Breathe deep outside Ford's new engine plant at Dagenham in east London and you are likely to choke on a mix of pollutants. Minute flecks of soot and ash from the clogged traffic on the nearby A13 main road get up your nose and down into your lungs; acrid whiffs of burning sulfur and nitrogen drift in from ships on the Thames and planes flying into City airport; and nearby sewage works and power stations all pitch in to make a foul atmospheric soup. Postcode RM9 6SA stinks.
But it is another world inside the factory. While Ford Dagenham makes gas-guzzling, V8 turbo-powered gasoline engines for Land Rover and Jaguar cars in the traditional dirty way, a separate area of the factory, about the size of six soccer pitches, is quite spotless. Here, breathing only filtered air, 500 people wearing gloves, masks and special shoes turn out vast numbers of low-emission car engines for all Europe.
"It's like a hospital, but without the MRSA [Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium responsible for difficult-to-treat infections in humans]," says one of the men on the factory floor. "We don't even have to start the engines. We simulate running them without any fuel."
Jim Austen, a test engineer, says: "In the old days, you used not to be able to see from one end of the line to the other for the fumes and dirt and the chimneys. It was very noisy, and you went home stinking of diesel. It's good to be on the side of the environment. It makes what you are working for more meaningful."
Europe's cleanest, and one of its largest, diesel engine factory can barely keep up with new orders. Ford, which sells one in six of all the vehicles in Britain, last year built 150,000 low-emission diesel engines for the European market. This year, it will be over 450,000, and next year it expects to ship 575,000 of these sub-130-gram-per-kilometer engines out of Dagenham to assembly works in Spain and Germany. Nearly one in four of the engines will come back to Britain as Ford Fiestas, Fusions and Focuses. Some already do 23km per liter, but later this year there will be models that return 25km per liter. All will qualify for London's new low-emission zone, and an attractive government tax break.
The shift to diesel is a direct response by the car makers to climate change concerns, but especially to oil prices, which last week again set new records.
"We are being overwhelmed by demand," said Oliver Rowe, communications officer for Ford Britain. "Sales [of 'green' cars] rose 33 percent last year and we expect the trend to accelerate. A major change is taking place in Europe, away from bigger engine gasoline cars to smaller diesel cars. It's being driven by high energy prices and budget changes in favor of small engines."
"The EU is driving manufacturers to get under 130g/km carbon dioxide emissions. Competition from other companies and public demand all are making us improve fuel consumption and lower [carbon] emissions. People are downsizing. Small cars means small engines means small emissions. I cannot see it changing. It's a real race to get small," he said.
Britain is leading the global rush to diesel, Rowe says, partly because it has always lagged behind Europe and is now catching up, and partly because former London mayor Ken Livingstone waged a long war on traffic and emissions with the world's first congestion charge and now a low-emission zone. The westward extension to the London congestion charge and planned changes to penalize gas guzzlers will almost certainly be scrapped under new London Mayor Boris Johnson, but the soaring fuel price rises alone are expected to drive demand for small cars and diesels that can achieve more kilometers per liter in particular.
"Diesel is getting as good as hybrids," says Rowe, who promises that later this year Ford Dagenham will start building one of Europe's "cleanest" mass produced engines, which will produce carbon dioxide emissions of less than 100g/km and do more than 30km per liter.
By comparison, the Toyota Prius, widely billed as the world's greenest mass production car, switching from electric to gasoline, clocks around 105g/km of carbon dioxide. The Smart car, with limited production runs, is lower at 90g and the average of cars in the UK is 164g.
Britain expects diesel emissions to grow by about 50 percent between 2002 and 2020, but the relentless drive away from gasoline has one major downside, overlooked by the government, ignored by many environment groups and barely known by the public.
A written answer last year by then transport minister Stephen Ladyman showed that diesel engines for passenger cars produce 16.9 times more particulate matter and over 83 percent more nitrogen oxides than the gasoline equivalents, albeit with 4.3 percent less carbon dioxide.
Indeed, the rise of diesel engines is the principal reason why London and possibly other UK cities have breached legal air quality legislation every year since 2005.
Air pollution near many of London's busiest roads averages well over twice the WHO's maximum recommended levels.
Concern centers on particulate pollution - the tiny specks of dust, ash or soot spewed out by vehicles, homes and industry.
There are, says the government, more than 1,000 premature deaths a year in London from air pollution, and there is considerable evidence that particulate pollution from diesel engines is associated with death, and admissions to hospital for the treatment of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and asthma.
Transport for London's consultation for the the capital's low-emission zone showed that 1,392,000 people were affected by breaches of EU legal limits for particulate matter in 2005.
"Diesel emissions from road transport are by far the biggest single cause of air quality legal breaches," says Simon Birkett, chairman of the cross-party Campaign for Clean Air in London.
He urges mayor Johnson and the government to take radical action to meet the demands of the new EU air quality directive, which is due to come into force very shortly and will require the UK to achieve much higher air quality standards for emissions of particulates by 2011.
"Unless the government sets, belatedly and soon, national standards for the abatement of emissions of oxides of nitrogen from older diesel vehicles of all main types, these vehicles must be banned from the most polluted parts of London if the UK is to comply with air quality laws," Birkett says.
He wants to see all car advertisements show, in grams per kilometer, the emissions of the hazardous oxides of nitrogen and particulate matter, as well as carbon dioxide emissions.
There is a real danger, he says, that in the rush to achieve carbon dioxide targets, other forms of pollution that can be highly injurious to health may be ignored or compromised.
"Air pollution needs to be tackled holistically, with sensible judgments being made in the inevitable trade-offs between air quality and climate change," Birkett said.
"A classic example is the latest Department for Transport's carbon dioxide calculator, which is likely to encourage people to choose cars with diesel engines because of their small climate change advantage, even though they generate substantially more of the hazardous particulate matter and nitrogen oxides. We should question whether there is still a place for diesel engines in large cities while there is such a serious public health problem," he said.
Back in Dagenham, Ford keeps a collection of its finest old models. Pride of place goes to a pristine Model T Ford, circa 1908. It still does 10.6km per liter of diesel, more than many of the gas guzzling engines that Ford makes.
Ironically, its diesel engine was designed to be driven on vegetable oil, and, 100 years on, its particulate emissions would have been significantly less than almost any engine the factory now makes.
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