Review of Directive 98/70 – non-paper 8

Non-road mobile machinery

Requirement in Directive 98/70:

Article 4, paragraph 5 states that “Member States shall ensure that gas oils intended for use by non-road mobile machinery and agricultural and forestry tractors marketed within their territory contain less than 2 000 mg/kg of sulphur. By 1 January 2008 at the latest, the maximum permissible sulphur content of gas oils intended for use by non-road mobile machinery and agricultural and forestry tractors shall be 1 000 mg/kg. However, Member States may require a lower limit or the same sulphur content for diesel fuels stipulated in this Directive.”

Article 9, paragraph 2 requires that “When considering its proposal for the next stage of emission standards for compression ignition engines in non-road applications, the Commission shall establish in parallel the required fuel quality. In so doing, the Commission shall take into account the importance of the emissions from this sector, the overall environmental and health benefits, the implications in the Member States regarding fuel distribution and the costs and benefits of a more restrictive sulphur level than is currently required for fuel used in compression ignition engines in non-road applications, and shall then align appropriate fuel quality requirements for non-road applications with the on-road sector by a certain date, currently expected to be 1 January 2009, to be confirmed or amended by the Commission in its review in 2005”.

The problem

Non-road engines consume some 9% of diesel fuel and are responsible fora comparable proportion of overall pollutant emissions. In its proposal that led to the 2003 revision of Directive 98/70 the Commission noted that the sulphur content of non-road fuel would in the longer term need to me modified to allow more stringent engine emission standards.

Directive 2004/26 establishes requirements for emission from non road mobile machinery for type approval. In particular from 31/12/2009, new machinery should only emit 0.025g/kwh particulate matter.The reference fuel to be used has a 300 ppm sulphur content for stage III A and a 10ppm sulphur content for stage III B and stage IV. The enhanced emission control equipment required to meet the specifications requires better quality fuel, particularly in relation to sulphur contentin particular to avoid deterioration of the emission control equipment.To enable this emission level, fuel with a sulphur content of 10-50ppm is required.

Views of stakeholders

Some stakeholders argue that fuel standards for non-road mobile machinery should be aligned with road fuel standards. Others argue that sulphur is the key parameter and only that should be aligned, it has been suggested that only 10-50ppm is needed by either 2010 or 2011. In a number of cases it is argued that the flexibility of Member States should be retained.

EUROMOT argued in its response to the first stakeholder meeting that for diesel sulphur should be set at 350ppm by 2006 and 10ppm by 2009.EUROMOT also supports the ACEA position on ethanol content of petrol.

Analysis

Two issues need to be considered:

  • which parameters need to be specified to enable the operation of NRMM and
  • what timing is required for those parameters to be introduced.

Sulphur

In the explanatory memorandum of the Commission’s proposal on NRMM it was stated:

Today about 9% of gas oil consumption is for non-road purposes - if inland waterways are included. About 50% is used for the on-road sector and about 40% as heating oil. At European level, there is no separate non-road diesel quality, and with a market share of less than 10% this situation is unlikely to change in the future. At national level, special fuel qualities might well be made available.

………

Given the above conclusions on limit values, we will in the future have a situation where the Stage III A limit values for gaseous pollutants can be met by using heating oil. However, to meet the Stage III B PM limit values, a fuel with a maximum of 10-50 ppm sulphur must be used. Thus, it is necessary to ensure that low-sulphur fuel is used once the PM limit values enter into force or in Member States that want to encourage earlier implementation of those limit values.

The Commission proposal included an assessment of the costs of the tighter emission requirements and included in this an assessment of supplying fuel with the tighter specification. It concluded that the overall benefits of the package proposed for the NRMM engines shows that the benefits per engine are about 75 Euro higher than the costs.

Essentially therefore the Community has already through the decision to implement tighter NRMM emission requirements that require a tighter fuel specification determined the need to modify the requirements in Directive 98/70 for NRMM fuel. The economic assessment of the proposal on NRMM equipment emissions included the estimated costs of the changes to the fuel specification. As discussed in the non-paper on 10ppm sulphur in diesel, recent evidence shows that the costs and CO2 emissions resulting from lowering diesel sulphur content are around half those that were previously foreseen.

It is therefore clear that the sulphur parameter of NRMM diesel fuel does need to be changed. Since low and zero-sulphur diesel fuel will already be on the market there should be no practical difficulties in arranging supply. It appears therefore that the sulphur specification should be tightened to the level required for correct operation of NRMM emission control equipment in time for that equipment to be placed on the market. Stage IIIB equipment will be placed on the market from 31 December 2009 and therefore this should be the latest date for ensuring that appropriate fuel is available.

Timing of any change

EUROMOT argues for an early change in the sulphur content of diesel fuel for non-road applications. However, such an early change is impractical. A realistic timetable in view of the need to modify Directive 98/70 is as follows:

Conclusion of review and if needed proposal for legislation – December 2005
Probable conclusion of co-decision legislative process – 2007/8
Likely date for implementation of agreed legislation– 2009/10

In view of this, a change from 1000mg/kg sulphur in 2008 as requested by EUROMOT is unlikely to be possible.The timing of the Directive modification means that it is not feasible to make changes before 2009.

Non-sulphur parameters

While changes do not appear to be required to other fuel specifications to enable the use of advanced emissions control equipment, it is desirable to consider whether the other specifications should be tightened.Some stakeholders have argued for aligning NRMM diesel fuel with the road fuel specification.

In view of the fact that aligning the sulphur content with road fuel would result in a separation of non-road diesel fuel from the heating oil specification, for logistical reasons fuel suppliers might wish to have other specifications aligned to minimise the types of fuel that they must handle.

A large proportion of non-road mobile machinery is operated where its emissions have a similar impact on air quality to road operated vehicles. The volume of non-road fuel use and emissions would suggest that a tightening of the non-road fuel specification to make it equivalent to the road specification would have significant air quality benefits.

Proposed action

It is proposed that the sulphur specification for non-road diesel fuel should be tightenedto 50ppm by 31/12/2009.

The complete specification of non-road diesel fuel should be aligned with that of road diesel fuel by 2011.