Fuel Economy Regulations Are Being Strengthened
Shortly after President Biden took office, he issued an Executive Order directing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to scrutinize the fuel economy regulations that had been finalized by the Trump Administration and currently govern the 2021-2026 model years. Both the NHTSA and the EPA responded by tentatively determining that the previous administration’s Safe Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicle Rule lowered the stringency of the NHTSA’s fuel economy standards below the level of maximum feasibility required by 49 U.S. Code 32902 (f ), and was inconsistent with the EPA’s obligations under the Clean Air Act. The two agencies share responsibility for administering fuel economy regulations, but are directed by different, inconsistent statutes.
Whenever new fuel economy regulations are introduced, the agencies are required to present detailed proposals to the general public that include a variety of policy options, and to provide an opportunity for stakeholders to submit comments. The formal unveiling is called a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” (NPRM). In the recent past, the NHTSA and the EPA have issued a joint NPRM whenever they have proposed new fuel economy regulations because the two agencies administer regulatory frameworks that are closely harmonized with one another. This year the agencies will be conducting separate rulemaking processes.
Both the EPA and the NHTSA were determined to reverse the rollbacks of the Trump Administration as soon as possible, but the NHTSA has a statutory lead-time requirement that prevents it from altering Trump’s finalized rules until the 2024 model year. The EPA is not required to give automakers this much advance notice, so they intend to revise the SAFE rule as early as 2023. Both agencies will seek to strengthen the standards considerably through the end of 2026, and their timetables for annual stringency increases are designed to bring their stringency levels into alignment in that final model year. It now appears that Trump’s rollbacks will only be in full force during 2021 and 2022. The aggressive stringency increases are designed to make up lost ground, and when all is said and done the 2026 stringency level will likely be close to what was envisioned by the Obama Administration when the current CAFE framework was established in 2012. New rules for 2027 and beyond are likely to be proposed, vetted, and finalized before President Biden finishes his term of office.
The separate NPRMs have generated a flurry of comments. The deadline for submitting comments to the EPA was September 27th, and the EPA has posted the most significant submissions for public viewing. If you go to www.regulations.gov and enter the docket number EPA-HQOAR-2021-0208 into the search field, you can access the comments from a wide variety of stakeholders and learn about the difficult decisions facing the EPA. The deadline for submitting comments to the NHTSA was October 26th, and many of these comments will likely be posted by the time this column goes to press. The docket number for this rulemaking is NHTSA-2021-0053.
Comments from the Union of Concerned Scientists provide insights into the concerns shared by many environmentalists. Authoritative comments from the Alliance for Automotive Innovation express the near unanimous sentiments of the automotive industry. According to the Regulations.gov Help Desk, 104,881 comments were submitted to the EPA.