GasPowered Archives - Art of Landscaping

December 15, 2021

California OKs phaseout of gas-powered landscaping machinery

SACRAMENTO —

California regulators voted on Thursday to ban the sale of new gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers starting in 2024 and portable generators by 2028, the latest step in the state’s aggressive effort to reduce harmful pollutants and transition toward a carbon-free economy.

The new regulations by the California Air Resources Board require all newly sold small-motor equipment primarily used for landscaping to be zero-emission by the target dates, with some exceptions.

The agency’s decision is based in part on the belief that battery technology will improve and zero-emission gear will become more widely available before the requirements kick in — though there will be an annual review to determine whether they are on target and whether regulation needs to be altered or delayed.

The restriction applies to homeowners and commercial landscapers alike, and the ban also includes gas-powered weed trimmers, chainsaws and power washers. The regulation does not ban existing gas-powered equipment, however, which can continue to be used.

Combined, these small gas-powered engines create as much smog-causing pollution in California as light-duty passenger cars. There are approximately 15.4 million small off-road engines in California and they produce about 141 tons of smog-forming emissions per day, according to the agency.

Richard Corey, executive director of the agency, told the board that the ban will provide significant health benefits for Californians, including those in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, which tend to experience the highest exposure to pollutants.

Environmental and public health advocates praised the new regulations, saying transitioning to zero-emission landscaping equipment and generators — either battery-powered or plug-in — will not only reduce pollution but protect the health of landscaping workers, homeowners and tenants who are exposed to gas and oil fumes.

“The new sales will start to make this transition to what’s much cleaner as well as quieter equipment,” said Bill Magavern of the Coalition for Clean Air. “That’s going to be a major health improvement for the workers who use the equipment and for residents who are exposed, as well as everybody in the region because smog is really a regional problem.”

Agency staff told the board that while transitioning to zero-emission machinery will lead to an added upfront cost to landscapers, that will be offset by the money they save in fuel, maintenance and repairs. The reduced emissions also will prevent hundreds of premature deaths in the decades ahead, as well as lowering healthcare costs for those affected by the carbon emissions, they said.

Landscaping businesses have adamantly opposed the new restrictions, saying zero-emission, commercial-grade equipment is prohibitively expensive and less efficient than the existing gas-powered lawn mowers, leaf blowers and other small machinery used in the industry. According to one industry representative, a three-person landscaping crew would need to carry 30 to 40 fully charged batteries to power its equipment during a full day’s work.

“The cost of transition would be significant and probably kill my small business,” Elizabeth Burns, president of Zone 24 Landscaping in Torrance, told the board.

Jeff Coad of small-machinery manufacturer Briggs & Stratton told the Air Resources Board that his company supports a move to zero-emission equipment but said the 2024 target date was unrealistic. The quality of zero-emission equipment such as commercial riding lawn mowers remains far behind that of gas-powered versions.

Air Resources Board member Hector De La Torre said when the agency sets ambitious goals, as in this case, “99{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} of the time we get there.” If there are problems going forward, however, the board will stop the process and reassess the situation.

“We’re not blind to the realities of what’s going on in the marketplace,” he said.

According to the board, operating a typical professional gas-powered lawn mower for an hour emits as much pollution as driving a car from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Operating a backpack leaf blower for an hour emits pollution comparable to driving that same car from Los Angeles to Denver.

The Air Resources Board began working on the regulations after Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order in September 2020 that required the state to “transition to 100{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} zero-emission off-road vehicles and equipment by 2035 where feasible,” which includes landscaping equipment and portable generators.

In October, Newsom signed legislation enshrining that policy in state law.

Assemblyman Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), author of the legislation, said the state has set aside $30 million to help professional landscapers and gardeners make the transition from gas-powered to zero-emission equipment. Berman and members of the Air Resources Board agree that more money will be needed in the future, particularly for small landscaping businesses.

The ban on gas-powered generators elicited the most opposition during Thursday’s hearing, with critics saying battery-powered generators are an inadequate substitute during a sustained power outage or when access to power to recharge a battery is nonexistent.

Dave Johnston, the air pollution control officer at El Dorado County Air Quality Management District, expressed concern about the consequences for residents in rural areas. Gas-powered portable generators are essential for many Californians, especially those living in areas hit by widespread blackouts when high winds sweep through the state, mostly because utilities are trying to prevent a downed power line from starting a blaze.

“Power outages in rural areas are frequent and can last for several days and are becoming more common,” he told the board, asking it to delay the ban. “Forcing moderate- to low-income rural residents to do without power for extended periods to achieve small emission reductions in these areas that are already in attainment is unconscionable.”

Recreational vehicle manufactures and dealers also urged the board to rethink the generator ban. They said RV users depend on gas-powered generators, which are often permanently mounted, while in remote areas without access to power. Solar-powered equipment cannot provide the energy needed to run medical devices, refrigerators and air conditioning in hot climates, they said.

“The battery required to supply needed power to an RV for just one day would need to be twice the size of a battery currently used in a Tesla Model S and would cost upwards of $60,000 to $100,000, and would add at least 1,000 to 2,000 pounds to a vehicle, decreasing its fuel economy,” said Michael Ochs of the Recreational Vehicle Industry Assn.

Dealers told the board the ban will force Californians to buy RVs in neighboring states where gas-powered generators are permitted, which would cost jobs and do nothing to improve air quality.

Agency officials said those concerns will be assessed before the new regulations are implemented.

The new regulations come as California moves toward the goal of transitioning to 100{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} clean energy by 2045, shedding its reliance on gas-powered cars and slowly phasing out the state’s billion-dollar oil and gas industry.

In the same 2019 executive order to ban gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers, Newsom required all new cars sold to be zero-emission vehicles by 2035. Newsom in April took action to ban new permits for hydraulic fracturing starting in 2024, and in October took the first step toward banning new oil and gas wells within 3,200 feet of homes, schools and healthcare facilities.

November 30, 2021

Gardeners say California’s subsidy to phase out gas-powered tools won’t cut it

Though Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill banning the sale of most new gas powered tools by 2024, gardeners and landscapers say a $30 million state subsidy isn’t nearly enough to help small operators make the switch to electric.

The state agency responsible for administering the subsidy estimates it has only enough to give each self-employed gardener a 50{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} coupon for one tool, far from the truckload of leaf blowers, lawn mowers, small chainsaws, brushcutters and trimmers most haul around.

In fact, local governments have learned they need to offer more. In Southern California, a regional air quality district that has been running a similar incentive program since 2017 saw few takers until it increased rebates to 75{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} per tool. The district paired that with an outreach program and encouraged landscapers to test electric equipment.

The California Air Resources Board is still figuring out who will qualify for the rebate but Assemblymember Marc Berman, one of the authors of the bill, said he’s open to adding more funding if needed.

“Let’s not make the perfect be the enemy of the good,” said the Menlo Park Democrat.

A chainsaw and gas on the ground during fire mitigation work at a property along Via Floreado road in Orinda on Nov. 16, 2021. Ken’s Rototilling and Landscaping company owns around 50 gas powered tools that could be impacted by a state ban on new small gas motors.

Environmentalists hailed the first-in-the-nation law for advancing California’s clean energy goals, noting the state estimates that smog-forming pollution from small gas-powered engines will surpass emissions from passenger cars this year. But electrifying the landscaping industry creates financial and physical burdens for the estimated 60,000 one-person and often unlicensed landscaping operations, an industry with an average income under $40,000 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

There’s an argument for subsidizing the transition. An electric leaf blower and batteries cost nearly twice as much as a comparable gas version. California estimates that a full transition of nearly 3 million tools used by landscaping professionals will cost $1.29 billion.

Bryan, a landscaper who asked to be identified by his first name only because he fears losing business, uses a mix of electric and gas equipment. The electric ones fall short.

“I have 10 to 15 houses a day, right now, but with electric (tools), I may do seven or five houses a day,” he said. That’s a loss of $1,000 a week.

Already, Bryan has told his kid he can’t afford books or a new laptop. The cost of a full conversion by purchasing all electric tools, he said, would require him to raise prices 30{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48}. He fears his residential clients will purchase their own tools and do it themselves, pushing him out of a job.

When the bill was signed, Berman and Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego called it a win for both the environment and human health. Electric tools have already been widely adopted by California homeowners, but only a fraction of commercial landscaping companies have made the switch, according to a 2018 survey by the air resources board.

Jorge Mijango of Ken’s Rototilling and Landscaping uses a chainsaw to cut trees for fire mitigation at a property along Via Floreado road in Orinda on Nov. 16, 2021. The landscaping company owns around 50 gas powered tools that could be impacted by a state ban on new small gas motors.

At that time, 8 in 10 landscapers said they planned on buying gas-powered equipment with many prioritizing performance, run-time and cost. But operating a gas-powered leaf blower for one hour, for example, emits the same amount of pollution as driving a Toyota Camry from Los Angeles to Denver, according to the air board.

The lawn equipment conversion will bring the rest of the state in line with cities such as Palo Alto, Los Altos and Menlo Park, which have already banned noisy leaf blowers. The law also directs the air resources board to come up with statewide regulations for other small motor equipment, such as golf carts, small generators and power washers.

But the landscaping industry, the main target of the ban, says the transition has already been costly.

Steven Wood purchased four batteries for his electric leaf blower after a number of communities in the Bay Area banned gas-powered leaf blowers. Woods, who owns a small landscaping business, immediately noticed the batteries don’t go far enough.

“I never spent $200 on something that lasted 45 minutes,” Wood said, “and it doesn’t last for six to eight houses a day.”

Once the batteries drain, Wood’s two employees resort to raking, which takes three times as long to complete a job.

Tests back him up.

Consumer Reports rated gas and electric tools, such as lawn mowers, leaf blowers and string trimmers, side by side. The nonprofit consumer organization found that battery-powered tools, with low maintenance and ease of use, were strong candidates for homeowners with less than an acre of land who could wait to recharge their batteries. But when it came to larger plots, more robust weeds to whack, or long hours of use, gas tools excelled.

“As an industry, we want this (battery-powered) equipment to be able to handle what we throw at it,” said Sandra Giarde, executive director of the California Landscape Contractors Association. “But it’s not there yet.”

Ken Tamplen, owner of Ken’s Rototilling and Landscaping holds a chainsaw at a property along Via Floreado road in Orinda on Nov. 16, 2021, in Orinda.

The air resources board said the technology is close enough. While electric tools may not have the same power, they offer other benefits, such as longer lifespan, better torque for some tools and savings on gas and maintenance, said air pollution specialist Christopher Dilbeck.

“We recognize that, yes, there will be substantial costs associated with what we are proposing,” said Dilbeck. “That is part of why this funding is available.”

The board, which will allocate the state’s $30 million subsidy, has yet to release how it will hand out incentives other than saying it will target small operators, including those without a business license. In one scenario, California could offer 12,000 small landscapers a 50{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} discount on all their new tools, or every sole-proprietor could receive a 50{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} discount on one tool.

“You are not going to be able to get the jobs done as fast,” said Ken Tamplen, owner of Ken’s Rototilling, a landscaping company in Contra Costa County. “You’re not going to be able to make as much money.”

This article is part of the California Divide, a collaboration among newsrooms examining income inequality and economic survival in California.

CalMatters is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

October 16, 2021

It’s Time To Ban Gas-Powered Landscaping Equipment

Landscaping products will be electric powered in California shortly, as a new invoice moves to ban gasoline-run garden tools in the condition — including garden mowers and leaf blowers — in an effort and hard work to restrict air pollution. Governor Gavin Newsom (D) signed a monthly bill on Saturday that will halt income of fuel-driven products with tiny off-street engines by January 1, 2024. That prohibition could also arrive faster, if the California Air Means Board (CARB) states these types of a legislation is “feasible.”

It’s not only landscaping tools that is part of the law. Transportable gas-driven turbines will will need to be zero-emission by 2028, in accordance to the Los Angeles Occasions. Once again, CARB has remaining say in that finish date. The regulation calls for all freshly sold smaller-motor equipment principally utilized for landscaping to be zero-emission — essentially to be battery-operated or plug-in — and incorporates any engine that generates considerably less than 25 gross horsepower, these as lawn mowers, weed trimmers, chain saws, golf carts, specialty automobiles, generators, and pumps.

It does not use to on-street motor cars, off-road motorcycles, all-terrain autos, boats, snowmobiles, or product airplanes, autos or boats — yet.

What is the Problem with Compact Fuel-Driven Off-Highway Engines?

Just about every weekend, about 54 million Us residents mow their lawns, employing 800 million gallons of gasoline for each yr and producing tons of air pollutants, according to the organization, People Powered Machines. Yard machines engines — which have experienced unregulated emissions right until the late 1990s and emit large ranges of carbon monoxide, unstable organic compounds, and nitrogen oxides — generate up to 5{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} of the nation’s air pollution and a good offer a lot more in metropolitan areas.

The US Environmental Defense Agency (EPA) has adopted emission benchmarks to control both exhaust and evaporative emissions from smaller spark-ignition engines. They condition that nonroad engines lead appreciably to air air pollution. The emission requirements handle oxides of nitrogen (NOx), hydrocarbons (HC), particulate make a difference (PM), and carbon monoxide (CO). These emissions assist form smog and consist of harmful compounds these types of as benzene, so cutting down them will advantage our wellbeing and surroundings. In the Clean up Air Act, Congress necessary the EPA to established emission requirements that address these problems.

The EPA claims a new fuel powered lawn mower provides as substantially air air pollution in 1 hour of operation as 11 new automobiles each remaining pushed for 1 hour. Applying a gasoline-powered leaf blower for 1 hour leads to the exact same volume of air pollution to be emitted into the air as does a 2017 Toyota Camry driving from Los Angeles to Denver, which spans about 1,100 miles. Which is why lawmakers are doing the job to curb emissions that arrive from those people applications.

“It’s remarkable how men and women react when they study how considerably this products pollutes, and how substantially smog-forming and climate-altering emissions that little off-street engine tools makes,” Assemblyman Marc Berman (D), the creator of the laws, relevant, according to the Los Angeles Situations. “This is a fairly modest method to hoping to limit the large amounts of air pollution that this tools emits, not to point out the health and fitness affect on the employees who are utilizing it frequently.”

California Sets Emissions Standards for New Non-Highway Engines & Will help Skilled Landscapers with $$

California has adopted its very own emission specifications for selected styles of new nonroad engines, cars, or gear. In those people instances, makers need to certify their products with CARB these products and solutions are also certified with the EPA even if no additional requirements apply. There are a lot more than 16.7 million modest engines in California, which tops the range of passenger cars and trucks on roadways by approximately 3 million.

CARB commenced performing on the landscaping tools regulations following Newsom issued an executive get in September 2020 that necessary the point out to “transition to 100{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} zero-emission off-street vehicles and devices by 2035 where possible.”

The condition has allocated $30 million to aid expert landscapers and gardeners with switching their gear from gas-driven to zero-emissions. Equipment with so-identified as small off-highway engines develop as significantly smog-creating pollution in California as gentle-responsibility passenger automobiles, and decreasing those emissions is pivotal to improving air top quality and combating local weather change, proponents of the legislation claimed.

By now, may possibly homeowners have converted to all-electrical landscaping tools this kind of as lawnmowers and hedge trimmers, as have numerous metropolitan areas and universities. A 2019 CARB study located that extra than half of home garden and back garden machines in the condition was presently zero emissions.

The little motor gasoline-driven ban legislation was opposed by Republican lawmakers, as properly as some Democrats, who expressed a range of worries.

Citizens in rural regions may perhaps be specially affected by the zero emissions moveable generator prerequisite.
Battery gear would have restricted charge through blackout periods.
The $30 million grant may not absolutely deal with the approximated 50,000 California little businesses that will be afflicted by the legislation.
Zero-emission commercial-quality products tends to cost extra than parallel fuel-powered devices.
The battery tools may well not have the efficiency scales of the existing gas-driven garden mowers, leaf blowers, and other small equipment.
Batteries current an uncertain expenditure, and a crew may well have to have a number of batteries to entire a day’s agenda. (These naysayers have to have to check out out the charging designed into the new Ford F-150 Lightning.)

Berman explained those fears are getting taken into account, and the regulation especially requires the California Air Resources Board to adjust the limits on generators centered on their “expected availability” of that tools on the commercial and retail current market.

Closing Ideas about All-Electric powered Landscaping Devices

Matt Harrison, a longtime public performs staff, informed the Washington Write-up his initial skepticism about employing all-electrical landscaping tools was that the electric powered variations would not be impressive sufficient or would die much too quickly. “It proved me improper,” he admitted. Now Harrison makes use of all-electrical mowers, blowers, weed whips, and chain saws. “You ain’t acquired to dress in ear defense,” he described. And “you do not have to get worried about coming dwelling smelling like gas.”

Organizations like the American Eco-friendly Zone Alliance (AGZA) are ready to aid outdoor-centered organizations and municipalities make the changeover absent from gasoline-driven small gear, which include schooling in EPA and CARB-compliant devices, people-run applications, and battery electric powered alternatives. “It’s just exploding,” said Daniel Mabe, founder of AGZA . “We’re on the precipice of a revolution.”

Of training course, electric powered devices is only portion of the equation to protecting the environment. A sustainable lawn also requires new approaches to watering, fertilizer, and pesticide use. We will need to rethink cultural norms that a effective, middle course lifetime equates with a sprawling eco-friendly garden. We should develop much more drought-tolerant plants, get rid of invasive plants, convey in plants that attract pollinators, and guidance biodiversity each time attainable.

And we must reconsider the power we use for lights our outdoor landscaped spaces. For example, a little-but-expanding amount of golf classes are now turning to photo voltaic electricity methods to either specifically energy their functions or feed electrical power into the community utility’s grid in return for offsets on their electrical invoice.

Till individuals approaches of landscaping swap the All American front garden and our most loved outdoor accumulating spaces, mowing, blowing, and trimming will be weekly jobs. Electrifying almost everything is a genuinely fantastic get started.

Picture by Carolyn Fortuna, CleanTechnica

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