This paper relates to a previous article published in this journal on vehicle emission regulation in Europe. The former paper explained the long drawn out (and yet not fully completed) negotiations for European Community standards in terms of technology choice (lean-burn engines versus catalytic conversion of exhaust gases) and envisaged commercial implications for the Euopean car industry, and the outcome as a highly satisfactory one to the industry. In the present paper British regulatory regime and decision-making processes for vehicles emissions is described and assessed. While Britain lost the argument, the position it adopted in Europe was rational given the British policy context and the limitations inherent in a technocratic policymaking process which remains biased towards science rather than technology.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Boehmer-ChristiansenS.The Regulation of Vehicle Emissions in Europe, in Energy and Environment, Vol. 1, No. 11990.
2.
Future EC directives will cover many more pollutants than those discussed here; a draft directive on canisters for cars (to trap and burn volatile HCs) is in the pipeline; more stringent norms for all diesel engines can be expected soon. Noise regulation is likely with more emphasis on commercial vehicles, as well as various safety standards. Standards necessarily become part of commercial competition and regulation is always in danger of being ‘captured’ by the firm or firms most able to comply. Hence the active participation of industry in the negotiations and the possibility of a technically poorly informed government being misled by commercially motivated expert advice. Inflexible regulation in turn may retard innovation.
3.
The literature on the lead in petrol issue is very large e.g. chapter 3 of D. Collingridge, The Social Control of Technology, Pinter 1980; HooperL., The Regulation of Lead levels in Petrol, Essex Papers in Politics and Government, March1987, shows that the “eventual introduction of lead-free petrol was the result of pressure from trading partners for standardization and did not stem from any direct concern over air pollution in the UK”.
4.
A lot of engines can be adjusted to take unleaded petrol, but not ‘retrofitted’ with converters at low cost, although this is encouraged in Germany. In Britain, the two issues have largely become separated. In Germany, where low lead petrol was introduced in the 1970s unleaded fuel and the adoption of converters was one process.
5.
The British Government helped to fund the pressure group CLEAR, set up in 1982 in order ‘to organise national and regional campaigns'.
6.
First Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, (paragraph 29), Cmnd 4585, 1971, HMSO.
7.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1988 talked of ‘all the environmental benefits’ of unleaded petrol and implied that such a switch in fuel ‘would enable all cars to be fitted with three way catalysts.'In fact, a new car and engine need to be designed first.
8.
House of Lords Select Committee on the European Communities, Particulate emissions from diesel-engined cars, 7th Report 1987–88, London, December1987.
9.
Support for such measures seems more widespread than was the case, at a similar stage of negotiations, for gaseous standards. See, for example, NSCA recommendations on diesel smoke.
10.
UK CEED Bulletin, No. 26, Nov-Dec.1989, p. 17.
11.
Boehmer-ChristiansenS. in Political Quarterly, 59, 2, April-June1988. The number of examples where slow responses to environmental problems ‘are hidden’ behind a fig-leaf of science appears to be increasing. The critical load criteria for acid rain may be the most recent one.
12.
House of Commons, Environment Committee Session 1987–88, First Report, p. 9. However, this was not true for central Europe thus exposing the environmental absurdity of uniform emission standards for pollutants which are not very widely and fully dispersed.
13.
By 1989 Britain was also committed to a stand-still policy for NOx emissions under the 1989 Sophia Protocol to the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution and it had become clear from independent engineering reports finally commissioned by Government, that the performance of lean-burn engines with reference to NOx remained considerably poorer compared to that of sophisticated catalytic conversion. Current engines with electronic management burn both ‘lean’ and ‘rich’ depending on acceleration within limits tolerated by catalysts.
14.
This tradition has made research in Britain more difficult than in Germany. If we have come fairly close to the truth, this is thanks to many people inside and outside government who talked to us informally. Such help invariably leads away from ‘conspiratorial’ interpretations and towards procedural and perceptional differences. Parliamentary reports from the Houses of Parliament also greatly helped in improving transparency.
15.
Based on attitudes observed during interviews by myself and Helmut Weidner in 1989, but also strongly expressed in earlier interviews by one other British researcher, Dr TurnerIan, who kindly made this material available.
16.
Government also lacked the technical capacity to check industry's claims. The German Government, at the advice of its own engineers rejected such claims in the early 1980s and argues still that a satisfactory lean-burn engine is some considerable time away and will be very costly. The knowledge to make this judgement appears not have become available to the DoE until 1987 through a report commissioned from the Fellowship of Engineering on acid abatement which has not yet been published.
17.
When lean-burn engines finally made their appearance on the road, the European vehicle industry had already ‘converted'. However, the current attention paid to carbon dioxide once again raises the need for greater energy efficiency and the trade-offs between efficiency of fuel conversion, emission reduction and performance in the context of marketing and consumer demand.
18.
The German idea that such economic incentives can be introduced in a cost neutral way by increasing revenue from polluting vehicles has not so far been discussed, although the concept of pollution taxes did begin to attract the Treasury's notice in 1989.
19.
Cars alone were responsible in 1988 for over 10% of the growth in imports since 1987. The Guardian Financial News, December 29, 1989, p. 11. In 1988, 57 per cent of new registrations were of imported cars. Ford remains the market leader making the largest profits of any car company in Britain, but runs a large balance of trade deficit with Britain. In 1989 car imports were largest single factor in Britain's accumulated trade deficit (1983–1988) of around £20 billion.
20.
op cit8, p. iii.
21.
McLoughlin, 1972, The Law Relating to Pollution, Manchester University Press, 1970.
22.
Glatz, in Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Vehicle Emissions and their Impact on European Air Quality, London, 1987–88.
23.
These laboratories are examples of the strong link between government and science built up in the UK during and after the war. They were, however, increasingly underfunded during the 1980's and now fear for their future. Close personal links with ministries strengthens the argument that internal politics required environmental policy to be linked to spending on research.
24.
The Chief Scientist to the DoE, in reply to Lord Ashby, House of Lords, Select Committee on the European Communities, Session 1984–84, Fifth Report, Lead in Petrol and Vehicle Emissions, London1985, p. 11. Dr. Fisk later negotiated the post - Luxembourg agreements on vehicles for Great Britain, with Dr. Westheide being his opposite number from Bonn. Both were interviewed, although the latter at considerably greater length. For Dr. Fisk's views, we are able to rely on extensive evidence given at this and subsequent public hearings. Only Dr. Westheide has had the time to write a book about vehicle emissions.
25.
Department of the Environment, Air Pollution, The Government's Reply to the First Report from the Environment Committee, HMSO, Session 1987–1988, HC 270–1, December1988.
26.
Such advice would have come to the DoT from its Transport and Road Research Laboratory, which now has a section on air pollution from vehicles. Until recently it was primarily concerned with energy efficient engines. The Nature Conservancy Council refers enquiries about policy back to the Chief Scientist at the DoE.
27.
House of Lords, Fifth Report, cit op note 19, p. 10.
28.
House of Lords, Evidence, pp. 7 and 8.
29.
Department of the Environment (UK), The Government's Reply to the First Report from the Environment Committee, HMSO LondonDecember1988, p. 2. This judgement relates to the 1988 First Report of the UK Terrestrial Effects Review Group to the DoE which admitted a direct link between UK emissions and acidification of freshwater in Scandinavia, although it also concluded that there “as yet no direct proof of pollution-related forest decline in the UK” (HMSO, 1988).
30.
Department of the Environment (UK), The Government's Reply to the First Report from the Environment Committee, HMSO LondonDecember1988, p. 2. This judgement relates to the 1988 First Report of the UK Terrestrial Effects Review Group to the DoE which admitted a direct link between UK emissions and acidification of freshwater in Scandinavia, although it also concluded that there “as yet no direct proof of pollution-related forest decline in the UK” (HMSO, 1988), p. 2.
31.
Department of the Environment, Digest of Environmental and Water Statistics No. 11, London, 1988, p. 16.
32.
Hansard, House of Commons, 26 April1989, p. 932.
33.
House of Commons, Environment Committee, First Report, Air Pollution, Vol. 1, Appendix I (including a reprint of The Fourth Report Session 1983–84), HC 446-1, HMSO, London, May 1988, paragraph 154. The Committee was also ‘appalled’ at the standard of evidence received from the Motor industry, with SMMT not even mentioning the problem of ozone.
34.
Government's Response to the Fourth Report from the Environment Committee, (Session 1983–84), p. 10, HMSO.
35.
Op. Cit. Note 33, p xxi.
36.
House of Lords, First Report, Op. Cit., Note 24.
37.
Only the producer of catalytic converters, Johnson Matthey, spoke up for its own product.
38.
Op. Cit., Note 24, p xiii.
39.
Reported in Environmental Data Services, ENDS Report, No. 178, London, November, 1989.
40.
Fifth Report of Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, An integrated Approach, Cmnd. 6371, 1976, HMSO.
41.
Nature Conservancy Council, Report No. 7, Acid Deposition and its Implications for Nature Conservation in Britain, Shrewsbury1984.
42.
SMMT view as stated in appendices to the Minutes of evidence taken before the European Communities Committee, published as part of House of Lords 5th Report, cit op, p. 181. Also interview, LondonApril1989.
43.
BallDavid, Smoke from diesel vehicles, in Clean Air, Vol. 12, 21982; also Thirty Years On: A Review of Air pollution in London, published by the former Greater London Council, 1983.
44.
NSCA, Pollution from Road Vehicles, Brighton1980.
45.
Interview with Jane Dunmore of CLEAR, Brighton, April1989.
46.
FoE Special Report, Particulate Pollution from Diesel Vehicles, London, April1989. This recommends US emission standards for heavy vehicles.
47.
Boehmer-ChristiansenS.A., The politics of environment and acid rain in FR Germany: forests versus fossil fuels?, SPRU Occasional Paper No. 29, Brighton, October1989.
