Few issues in recent years have been debated as much as the move by both the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to set in place the Clean Trucks Fee.
Considered an important milestone in the ambitious effort to move toward zero-emission operations, the fee went into effect on April 1, 2022, and has since collected $10 per twenty-foot equivalent unit on loaded drayage trucks entering or leaving container terminals.
The idea was to develop a fund that would help bankroll the high cost of replacing old trucks with new vehicles.
But first-year results provided on Thursday, April 27, to POLA harbor commissioners were less than stellar — and there are now plans to increase the voucher amounts available in the second year.
“We made $5 million available for vouchers” to help purchase clean trucks, said Chris Cannon, director of Environmental Management and chief sustainability officer for the Port of L.A. “We only got four applications, which was very underwhelming. We really received not a lot of interest.”
One frustrated commissioner went even further.
“Can we be honest?” said Commissioner Ed Renwick. “Can we say this policy is a failure?”
In the first year the fee was applied, Cannon reported, approximately $40.1 million was collected in fees, though $1.3 million of that went to administrative costs.
So net revenue came in at $38.8 million.
The Port of Long Beach is expected to make a report on its first-year results in May.
Currently, vouchers from the program provide $150,000 per zero-emissions truck.
But the trucks cost about $450,000.
The reasons for the lackluster first-year results in the program, Cannon said, boil down to not enough incentive funding per ZE truck, a lack of available supply of new trucks and infrastructure, and the market’s caution because of uncertainty over the regulatory landscape.
Going forward, Cannon said, the plan currently is to increase the voucher amount from $150,000 to $225,000 (or up to $250,000 for…
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