Proven clean air strategies go underfunded while generous incentives for unavailable technologies are favored. Clean diesel 50 times more effective than other approaches. Washington, D.C. – As currently configured, the Volkswagen Partial Consent Decree and Settlement will fail to effectively mitigate the lifetime total emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) prescribed by the court due to a funding scheme that favors less effective and available technologies and approaches when compared to proven and documented benefits of advanced clean diesel technology, said Allen Schaeffer, the Executive Director of the Diesel Technology Forum. The Forum today filed its official comments with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on the matter of the Proposed Partial Consent Decree: Volkswagen (VW) “Clean Diesel” Marketing, Sales Practices, and Products Liability Litigation, Environmental Mitigation Trust (EMT) between VW and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the State of California. "The only thing we can trust is that as currently fashioned this settlement will not ensure timely and proven mitigation of the lifetime total NOx emissions reductions.  There’s a good chance that it will go down in history as a huge missed opportunity for making immediate clean air improvements.  We urge the DOJ and parties to the settlement to modify the structure and allocation scheme in the EMT to be technology neutral and more open to private fleets to achieve the NOx mitigation goals articulated by the Court,” Schaeffer said. “We are hopeful that the Court reconsiders this plan and recognizes the importance of near term benefits from proven technologies to mitigate NOx emissions.  Otherwise, years from now, communities around the country may be wondering why so many dollars yielded so little progress to achieve clean air compliance, when immediate gains from accelerating the adoption of new, available clean diesel technology would have delivered proven benefits today.” The partial consent decree released on June 28th outlines the details of the $14.7 billion settlements that includes a $2.7 billion Environmental Mitigation Trust to “fully mitigate the total, lifetime excess NOx emissions” from the vehicles at issue.  The Trust is established to mitigate these emissions generated by the 550,000 light-duty VW diesel vehicles found to have been outfitted with the means to skirt emissions standards established by the EPA and the California Air Resources Board (CARB).