EPA Issues Proposed OPE Emission Standards

Today the EPA issued their “Proposed Emission Standards for New Non-road Spark-Ignition Engines, Equipment and Vessels."

These proposed standards include coverage of small land-based non-road engines and new evaporative emission standards for equipment using these engines.

The rule would take effect in 2011 for riding mowers and 2012 for push mowers and would apply only to new engines.

When fully implemented, the proposed standards would result in a 35% reduction in hydrocarbon and nitrogen-oxide emissions from the new engines’ exhaust.

Briggs & Stratton had said that adding catalytic converters to all its engines, which would have been required in California’s initial approach, would have been so costly that it would have resulted in the loss of US manufacturing jobs. Briggs now hopes to meet the new proposed standards without using catalytic converters.

One of the first changes by Briggs & Stratton would be improved fuel systems that reduce the amount of gasoline fumes leaked into the air. Other changes would come later, as new regulations are phased in.

The EPA suggests that the new rule could add up to $47 to the price of a lawn tractor, $280 to an outboard engine and $360 to a personal watercraft.

Briggs indicates that “there could be fairly significant price increases on (engines) that you see on riding lawn mowers and other large products. With other engines, the price increases could be slight.”

These proposed rules would have little, if any, effect on all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles.

For a quick easily readable overview, I would recommend you click on the first bullet below called “Fact Sheet” which should give you a short four page PDF document.

If you look at the other links, you will notice that this document’s pre-publication “Preamble” is 280 pages, the pre-publication “Regulations” is 265 pages, and the “Draft Regulatory Impact Analysis” is 709 pages long.

And you wondered why engine manufacturer employees all have gray hair!

Fact Sheet: Proposed Emission Standards for New Non-road Spark-ignition Engines, Equipment, and Vessels (Also available as a PDF file, 4 pp, 85K, EPA420-F-07-032)

Preamble (Pre-publication Version (PDF) (280 pp, 2.5MB)

Regulations (Pre-publication Version) (PDF) (265 pp, 1.9MB)

Draft Regulatory Impact Analysis (PDF) (709 pp, 6.3MB, EPA420-D-07-004) Instead of downloading the entire document, you can access The Individual Chapters Of The Draft Regulatory Impact Analysis.