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Read the report: Clean Cars, Cleaner Air: How Strict Low-Emission And Zero-Emission Vehicle Standards Can Cut Airborne Pollution In New Hampshire
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As the new home of NHPIRG’s environmental work, Environment New Hampshire may be contacted regarding this release.

Citing perilously high levels of airborne toxic pollution in every county in the state, NHPIRG and the Audubon Society of New Hampshire today called on the Shaheen administration to adopt new rules, to begin in 2006, to steadily ratchet down limits on auto pollution and make zero-emission vehicles available for sale in New Hampshire.

"We are proposing a standard, based on programs in Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine and other states, that would dramatically curb toxic pollution in our air," said NHPIRG Advocate Josh Irwin. "It would also vigorously promote the development of cutting-edge, clean car technology that could someday altogether eliminate toxic pollution from cars altogether."

The report, based on EPA data from 1996 -- the most current available -- demonstrated that levels of three key air toxics exceed federal safety standards for cancer risk in every county in the state.

Among the report's other findings:

A key part of the answer to that pollution, the report concluded, is adoption of a Clean Cars standard that would set tighter limits on automobile pollution than a competing federal standard set to take effect in 2004.

Irwin noted that a newly revamped EPA modeling system would soon tell researchers more about how the Clean Cars standard stacked up against the federal standard, known officially as Tier 2. (The Clean Cars standard is known to policymakers as the Low Emission Vehicles or LEV II standard.)

But tougher limits aimed at curbing carcinogens and other pollutants are only half the story, the groups said. The more innovative component of the Clean Cars standard they propose is a requirement that a small fraction of the light-duty vehicles available for sale in New Hampshire be super-clean "zero-emission vehicles," or ZEVs.

That fraction would start at 10 percent and rise slowly from there.

Automakers would have several ways to meet that requirement, including selling cars that approach ZEV status and banking credits for meeting targets before deadlines.

Julian Zelazny, environmental policy director for the Audubon Society of New Hampshire, noted that electric cars are currently the only ones clean enough to meet the ZEV standard of no pollution.

But he added that cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells - expected to be about a decade from broad commercial viability - could one day satisfy the ZEV requirement as well.

The only emissions from vehicles running on hydrogen, Zelazny said, are heat and water. He added that ZEV requirements in other states have lent momentum to the development of the fuel cell technology.

"If the Shaheen administration acts to adopt this standard, we expect that by 2020, 8000 cars on New Hampshire's roads will emit no pollution at all. Another 360,000 will be nearly as clean," Zelazny said.

Irwin noted that demand for the hybrid Toyota Prius, which is approaching compliance with ZEV requirements, has far outstripped supply since the car was introduced. Toyota expects to make 300,000 hybrids a year by 2005. Irwin said that boded well for widespread use and acceptance of clean-car technology.

"Cars that run on hybrid or electric motors, cars that pollute nothing at all, and, not long from now, even cars that run on hydrogen, could be in widespread use," Irwin said. "Some of them are already in our showrooms, some soon will be. But all of them are getting ready to make a vast contribution to protecting our health and our environment."