Electric RTGs on deck for two Long Beach marine terminals

Electric RTGs on deck for two Long Beach marine terminals    Long Beach port officials Monday approved a plan to pay two Southern California marine terminals $2.5 million each to convert more than two dozen rubber-tired gantry cranes from diesel to electric power.
   Cerritos, Calif.-based Total Terminals International and Seattle- Wash.-based SSA Terminals will use the funds to convert 28 mobile cranes used at the two firms' Long Beach facilities to electric power by 2010. Under terms of the grant, TTI and SSA must provide matching funds to the port contributions. The port estimates that the two terminal operators will each spend $2.8 million of their own funds on the project.
   The port's grant funds are part of a RTG electrification program adopted by port officials in January and aimed at cutting pollution from the cranes. At the time, port officials made it clear that the program is intended to help terminals move toward the electric cranes, but not to fully fund the conversion of the nearly 85 RTGs operating in the port's seven container terminals.
   'We are hoping that by providing these grants, terminals will be encouraged to make this investment,' said Richard Cameron, port director of environmental planning.
   The RTG electrification program is in addition to the clean-diesel conversion required for RTGs by 2014 under the port's omnibus environmental manifesto, the Clean Air Action Plan. Terminals choosing not to invest in converting RTGs to electric power would still be required by the port under the CAAP to convert to RTG engines meeting federal 2007 emission standards by 2014.
   TTI and SSA won the electrification grants after a competitive application process that weighed the 'cost effectiveness, technical approach and proposed schedule' of each applicant's proposal, according to a port statement. The port originally envisioned a maximum grant level per awardee of no more than $1 million.