify always but have not been able to do yet from any other source. I have also not seen any comparison between these vehicles and others that are sold here both foreign and domestic. I would be interested to know how a variety of vehicles stack up on a per mile basis where fuel economy would have to make a difference.
I would like to see this information. I would also like to know how many other vehicles employing similar Bosch equipment and the “test” software that VW illegitimately used even after being warned about it.
The one thing that all of this does prove again is that no corporation is to be trusted to “do the right thing” ever in spite of fact that one portion of our political system seems to think that business should be allowed to police itself. Business self monitoring and policing should never be allowed.
Brian
The information you would like to see should have been included in news articles. Unfortunately, news articles on technical subjects are usually deficient and fail to provide important information. Thus, from reading articles, we are not able to understand adequately the magnitude of problems.
There was an article on how the deception occurred which, for those of us who understand how decisions are made within large companies, was easy to understand. Higher level personnel are often shielded from unpleasant facts because the lower level personnel who should be providing the facts are afraid that if they do so, they may lose a promotion or even lose their jobs. Thus, if meeting emissions requirements cost far more than expected, that information might be hidden from higher level personnel. In the case of VW, that was done by rigging the emissions reduction systems to invalidate the tests. It is not at all surprising that the CEO and higher level executives were unaware of the problem.
Probably the excessive emissions problem would have been discovered sooner had the tests been done under real-world conditions, i.e., while the cars were being driven in traffic on real roads instead of while the cars were stationary.