California will set own vehicle pollution rules
EPA announcement overturns Trump administration decision
The Biden administration on Monday announced that it intends to restore California’s ability to set its own tough pollution rules for passenger vehicles, a move widely expected to return the state to a national leadership role in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases that are disrupting the Earth’s climate.
The announcement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reverses a 2019 decision from the Trump administration that sought to set uniform nationwide standards. As the nation’s largest auto market, California has the ability
to influence rules in other states and nationwide, affecting millions of cars, trucks and SUVs.
“I am a firm believer in California’s long-standing statutory authority to lead,” said Michael Regan, EPA administrator. “The 2019 decision to revoke the state’s waiver to enforce its greenhouse gas pollution standards for cars and trucks was legally dubious and an attack on the public’s health and well-being.”
The announcement is the latest major environmental shift by President Biden to overturn Trump rules since he took office three months ago. Biden also reentered the United States in the Paris Climate agreement, revoked the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, halted development of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and last week hosted a meeting with world leaders to discuss climate change.
California’s authority to set its own standards for pollution from passenger vehicles dates back more than 50 years and was put in place by the 1970 Clean Air Act, which was signed by President Richard Nixon. Over the years, the state has adopted tough tailpipe rules that were copied by other states and eventually by the federal government, helping reduce smog dramatically.
However, the Clean Air Act requires California to get a waiver from the U.S. EPA to set tougher standards than the federal government. Historically, presidents have granted it dozens of times. Other states then are allowed to copy California’s standards.
But in 2019, Trump’s EPA chief, Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, denied the waiver.
“The unprecedented revocation of the waiver by the previous administration — lacking any modicum of technical, legal, or scientific support — cost consumers money at the pump and threatened their health with poor air quality,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday.
The decision, Newsom said, will “usher in the new age of EVs and zero-emission vehicles that we need to clean our air and fight climate change.”
The EPA will now hold public hearings. But the agency intends to rescind the Trump administration decision, EPA sources have said.
Environmentalists cheered the move.
“States are doing vital work to protect people from unhealthy motor vehicle pollution,” said Alice Henderson, a senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund.
Monday’s news puts California in the climate driver’s seat again.
Already 13 other states and the District of Columbia — representing 36% of the U.S. auto market — have adopted California’s greenhouse gas emissions standards and “zero emission vehicle” standards, which require automakers to make electric vehicles, along with super-clean gasoline-burning vehicles. Minnesota, New Mexico and Nevada also are considering copying California’s standards.
Supporters of the Trump policy said that Monday’s announcement gives California too much power.
“If the Biden administration is serious about road safety, affordability and securing a cleaner American energy future, he should not be allowing California to dictate the vehicles people drive in Indiana, South Carolina, Ohio or in eastern Washington,” said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash.
After Trump denied California’s authority, 23 states filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the decision. That suit is now moot.
On Thursday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced his agency will begin to withdraw a Trump administration rule that prohibited states from setting their own tailpipe standards, a measure related to Monday’s EPA decision on California.
“The transportation sector is the U.S. economy’s largest contributor to greenhouse gases,” Buttigieg said at an Earth Day event. “And that relationship to the problem of climate change means that we in transportation can also be the biggest part of the solution.”
California’s previous waiver was approved by the Obama administration.
The state’s “advanced clean car” standards require new vehicles sold in California to emit 40% fewer greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, by 2025, compared to 2016 levels.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which come from the burning of fossil fuels, has had the effect of forcing automakers to increase gas mileage. Obama adopted California’s standard as the national standard in 2012, which he said at the time would require an average fleet fuel economy of 54 mpg on new vehicles sold in 2025.
Environmental groups hailed that as a major announcement to dramatically reduce America’s consumption of foreign oil, cut smog and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
But the Trump EPA loosened those rules so that the fleet average would peak at about 37 mpg by 2025 instead.
Trump officials said the Obama-California rules would reduce safety and increase the price of vehicles. California officials say the safety argument is not supported by science and that the state’s rules reduce costs over the life of vehicles due to the need for motorists to buy less gasoline.
The dispute split the auto industry, with some automakers endorsing the Trump approach and others agreeing to a compromise with California to largely put in place its standards anyway.