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So how did Cash for Clunkers work out from an environmental standpoint? You don’t want to know.

The $3 billion federal program was kinda sorta supposed to send inefficient, high-polluting, belchy vehicles to an early grave. Instead it put a lot of new large, inefficient vehicles on the road, according to an AP investigation of new government records.

The most common deals swapped old Ford or Chevrolet pickup trucks for new pickups that got “only marginally better gas mileage,” the analysis found. Old Ford F-150 for new Ford F-150 was the most common exchange. Buyers were 17 times more likely to purchase an F-150 (rated at 16 miles per gallon) than a hybrid Toyota Prius.

At least 15 owners of large pickups cashed them in for new Hummer H3 SUVs that get only 16 mpg. Excuse me, but why did the government even send claims forms to Hummer dealerships? Government officials are “investigating” out how these deals squeaked through, the AP reports.

About 1 in 7 of all deals went for vehicles that got 20 mpg or worse. If you think about it, though, 20 mpg really isn’t such a bad rate … for 1979.

There were plenty of signals before the one-month summer program began that it was a poor method for cutting pollution (note our roundup of early warnings). There’s also a lively debate on whether it made sense as economic stimulus.

Chandra says that governments could garner greater environmental benefits by purchasing carbon offsets (currently priced between $3 and $40 per tonne on carbon markets) or investing in green jobs and technologies.

While hybrid rebates help governments to appear environmentally progressive, Chandra suggests that some programs may serve as de facto “bailouts” for the North American auto industry.

By Davi Ottenheimer on Security

The BBC reports on fraud in the German car scrap

According to police, the owners had already received the government subsidy under the scrappage scheme, but instead of being destroyed the cars ended up in the hands of criminal gangs who sold them on.

“This is not an isolated case and police say a number of factors are to blame.

Thanks to the global downturn the scrap metal market has crashed, so many scrapyard dealers are sitting on a mountain of old cars they need to get rid of.

There are lax controls and criminal gangs are becoming more savvy.”

The government now estimates around 10 percent of the plan, as many as 50,000 cars, have been diverted by criminals. It seems that it would not be terribly hard to track the scrapped automobiles but apparently no one noticed until a Hamburg port cargo check revealed 40 old cars headed to Africa.

TORONTO — Ontario’s government will announce a plan Wednesday to offer purchasers of electric cars incentives of up to $10,000 in a bid to make the environmentally-friendly vehicles more accessible to the average consumer.

The plan is part of the province’s attempts to boost the struggling auto sector and position itself at the forefront of the emerging technology, sources told The Canadian Press.

Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice said Thursday Ottawa is looking into whether to offer consumers more incentives to retire their old, polluting cars and buy new vehicles.

“We’re assessing it now. Certainly any changes we make would come into effect this fall,” he said in an interview with CBC Newsworld.

Last month, U.S. President Barack Obama signed his country’s billion-dollar “cash for clunkers” law. Several European countries are also offering consumers financial incentives to scrap old cars and buy new vehicles.

Prentice said an existing program announced last June has not succeeded in getting as many clunkers off the road as hoped.

“We had an objective of 50,000 vehicles per year,” he said. ” We’re currently on track to achieve about 30,000 — perhaps as much as 40,000 — vehicles.”

The program — touted as a way to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions — offers incentives such as discounts on public transit passes, bicycles, memberships in car-sharing programs or $300 cash. The retired vehicles are turned over to scrapyards to crush and recycle, according to provincial guidelines.

1,094 people have visited this page since it was created. 814 came from Google, 154 from Yahoo, and 26 from AOL. All told, it has represented more than 10% of my total traffic, since it went up.

Most were searching for terms like ‘government voucher for old cars,’ though a lot searched specifically for the $3500 figure.

923 visitors were in the US, 160 in Canada, and just 5 in the UK.

Of course, none of this means these grants would be a good policy to implement, or that they would make a difference in greenhouse gas emissions or oil dependence large enough to justify their cost to the taxpayer. It would be far more efficient to raise taxes on fuel and/or the efficiency standards for new vehicles. Of course, giving people thousands of dollars is a more appealing option for an ambitious politician.

Posted by Engineer-Poet on June 17, 2009 – 8:35am

World oil production is beset by declining fields and stagnant investment, and Saudi Arabia is predicting a new price spike even higher than the one in 2008. In the midst of this looming crisis, HR2751 is set to saddle the USA with a brand-new crop of gas-guzzling vehicles.

Via the UAE comes a warning from Saudi Arabia: crude oil prices are likely to spike above last year’s record high. “If others do not begin to invest similarly in new capacity expansion projects, we could see within two to three years another price spike similar to, or worse than, what we witnessed in 2008.”

This is no surprise to anyone who’s been following the peak oil news, and it seems very unlikely that anything can be done on the supply side. If oil production is to keep pace with the historically rising consumption curve, we’ll need 20-30 million barrels per day of new production by 2030 just to keep pace with depletion elsewhere. That’s several new Saudi Arabias.

Where would this capacity come from? Not Mexico; its fields are sliding fast (Cantarell at 30%/year) and Pemex has neither the capability to develop difficult new resources nor the legal ability to partner with private oil companies. Not Venezuela; Chavez steals anything that comes into his country. Not Canada; the tar sands are terribly expensive to develop and are unlikely to hit 3 million bbl/day. Not Russia, which is past peak and following the same route as the USA’s lower 48. Not Brazil; even if the 8 billion barrels in Tupi can be pumped at an initial 10%/year, that is only about 2 million bbl/day. And certainly not ANWR or the Bakken shale, which are good for perhaps 2 mmbbl/day total.

Dennis Ragoza, CEO of the program, certainly agrees that the $300 incentive is a non-starter with the public; it’s just not enough.

He should know. BC Scrap-it administers the government’s $300 scheme and since it was introduced on January 30 of this year, only a handful of people have taken the federal money in B.C.

On the other hands, BC Scrap-it, a provincial program, has been overwhelmed with interest. Why? Simple. The BC program offers up to $2,250 for polluting clunkers that are crushed and taken off the road.

The key point is that the payouts are based on the size of the greenhouse gas benefit. That is, the worst polluters are worth the most to owners who scrap them.

If your old car, when scrapped, offers a fairly low greenhouse gas reduction, then you get $750 applied to the purchase of a new vehicle. Medium benefit, $1,250 and high greenhouse gas benefit, $2,250.

Ragoza argues that the Scrap-it program was designed first as an environmental program, but the economic stimulus is just as real. “

Updated Fri. Jun. 19 2009 7:08 AM ET

Jeremy Cato, Autos.CTV.ca

MUNICH, GERMANY — There are good ways to do cash-for-clunkers programs, and there are bad ways, and then there is Canada’s way, which is to do essentially nothing at all.

Let’s start with the bad. Here in Germany, the federal government has introduced a rich, no-strings-attached clunkers program that is costing taxpayers a fortune and threatens to undermine any recovery in the auto sector next year.

Under Berlin’s rules, owners with cars at least nine years old get 2,500 euros (about $4,000) for turning in a wreck and buying a new car, regardless of its size or fuel efficiency. That cash comes on top of any sweetheart deal the buyer cuts with dealers and auto makers.

As you can imagine, it’s been a huge, huge success. New car sales in Germany are up 40 per cent from a year ago and sales haven’t been this good since 1991.

Those wishing to buy an older junked car for $200 and trade it in for $4,500 towards a new car are going to be dissapointed. The bill requires you to own and operate the car for more than a year before trading it in and it has to be in drivable condition, meaning the clunker can’t be overly clunky.

No Old Cars

Many car enthusiasts fearful someone will trade in a rare classic will applaud the section limiting the cars to those produced in model year 1985 or after. Of course, this wasn’t done for the sake of car fans. They can’t easily determine the combined fuel economy of vehicles before the date because the EPA didn’t track this data.

To The Crusher!

The law is very explicit on this point: the car has to be crushed. No salvaging it. No retitling it. No shipping it off to another country. The car has to be crushed and the title has to be transferred. Anyone trying to pass the voucher off and then resell the car could be penalized $15,000 per violation. However, you can strip and sell any part of the car that isn’t the engine block.”