Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
pay CAFE civil penalties ranging from less then US$1 million to more than US$20
million annually. Asian manufacturers and most of the big domestic manufacturers
have never paid civil penalties.
In 2009 the US government proposed a new national fuel economy program for
models 2012 to 2016, which ultimately requires an average fuel economy standard
of 35.5 miles per gallon (39 mpg for cars and 30 mpg for trucks).
In 2011 an agreement was reached by the US government and the major auto-
makers to increase fuel economy to 54.4 mpg for cars and light duty trucks by
2025.
“Feed-in tariffs” are a policy adopted at the state or national level but not at the in-
ternational level, and they guarantee grid access to renewable energy producers and
set a fixed guaranteed price at which power producers can sell renewable power
into the electric power network.
Some policies provide a fixed tariff while others provide fixed premiums added
to market or cost-related tariffs. By 2010, some 87 countries had adopted “feed-in”
policies. The United States adopted them as early in 1970 and, in 1990, Germany
followed. A number of other European countries adopted them over the subsequent
decade. After the turn of the century many developing countries, along with states/
provinces in other countries, including Australia and Canada, adopted the same
policy.
A “feed-in tariff” that provides a strong predictable stable price for renewable
electricity has proved successful in some wealthy countries such as Germany and
has accelerated investment in renewables. Setting quotas for renewable energy
could be equally effective if the contracting process were to provide winning bid-
ders with enough assurance that they could get financing at reasonable rates.
The Climate Convention UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change) adopted in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during the Earth Summit in
1992 has as its ultimate objective the stabilization of the atmospheric concentra-
tions of greenhouse gases at levels considered safe and achievable in a time frame
compatible with the ecosystem's capacity of recovery and natural adaptation.
