EPA poised to scrap fuel economy targets, setting up clash with California
The Trump administration is poised to abandon America's pioneering fuel economy targets for cars and SUVs, a move that would undermine one of the world's most aggressive programs to confront climate change and invite another major confrontation with California.
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce in the coming days that it will scrap mileage targets the Obama administration drafted in tandem with California that aim to boost average fuel economy for passenger cars and SUVs to 55 miles per gallon by 2025, according to people familiar with the plans.
The agency plans to replace those targets with a weaker standard that will be unveiled soon, according to the people, who did not want to be identified discussing the plan before it was announced.
EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said a draft determination was undergoing interagency review and a final decision would be made by Sunday.
EPA chief Scott Pruitt has previously suggested that he thinks the targets are too onerous for manufacturers and inhibit them from selling the vehicles most popular with Americans. A climate skeptic, Pruitt has questioned mainstream science on the warming caused by greenhouse gases such as auto emissions.
Whether Pruitt can weaken the rules for the entire country is an open question. California, with its history of smog problems and heightened vulnerability to climate change, has unique authority under the Clean Air Act to impose its own standard. The act also permits other states to adopt the California rules, and a dozen have.
Over the last decade, the federal government has worked with California to keep mileage targets uniform nationwide, folding the state's aggressive smog and anti-pollution goals into the national program. A single standard is crucial to automakers who don't want to contend with multiple production lines to comply with conflicting rules in states, particularly one as important to car sales as California.
After President Trump was elected, automakers immediately began lobbying him to rewrite the rules - and to pressure California to dial back its efforts. Pruitt's action would give the companies limited or no relief if it is not enforced nationwide since California's rules apply to more than a third of cars sold across the country, and automakers are loath to create multiple production lines to comply with conflicting rules.
The state is showing no sign of yielding. And the EPA chief is striking an increasingly hostile tone toward it, suggesting that he may seek to revoke the federal waiver that allows California to impose tougher rules than those of the federal government.
State leaders are daring him to try. They are confident it is a legal fight California would win.
"We are not going to go backward," said California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra. "We are not interested in a race to the bottom…. We are prepared to take whatever action, legal or otherwise, we have to to protect our health and our economy."
"We didn't make these moves lightly," Becerra said of the fuel economy targets. "They came after years of study, scientific evidence, fact-gathering, comment periods, a lot of back and forth among experts and stakeholders. To unwind this and go backward would cost our industries and cost our people billions of dollars. There has to be a good reason to make any kind of move. We have seen nothing change that would make California change its position."
The 55 miles per gallon target is based on outdated testing methods, so it is widely accepted that the current figure that would appear on the window sticker in showrooms is closer to 44 miles per gallon.
The ambitious Obama-era program is geared toward moving drivers into vehicles that by 2025 release, on average, half the greenhouse gases of vehicles built in 2010. The EPA called it the "the most significant federal action ever taken to reduce [greenhouse gas] emissions."
Some experts say the vehicle program is more significant in the fight against global warming even than Obama's signature Clean Power Plan, which sought to curb emissions from electricity plants. While market trends are pushing utilities to drive down their emissions even after Trump moved to unravel the Clean Power Plan, the auto industry is at risk of stalling on climate action if it is not pushed by government.
"Given the work that needs to be done to bring the transportation sector along and the importance of driving those emissions down, having government policy like this is essential," said Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at UCLA.
The existing fuel economy rules are also at the foundation of California's own climate goals, which could prove impossible to meet if the EPA were to successfully strip its authority to enforce them.
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