The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have officially launched their Clean Trucks Fee, an important milestone in their ambitious efforts to move toward zero-emission operations — a goal port executives and the mayors of their respective cities celebrated on Friday, April 1.
The fee, which began Friday, will collect $10 per twenty-foot equivalent unit on loaded drayage trucks entering or leaving container terminals at the twin ports, the two busiest in the nation. (TEU is the standard measurement for containers, though most are larger than that.)
“We expect just in the first year alone that this will generate $45 million at each port,” Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia said at a news conference, held at 4Gen Logistics, a family-owned port drayage company that will be a zero-emissions company by 2025.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, meanwhile, predicted the effort will be historic.
“I think this is one of those moments that, when we stop and look back,” Garcetti said, “will be one of the most significant of our lives.”
Garcetti was talking, of course, about efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change.
The ports have set a goal of transitioning to an entirely zero-emissions truck fleet by 2035.
Port equipment is set to transition by 2030.
“Now is the call to action,” said Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka. “We’ve got to step it up from here with even more investors.”
The officials who spoke Friday stood in front of trucks that, Seroka said, cost $1 million each — underscoring one of the biggest challenges that lie ahead.
“The transitioning of all of this equipment on dock and on the roads is a monumental task,” he said. “The investment in today’s prices is more than 10 billion U.S. dollars and we have to get started quickly.”
Establishing the infrastructure to include charging and fueling stations will also be a challenge.
Exemptions for the Clean Truck Fund fee will initially be provided for containers hauled by zero-emission trucks and low-nitrogen oxide-emitting (low-NOx) trucks.
The fees are to be paid by cargo owners, though concerns linger that they may get passed on to truck drivers, an issue both harbor commissions have pledged to watch closely.
“No trucker will pay the clean truck fund rate,” said Port of Long Beach harbor commission President Steven Neal. “(It) will be paid by the cargo owners and their authorized agents.”
The combined effort of both ports — which together make up the largest cargo gateway in the nation — is breaking new ground, said Los Angeles harbor commission President Jaime Lee.
“No other port complex in the world,” lee said, “is driving a changeover to cleaner technologies to this magnitude.”
The task ahead,however, is daunting, officials acknowledged.
“Today we have 20,000 trucks in the registry (serving both ports) and of those 20,000, only 5,300 are older than the year 2010,” said Port of Long Beach Executive Director Mario Cordero. “I say ‘only’ because that number was much higher previously. But we need to transition those 5,300 trucks in the short term to anything but diesel.”
The ports have been pushing forward on a lofty clean air goal for nearly two decades.
It’s time, Cordero added, “to move the needle” again, noting that health issues are at stake.
Besides contributing to climate change, emissions from diesel trucks also cause pollution that leads to health problems in those who live near the ports and freeways.
“It’s not about reducing emissions,” Cordero said. “Our quest today is about eliminating emissions.”