A New Climate Rule Could Change the Face of America’s Railways
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An alliance of labor and environmental groups is taking on the rail industry to pass a rule that would create both zero-emissions trains and good union jobs.
A new California rule mandating a switch to zero-emissions locomotives could create scores of new union jobs, especially if other states follow suit. But last month, the railroad industry filed a lawsuit challenging the rule, charging that states do not have the right to pass regulations stricter than federal limits on emissions. Meanwhile, railroad companies have largely ignored federal rules that are in place mandating a transition to the cleanest-burning diesel regulations, and experts say adherence to those existing rules would also create thousands of union jobs while greatly reducing the release of carbon into the atmosphere.
The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) union has long been pushing for a transition to cleaner locomotives, in keeping with the spirit of a Green New Deal. UE general president Carl Rosen says the transition to clean locomotives fits with UE’s commitment to environmental justice and fighting climate change, and it could mean new union jobs including at the Wabtec Corp. locomotive factory in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Rosen testified on July 26 before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety about locomotive emissions standards and their impact on jobs and health.
“Setting stricter emission standards for locomotives is not only the right thing to do for workers and communities around the railroads, it will also stimulate American manufacturing, as new requirements for railroads to fully modernize their fleet will spur demand,” Rosen told the committee. “Essentially all manufacturing of locomotives for the U.S. market takes place domestically, and much of it is union, with family-supporting wages and benefits.”
The Wabtec plant, where about 1,400 UE workers have been on strike since June 22, has seen more than 1,600 jobs slashed in recent years. Wabtec bought the plant—UE’s flagship membership base — from GE in 2019.
A study released this year by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst found that manufacturing green locomotives — zero-emissions electric and the cleanest possible diesel models — could add 2,600 to 4,300 jobs at the Wabtec plant and up to 5,000 new jobs in Erie County in associated goods and services.
“Most of the drop [in Wabtec employment] is because railroads stopped buying new locomotives, no one has been making them do it,” Rosen told In These Times. “One of our contract demands is [for the company] to commit to working with us to push green locomotives forward and do that work at our plant.”
Wabtec is already making battery-powered locomotives, including through a $100 million deal to place the locomotives in rail yards in Nebraska and California.
Cleaner locomotives would also provide health benefits for workers nationwide who spend their days in and around rail yards breathing dangerous diesel emissions.
Larry Hopkins is a rail crew driver in Chicago, ferrying conductors and engineers between locomotives and hotels. He lives between six rail yards on Chicago’s Southwest Side and is president of UE Local 1177, which represents the rail crew drivers employed by Hallcon Corporation.
“We are constantly breathing the fumes from those locomotives,” said Hopkins. He suffers from sinus problems he attributes to the diesel exposure over 13 years working for the company Renzenberger Inc., and then Hallcon Corporation after a 2013 merger. “It’s all about corporate greed. The railroads are worried about profit and not lives. They act like they’re concerned, but they’re not.”
Meaningful regulation
The UE and other labor and health groups have been pushing proposals for funding cleaner locomotives that ultimately were stripped out of earlier versions of legislation that became the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.
So now the UE and other advocates are pinning their hopes on state regulations, with California leading the way and other states likely to follow. The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently drafting a new rule that would allow states to pass stricter emissions standards than federal law. The provision is part of proposed rules that would strengthen emissions limits on heavy duty vehicles including trucks — restoring protections that were derailed by the Trump administration.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulation approved in April mandates all switcher, industrial and passenger locomotives operating in California be emissions-free by 2030, while freight train locomotives must be emissions-free by 2035, unless railroads adhere to an alternate compliance plan that results in an equivalent reduction in emissions.
Under the rule, starting in 2024, companies must pay into a fund based on how much diesel pollution their locomotives are emitting in California, with the funds used for transitioning to cleaner locomotives. Locomotive idling — which releases copious emissions — will also be limited to 30 minutes.
The EPA first instituted emissions classifications and limits for diesel locomotives in 1997. The oldest, dirtiest locomotives are considered tier 0. Tier 4 diesel locomotives employ the latest technology and have relatively low emissions. Updated regulations adopted in 2008 called for most locomotives to meet tier 3 standards by 2012 and tier 4 by 2015. But as of 2021, fewer than 10% of the nation’s Class 1 locomotives met the tier 4 standards, according to UE’s analysis of federal statistics, and three-quarters were tier 2 or lower.
The UE’s Green Locomotive Project demands that almost immediately, all long-haul locomotives meet tier 4 standards, and all switcher locomotives in rail yards be zero-emissions. The project calls for transitioning to entirely zero-emissions locomotives over time.
“You can take an old locomotive into the shop and bring a tier 3 out the other end,” said Rosen. A tier 4 by contrast is “a significant leap forward in afterburners and things that require a much larger chassis,” he continued. “But [railroads] aren’t even doing what they could to get to tier 3, because there are no teeth” in the federal tier regulations.
Rosen noted that creating stricter, binding federal standards for rail emissions would likely be a slow process, so advocates are hopeful that the EPA will simply pass the rule allowing states to create their own standards before the industry lawsuit can shut such standards down.
“If California does it, it will force the rail industry to clean up in general,” Rosen said. “We could certainly see states like Illinois, Pennsylvania and others move on this sort of thing if it becomes possible to have states set their own standards. Once you have states like [California] doing it, it will become de facto national policy because locomotives have to move from place to place.”
Kevin Brubaker, deputy director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center, noted that California’s Clean Car rules have pushed auto makers to invest in electric and hybrid models. That rule, also promulgated by CARB, sets a schedule so that by 2035, all cars and light trucks sold in the state must be zero-emissions.
“With the California car standard we’ve seen California leading the nation toward greener transportation,” Brubaker said. “We hope they can do the same on the locomotive side. There are obviously far less locomotives than automobiles in the world, but with locomotives there are probably a greater percentage serving California than automobiles purchased in California. So California could — assuming they have legal authority to do so — push the locomotive market even more effectively than they did the car market.”
Environmental injustice
Rail emissions are widely recognized as a serious environmental justice issue, since people living around rail yards and along rail lines in urban areas are disproportionately people of color. CARB has estimated the California rules will prevent 3,200 premature deaths — and that one locomotive has equivalent emissions to 400 heavy-duty trucks.