Things Folks Know That Just Ain’t So…

What folks know…

Air Care, BC’s mandatory vehicle inspection and maintenance program, has been highly effective in reducing harmful vehicle emissions.

Why it ain’t so…

B.C.’s AirCare program provides environmental and health benefits which are less than one percent of its $63 million annual cost.

Background

In 1992, British Columbia launched AirCare, the first vehicle inspection and maintenance program in Canada. AirCare administration is now in the process of designing AirCare II to replace the original program when the current testing contract expires in 1999. Ontario had originally announced that it would introduce its first inspection and maintenance program during 1998, but the launch of that program has since been postponed.

The Cost

During the first five years of AirCare, the average annual cost of the program including test fees, repairs, expenses, and lost time, is conservatively estimated to have been nearly $63 million, or $1 million every six days. This amount does not include the environmental damage from two million extra vehicle trips to and from testing and repair facilities per year.

The value of any reduction of emissions depends upon the adverse effect that the pollutant has on human health and the environment. Even AirCare’s best claimed reduction in emissions reveals that consumers received environmental and health benefits which were less that one percent of the costs. Inspection and maintenance programs like AirCare claim to reduce three substances in a vehicle’s exhaust: CO (carbon monoxide), VOCs (volatile organic compounds, also called hydrocarbons), and NOx (nitrogen oxides). Yet AirCare has virtually no impact on either SOx (sulphur oxides) or PM10 (particulate matter 10 microns or less in size), the pollutants considered to be much more harmful.

CO accounts for over 90 percent of the total emissions AirCare claims to reduce, yet CO does not contribute to smog and causes “no discernible damage to human health or the [BC] environment,” according to a draft study commissioned by the Greater Vancouver Regional District and the BC Ministry of Environment, Land and Parks.

AirCare supporters tend to treat all emissions as equal, thereby disguising the program’s true value. For example, in 1996, Moe Sihota, BC’s Environment Minister at the time, was quoted as claiming that during its first three years, AirCare had reduced emissions by 165,000 tonnes. However, 93 percent of those claimed reductions are for CO, the value of which is less than $1 a tonne (value is calculated in terms of averted damage to human health, materials, crops, etc., per tonne). The total environmental and health value of the emissions reductions claimed for those first three years of AirCare consist of less than $154,000 from the reduction of CO, $937,000 from the reduction of VOCs, and $94,300 from the reduction of NOx—a total of $1.2 million of claimed benefits that, after three years, cost residents of British Columbia 150 times that amount.

Questioning the Benefits of Inspection and Maintenance Programs

Even if inspection and maintenance programs were reasonably effective in reducing vehicle emissions, British Columbia has ozone levels that are minuscule compared to many regions in the US. According to environmental consultant Mr. Paul Coninx, an inspection and maintenance program in Ontario would have little or no impact in southern Ontario, because the marginal ozone problem that exists in that province is largely created by air flowing in from the United States.

Could it be that government support for AirCare and similar types of inspection and maintenance programs has successfully crowded out more promising and cost-effective pollution control alternatives in favour of scheduled vehicle emission testing programs that are highly lucrative for special interests?

For more information on this topic see the Fraser Institute Critical Issues Bulletin: Vehicle Emissions Testing: AirCare, Drive Clean, and the Potential of Inspection and Maintenance Programs, by Paul Coninx, September 1998, available on our web site.

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Last Modified: Wednesday, October 20, 1999.