State, EPA on collision course?
Agency is set to roll back tough car emissions rules
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration declared Monday that President Barack Obama’s administration “was wrong” to toughen emissions standards for new cars and trucks and moved to roll them back, setting up a major conflict with California and its stricter regulations for greenhouse gas pollutants.
The Environmental Protection Agency said the current rules, established by the Obama administration in concert with California in 2009, are “too high” for model years 2022 to 2025. The standard calls for all new vehicles sold in the U.S. to meet a fleet average of 50 miles per gallon by 2025, up from the current 35 mpg.
Some carmakers have complained that the standard is unreasonable and potentially costly,
though they are also concerned about having two U.S. car markets — one for California and the 12 other states that have tougher emissions rules, and one for the rest of the country.
“The Obama administration’s determination was wrong,” said EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. He said Obama officials had ordered the tougher targets out of “politically charged expediency” and “made assumptions about the standards that didn’t comport with reality, and set the standards too high.”
The widely anticipated decision sets the agency on a path to make the rules weaker, but how much weaker remains to be seen. The process will take months at a minimum and is sure to ignite a legal war between the administration and California as well as environmental groups.
California intends to stick with the current standards and is looking to tighten them on cars made after 2025. The state has the legal authority to do so, known as a waiver, written into the 1970 Clean Air Act. California and the 12 states that follow its rules make up more than a third of the national market for passenger vehicles.
Pruitt indicated he might try to revoke California’s waiver, which no administration has successfully done, although George W. Bush’s administration attempted to deny one to the state a decade ago. The state sued, and the case was dropped by the Obama administration before a court could resolve it.
Bill Wehrum, who led the effort under the Bush administration, is back at the EPA as the chief of the agency’s air pollution office.
“The California waiver is still being re-examined by EPA under Administrator Pruitt’s leadership,” the agency said Monday.
“Cooperative federalism doesn’t mean that one state can dictate standards for the rest of the country,” Pruitt said.
Gov. Jerry Brown called the announcement “a belated April Fool’s Day trick. This cynical and meretricious abuse of power will poison our air and jeopardize the health of all Americans.”
Mary Nichols, chief of the California Air Resources Board, which helped set the standard that Pruitt now wants to roll back, charged that the EPA’s decision is “politically motivated” and has “no documentation, evidence or law” to back it up.
“This is not a technical assessment,” Nichols said. “It is a move to demolish the nation’s clean car program.”
The fight will cause planning headaches for automakers, who are running into design deadlines for the model years in dispute. And if the national market for vehicles is split, California’s ability to meet its own climate goals would be undermined, experts said, because it could limit the market for clean cars to California and the states that follow it.
But the Auto Alliance, which represents 17 major automakers, including Ford and General Motors, praised Pruitt’s move.
“This was the right decision,” said Gloria Berquist, spokeswoman for the alliance. She said automakers are committed to building low-emissions cars, including electric vehicles, but that the price tag is an impediment to people buying them.
“The wisest course of action is to keep new vehicles affordable so more consumers can replace an older car with a new vehicle that uses much less fuel — and offers more safety features,” she said.
Critics of tighter air pollution rules say they make the roads less safe because they discourage the sale of trucks and SUVs, heavier vehicles that hold up better in crashes.
The Obama administration developed the current standards as part of the 2009 bailout of General Motors and Chrysler. In return for their rescue by U.S. taxpayers, Detroit automakers agreed to slash greenhouse gas emissions from their cars and light trucks. California agreed to follow the new rule so that automakers could meet a single national standard.
After the November 2016 election, the Obama administration moved more than a year ahead of schedule to make the rule final, saying the standard was achievable. Automakers accused the EPA of rushing the standard and told President Trump it would
“This is not a technical assessment. It is a move to demolish the nation’s clean car program.” Mary Nichols, California Air Resources Board chief
destroy more than a million jobs.
The industry is urging the state and EPA to agree on one standard, but the state isn’t going to go along with a rollback voluntarily. In fact, state Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Monday that “we’re ready to file suit if needed to protect these critical standards and to fight the administration’s war on our environment.”
Transportation is the nation’s largest source of carbon emissions, which are the leading driver of climate change. California cannot meet its statutory goal of slashing carbon emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 without lower pollution from passenger vehicles.
Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Association, said 2.1 million cars were sold in California last year, or 1 out of every 8 in the country. If tailpipe rules differ by state, it could cause “market disruption,” he said.
“Our sincere hope is that folks can work it out so we have one standard and there isn’t disruption in the availability of vehicles,” Maas said.
He said consumer acceptance of electric cars is rising, but he questioned whether “the pace of change is rapid enough” to meet California’s goals, which call for 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2025. The total now is 350,000.
To prevail in any legal fight with California or environmental groups, the Trump administration is likely to have to prove in court that the EPA’s scientific and technical analysis that led to the setting of the emissions standards under Obama was wrong.
“It would be especially difficult for them to make the case, given that they have not redone EPA’s technical analysis, which took many years and was very thorough and found that the standard was appropriate,” said Shannon Baker-Branstetter, policy counsel for Consumers Union, which supports the current standard. “They will need to provide data and evidence of why the standard is no longer appropriate, but that will be a high bar.”
Because it takes about 15 years for the U.S. vehicle fleet to turn over, most cars will have to be zero-emission by 2035 to meet a goal of having mostly zero-emission cars by 2050, said Bob Perciasepe, former EPA deputy administrator in the Obama administration, now president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.
“We’re losing time,” said Roland Hwang, managing director of the climate and clean energy program for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “Auto companies know that for global competitive reasons, they need to move these cleaner cars, so why are they fighting it? They should be joining us.”