PMSA: CAAP update components costly, burdensome

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach released a draft version of their proposed 2017 Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) update in July and are expected to vote on whether to approve it during a Nov. 2 joint hearing.    The updates to the Los Angeles and Long Beach seaports’ Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) that were proposed earlier this year and are due to be voted on by each port’s board of directors next month are costly and “not well thought out,” the president of the Pacific Maritime Shipping Association (PMSA) said in an Oct. 17 speech.
   John McLaurin, president of the Oakland-based independent not-for-profit shipping association, which focuses on issues affecting international trade, made the remarks during a meeting of the Los Angeles-Long Beach chapter of the Propeller Club, which promotes the interests of international commerce, shipping, transportation and supporting industries.
   The ports of LA and Long Beach released the draft version of their proposed 2017 Clean Air Action Plan update in July and are expected to vote on whether to approve it during a Nov. 2 joint hearing.
   Strategies outlined in the draft plan include phasing in clean engine standards for new trucks entering the port drayage registries starting in 2018, with the goal of transitioning to a zero-emissions drayage fleet by 2035; and expanding use of on-dock rail, with the goal of eventually moving half of all inbound cargo leaving the ports by rail.
   Other proposed components include developing a universal truck appointment system for the entire complex with the goal of minimizing truck turn times, and developing infrastructure plans that support terminal equipment electrification and alternative fuels use.
   McLaurin, who previously expressed his opinions on issues with the proposed updated in an op-ed piece in the Long Beach Press-Telegram newspaper, said at the Propeller Club luncheon that the ports at this point have no way to pay for the billions of dollars of emissions reduction mechanisms outlined in the plan.
   “The industry’s ultimate challenge is that the $14 billion cost cited in the CAAP is unprecedented and there is not enough funding in either the public or private sectors to pay for the as yet to be developed technology,” he said. “As a result, terminal operators and ports face the challenge of how to pay for this plan, while at the same time figuring out how to stay competitive.”
   Besides financing, another factor that needs to be included, McLaurin said, is time. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have set a 100 percent zero-emission requirement deadline by 2030 for cargo handling equipment, which is far more aggressive than the State of California’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2050.
   The compressed deadline, McLaurin said, raises the question of why marine terminals are being forced to reduce emissions 20 years ahead of every other business and industrial sector in California.
   “Is it because they produce a large volume of the emissions compared to the rest of the state?” he asked rhetorically. “Well, using 2015 port emission inventory numbers and comparing them to the State of California total greenhouse gas emissions, cargo handling equipment for the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland make up only 0.0747 percent of the state’s GHG inventory. Is that enough to have an impact on global climate change? To be blunt: no.
   “Unfortunately, the CAAP directs and dictates an emissions strategy without any counterbalancing funding stream or commercial program to attract more cargo to mitigate its unprecedented costs,” McLaurin addded.
   The one counterbalancing proposed element of the CAAP is lobbying for state and federal funds to help mitigate the cost and to expand the CAAP requirements regionally or nationally as part of an effort to minimize cargo diversion by, as McLaurin put it, “spreading the pain to the competition” at other California and U.S. ports.
   “Given the limited opportunities for state and federal funding, the competitive nature of our business and the political realities of our national politics, I would suggest that these specific CAAP proposals are not well thought out,” he said. “From a competitive standpoint, the CAAP at its core is simply layering additional costs without improving speed, velocity, density, reliability or risk to terminal operators, ocean carriers, trucking industry and cargo owners.”