EPA LOOKS TO CALIF. AS MODEL ON EMISSIONS
Reports: State’s authority to set strict limits to be restored
The Biden administration is preparing strict new limits on pollution from buses, delivery vans, tractortrailers and other heavy trucks, the first time tailpipe standards have been tightened for the biggest polluters on the road since 2001.
The new federal regulations are being drawn from truck pollution rules recently enacted by California and come as the Biden administration is moving to restore the state’s legal authority to set auto emissions limits that are tighter than federal standards, according to two people familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to speak on the record.
The developments represent a revival of California’s influence on the nation’s climate and clean air policies, following four years in which President Donald Trump waged legal and political battles with the state. The Trump administration stripped away California’s authority to institute its own vehicle pollution standards, power that the state had enjoyed for more than 40 years.
Trump claimed that California’s tougher rules made cars more expensive and less safe.
But now, California is reasserting itself as a leader in policies designed to fight pollution
and global warming.
Federal regulators are looking to California for inspiration as they draft new national rules designed to meet President Joe Biden’s pledge that half of all new cars sold in the United States by 2030 will be electric vehicles. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has signed an executive order to phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered cars in California by 2035 and is proposing to spend $37 billion next year to cut greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, buildings and the energy sector.
Newsom said he hoped that as California would set ever more ambitious climate and clean air rules, the federal government would continue to follow. “We want to harmonize again, upward, not downward,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Environmental Protection Agency, Nick Conger, confirmed that the agency was
working on a new rule that “would significantly cut nitrogen dioxide emissions,” from trucks but declined to say if they were modeled after California’s new rule.
“These standards, currently subject to interagency review, will be rooted in the latest science and the law,” Conger wrote in an email. “As part of any rule-making process, E.P.A.’s proposal will initiate a process to take input from a variety of stakeholders.”
The people familiar with the forthcoming federal rule said it had been significantly shaped by the California rule but that some technical details would most likely differ.
Regulation of vehicle emissions is central to combating climate change; tailpipes are the largest single source of heat-trapping greenhouse gases produced in the United States.
Under the 1970 Clean Air Act, the EPA had granted
California a waiver to set tailpipe standards that were tougher than federal limits in order to combat its smog problems.
As the most populous state, and with the world’s fifth-largest economy, California has been able to influence automakers and set the pace for the rest of the country. Seventeen other states and the District of Columbia have adopted the California rules, turning them into de facto national standards. Twelve other states are following California’s mandate to sell only zero-emissions vehicles after 2035.
In 2009, President Barack Obama set federal emissions standards based on the California rule. Last year, the Biden administration began the legal process to restore the California waiver, which is expected to be finalized in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, the EPA is preparing tighter regulations governing emissions from heavy-duty trucks to reduce emissions of nitrogen dioxide, which is linked to lung cancer, heart disease and premature death. The California truck rule, enacted late last year, requires manufacturers to produce progressively cleaner trucks between 2024 and 2031.
The federal government last updated its truck emissions rule in 2001, when the EPA required commercial trucks to cut emissions of nitrogen dioxide by 95 percent over 10 years. The rule contributed to a 40 percent drop in national nitrogen dioxide emissions, the agency said.