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Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, today I am adding my name as a cosponsor of S. 171 the Clean Gasoline Act of 1999. This bill sets a national, year-round cap on the sulfur content of gasoline sold in the United States. The bill would bring American gasoline standards in-line with the low sulfur levels required in Japan, Australia, the European Union and the State of California.
As we all know, cars are a significant source of air pollution. This bill would have an effect on pollution equal to removing 54 million vehicles from the road. The reason for such a dramatic improvement is that sulfur in gasoline coats the car's catalytic converter and spoils its ability to reduce emissions smog-forming pollutants. More than 30 percent of these pollutants are emitted by cars and trucks.
In the new breed of low emission vehicles, sulfur is particularly damaging. Engineers have created a new generation of pollution control devices for these vehicles that more effectively reduce smog-forming emissions. But, these cutting-edge technologies are poisoned by even moderate sulfur levels in the gasoline. According to industry research on this new class of clean cars, reducing gasoline sulfur concentration from the current national average of 330 parts per million to 40 ppm will reduce hydrocarbon emissions by 34 percent, carbon monoxide emissions by 43 percent, and nitrogen oxides emissions by 51 percent.
If these devices fail to work properly because they are clogged with sulfur, those emissions reductions will be lost and much of our investment in cleaner automotive technology will be wasted.
More importantly, lower sulfur levels in gasoline will reduce emissions from nearly every car on the road today--not just those with the latest pollution control devices. This is because reducing the sulfur content of gaoline instantly improves the performance of all catalytic converters in all cars. Low-sulfur fuel adds value to our existing investments in pollution control technology. There are more than 125 million passenger cars on the road today, and this bill will make almost every single one of them cleaner.
I'm sure my colleagues recall the phase-out of leaded gasoline in the late 1970s. We undertook that phase-out because we understood that catalytic converters--a new technology at the time--would not work with lead in the gasoline. Now is the time to phase-out sulfur because, by reducing sulfur levels, we can reap more rewards from existing technology and eliminate barriers to new technology.
Reducing sulfur levels in gasoline will require some changes to oil refining and processing techniques, and there is a modest cost associated with that. But, no other strategy can achieve such large reductions in air pollutants so quickly. We must capitalize on two decades of improvements in automotive technology by making similar advances in the gasoline used in those cars.
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