Automakers drop efforts to curb California’s tougher climate rules
WASHINGTON — Toyota, Fiat Chrysler and several other major automakers said Tuesday they would no longer try to block California from setting its own strict fuel-economy standards, signaling that the auto industry is ready to work with President Joe Biden on his largest effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The decision by the companies was widely expected, coming after General Motors dropped its support for the Trump-era effort just weeks after the presidential election. But the shift may help the Biden administration move quickly to reinstate national fuelefficiency standards that would control planet-warming auto pollution, this time with support from industry giants that fought such regulations for years.
“After four years of putting us in reverse, it is time to restart and build a sustainable future, grow domestic manufacturing, and deliver clean cars for America,” said Gina McCarthy, the senior White House climate change adviser. “We need to move forward — and fast.”
The auto giants’ announcements come on top of a 2020 commitment by five other companies — Ford, Honda, BMW, Volkswagen and Volvo — that they would abide by California’s tough standards. And last week, GM pledged to sell only zero-emissions vehicles by 2035, a move that would put the company in line with another recent California policy banning the sales of internal-combustion vehicles by that year.
Tuesday’s move also marked a stark reversal for California’s influence on Washington policymaking. After President Donald Trump rolled back Obama-era auto pollution rules that had been modeled after California’s statelevel rules, he then blocked the state’s authority from setting such rules. Now Biden is expected to use California as a model for swiftly reinstating national rules.
“We’re going to continue to play an important role in pushing the federal government and the auto companies,” vowed Jared Blumenfeld, the California secretary of environmental protection, who added that Biden had recently spoken with Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, about using the state’s auto emissions polices as a guide to federal policies.
In a statement, the auto companies, represented by the industry group Coalition for Sustainable Automotive Regulation, said the lawsuit started by the Trump administration to block California’s fuel economy rules no longer had their support: “We are aligned with the Biden Administration’s goals to achieve year-over-year improvements in fuel economy standards that provide meaningful climate and national energy security benefits.”
They added, “In a gesture of good faith and to find a constructive path forward, the CSAR has decided to withdraw from this lawsuit in order to unify the auto industry behind a single national program with ambitious, achievable standards.”
Trump had made the rollback of Obama-era fuel economy standards the centerpiece of his deregulatory agenda. The Obamaera standards, which were modeled on California’s, would have required auto companies to make and sell vehicles that reached an average fuel economy of about 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The standards, which would have eliminated about 6 billion tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide pollution over the lifetime of the vehicles, stood as the single largest federal policy ever enacted to reduce climate change.
The Trump administration last year rolled back that standard to about 40 mpg by 2026 — a move which would have effectively allowed most of that carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. California, however, reached a separate deal with the five automakers, in which they agreed to reach a standard of 51 mpg by 2026. The Trump administration, backed by GM and other automakers, blocked California’s legal authority to set those standards.
Now that GM, Toyota and Fiat Chrysler have dropped out of that lawsuit, Biden administration officials have one less speed bump ahead of a new federal standard.
The White House is also expected to explore ways to adopt the California policy requiring all new vehicles sold after 2035 to release no emissions.
McCarthy is expected to meet this week with the heads of several major auto companies and representatives from the United Auto Workers and other unions as she begins to sketch out the details of the new rules.
Although the California deal sets a standard of 51 mpg for model year 2026, the coming Biden rule will likely take a year or more to complete. So its first targets will be later, 2028 or 2029. California and environmental groups are likely to push for standards that are even more aggressive to help meet the goal of ending sales of gasoline- and diesel-powered cars by 2035.
Crafting such rules could be a lengthy and complex process, but several people close to the administration say they expect that the EPA and Transportation Department to publish a “notice of proposed rule making” — essentially, a document that launches the one-to-two-year legal process of drafting and implementing such rules — by March.