Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
EPA expected to roll back vehicle mileage standards
DETROIT — The Trump administration is expected to announce that it will scale back automobile gas mileage and pollution standards that were a pillar in the Obama administration’s plans to combat climate change.
It’s not clear whether the announcement will include a specific number, but current regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency require the fleet of new vehicles to get 36 miles per gallon in real-world driving by 2025.
That’s about 10 mpg over the existing standard.
Environmental groups predict increased greenhouse gas emissions and more gasoline consumption if the standards are relaxed. They say the announcement could come Tuesday at a Virginia car dealership.
EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said in an email Friday that the standards are still being reviewed.
Any change is likely to set up a lengthy legal showdown with California, which has the power to set its own pollution and gas mileage standards and doesn’t want them to change.
About a dozen other states follow California’s rules, and together they account for more than onethird of the vehicles sold in the country. The federal and California standards currently are the same.
Automakers have lobbied to revisit the requirements, saying they’ll have trouble reaching them because people are buying bigger vehicles because of low gas prices.
They say the standards will cost the industry billions of dollars and raise vehicle prices because of the cost of developing technology needed to raise mileage.
When the standards were first proposed, the government predicted that two-thirds of new vehicles sold would be cars, with the rest trucks and SUVs, said Gloria Bergquist, spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Now the reverse is true, she said.
Still, environmental groups say the standards save money at the pump, and the technology is available for the industry to comply.
They also say burning more gasoline will put people’s health at risk.
“The American public overwhelmingly supports strong vehicle standards because they cut the cost of driving, reduce air pollution and combat climate change,” said Luke Tonachel, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Clean Vehicles and Fuels Project.
The EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are involved in setting the standards, which would cover the years 2022 through 2025.
Some conservative groups are pressing EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to revoke a waiver that allows California to set its own rules. They say California shouldn’t be allowed to set policy for the rest of the nation.
Pruitt has publicly questioned the veracity of evidence complied by climate scientists, including those in his own agency, that global warming is caused by man-made carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels.
If the waiver is revoked, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra says the state will resist.
“What we’re doing to protect California’s environment isn’t just good for our communities — it’s good for the country,” he said in a statement.
Getting rid of the waiver or having two gas mileage and pollution requirements presents a dilemma for automakers.
While they would like to avoid fines for failing to meet the standards, they also don’t want the expense of building two versions of cars and trucks, one for the California-led states and another for the rest of the country.
Mark Reuss, a General Motors’ product development chief, said in a recent interview that he would rather have a single nationwide standard, even if it stays the same. .
“I want one good one,” he said. “I could focus all my engineers on one.”