Jay Obernolte Asks Witnesses About California Air Resources Board’s ’Completely Nonsensical’ Rule

3 months ago

During a House Science Committee hearing earlier this month, Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) questioned witnesses about the California Air Resources Board’s proposed rules.

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Transcript

00:00Well, thank you very much to all of our witnesses.

00:03That includes our witness testimony.

00:06We'll move now to the questions and answers portion of our hearing and I will begin by

00:10recognizing myself for five minutes for questions.

00:13Mr. Jeffries, let me start with a project that is critically important to my district

00:19and it's one I think you are aware of.

00:21BNSF has proposed to build a multimodal transfer facility in the city of Barstow, which is

00:27in my district.

00:28It's going to bring over 20,000 jobs to my community and the purpose of the facility

00:35is to transfer freight from the ports of Long Beach to Los Angeles instead of putting them

00:41on trucks, which is what happens now, they want to put them on rail cars, put them by

00:45rail out to Barstow and then switch them to other trains going other places in the country.

00:50So that would shift the transportation of millions of tons of freight from truck to

00:56rail.

00:57And now BNSF has said very publicly that should this proposed in-use locomotive rule

01:02become enforced, that they would no longer be able to build this facility in Barstow

01:08and they're in the middle of building it now.

01:09They would stop and build it somewhere else because they can't afford to have freight

01:17locomotives that can't go into California and have to switch at the state border would

01:20make the whole system completely nonsensical for them and I understand that.

01:25But help me understand this, it seems to me from a layman's perspective that for CARB

01:30to take an action that forces the transport of millions of tons of freight by truck that

01:38emits three times as much greenhouse gases per pound of freight moved instead of rail

01:43would be completely nonsensical and the opposite of the goal that they're trying to achieve.

01:49Am I missing something there?

01:52You're not missing anything and it's completely counterintuitive to CARB's overarching goals

01:58and these are the types of projects that we should all be celebrating and championing.

02:02This is a $1.5 billion project, it would be the largest intermodal yard in the country,

02:08all done with private dollars, not public dollars, and to your point, taking thousands

02:13of trucks off a very congested corridor, putting it on rail, getting it out of the LA basin

02:21into an area to sort for long haul across the country, it's exactly the sort of thing

02:25we should want to see happening and it would be such a missed opportunity if this project

02:29were put at risk because of this rule.

02:32To amplify the point, that corridor that you're referring to that is currently heavily trucked,

02:37that's also in my district and so I have a vested interest in making sure that we shift

02:42those emissions to something that's three times more efficient.

02:48Mr. Abbs, I had a question for you, I was interested in your testimony about the fact

02:53that freight locomotives in California were one of the largest emitters of health-threatening

03:01pollutants and that was your oral testimony and your written testimony, you had a fact

03:07that you quoted that said locomotives represent 31% of the pollution reductions needed to

03:12meet federal air quality requirements under the Clean Air Act and that 31% really caught

03:18my eye because the statistics that the EPA gave us is that railroads make up less than

03:242% of transportation emissions and only about .05% of overall greenhouse gas emissions,

03:31so can you tell me where that 31% statistic came from, because I'm having trouble reconciling it.

03:38Yes, Chair, thank you for that question.

03:40So that number comes from CARB's state SIP that they turned in for the 2022 SIP standard,

03:51so it represents the difference in emissions that California would need to achieve to meet

03:582037 Federal Clean Air Act requirements for particulate and NOx.

04:04All right, well, I'm going to have to chase down why those numbers are so different because

04:08that seems to counter to the data that the EPA is giving us.

04:14And Tyler, let me conclude here, I've got another minute left here.

04:18One of the arguments for completely electric zero emissions locomotives is that even if

04:24it's not possible to pack enough energy into batteries in a locomotive form factor, it

04:30is possible to just have tenders that are towed behind the locomotive with more and

04:34more batteries, and even if you need 10 of those tenders to do the job of one diesel

04:38locomotive, that that's feasible.

04:40But that's the argument.

04:43Do you see some merit in that?

04:44Is that true?

04:45Or is that something that you are skeptical about?

04:48That's something that my research group has been actively looking at.

04:51While technically feasible to couple up as many tenders as needed to provide the battery

04:56power, there is the operational consideration of train length.

05:00So in the United States, roughly 70% of the primary principal mainline corridors are single

05:06track lines.

05:07It's going to have one train operating at a time, and these trains pass each other at

05:11very short sections of a double track called passing sidings, and the length of those passing

05:15sidings can limit the length of a freight train.

05:18So any time you take away that available length of a freight train and consume it with battery

05:24tenders or tenders of any sort, you're going to be reducing the potential number of rail

05:28cars that can be transporting revenue-earning freight on those trains, and by doing that,

05:33you're not only earning less revenue per freight train, but you're also transporting less freight

05:38and making them overall less efficient.

05:40So there's an efficiency penalty dictated by the maximum train length that tenders impose

05:45on the network and operations.

05:47All right.

05:48Thank you.

05:49I'll now recognize Ranking Member Fucci for five minutes for her questions.

Jay Obernolte Asks Witnesses About California Air Resources Board’s ’Completely Nonsensical’ Rule

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