Because of a “backdoor” in the Clean Air Act, California’s planned standards to substantially reduce emissions from heavy-duty vehicles could essentially result in a nationwide ban on the sale of new diesel-powered heavy-duty cars, said experts.
According to three people familiar with the agency’s plans, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will approve California’s proposed regulations, which would require that all new heavy-duty vehicles, such as delivery vans and shipping trucks, sold in the state after 2045 be entirely electric or hydrogen-powered. Following California’s lead on this matter, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Massachusetts, Washington, and Vermont have also made commitments; experts said that this action amounted to a nationwide prohibition.
“It’s a way to backdoor allow — under the auspices of the Clean Air Act — for California that set standards for the U.S.,” Dan Kish, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, said to the DCNF.
Biden administration is planning to grant California a waiver for its new laws, allowing it to impose harsher guidelines
California’s requirements would be much tighter than those set by the federal government under the Clean Air Act, and to enforce them, the state needs a special waiver from the EPA. Three years before the most recent regulations from the Biden administration, which go into effect for the model year 2027, the state will begin imposing higher emissions limits for all heavy-duty vehicles beginning with the model year 2024.
Over 20% of all heavy-duty vehicle sales in the United States are made up of California and the six other states that are anticipated to follow in its footsteps, according to the Post. According to analytics company Wood Mackenzie, only 2.7% of all heavy-duty electric vehicles were sold in the United States as of May 2022.
“This is a unique provision in federal law that allows one single state, of course, it’s a big, powerful state, California, with its markets, to essentially dictate the regulation of interstate commerce for other states,” Steven Bradbury, a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former lawyer for both the Trump and George W. Bush administrations, said in an interview. “If just California alone is allowed to enforce these requirements, that would be enough to push the entire market … in that direction … because these companies cannot build different sets of trucks for different regions of the country. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Electric vehicles are a key part of the Biden administration’s plan for the United States to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association argued that the new regulations would make it necessary to purchase new cars
According to the Post, the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association, which is made up of a group of more than 30 truck and bus manufacturers, has argued that the new regulations would make it necessary for manufacturers to put off the purchase of new cars due to rising costs for electronic heavy-duty cars. The group contends that this would undermine the environmental advantages by encouraging truckers to keep less efficient vehicles on the road for longer periods.
“Our industry hopes these reports aren’t true,” President and CEO Chris Spear of the American Trucking Association said in a statement. Spear stressed that the industry had reduced emissions by 98% since 1998 and that it had worked closely with the EPA to develop “aggressive, achievable” emissions reduction timelines for decades.
“If the reports are accurate, let us remind you that this isn’t the United States of California,” said Spear. “The state and federal regulators collaborating on this unrealistic patchwork of regulations have no grasp on the real costs of designing, building, manufacturing, and operating the trucks that deliver their groceries, clothes, and goods, but they will certainly feel the pain when these fanciful projections lead to catastrophic disruptions well beyond California’s borders.”
California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom praised the state’s “strong move”
California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom praised the state’s “strong move” to “lead the way” on this subject on Twitter on Monday in response to the Post’s revelation.
“Heavy-duty trucks account for nearly a third of harmful air pollutants. We need bold action,” said Newsom in a tweet. “[California] will once again lead the way — phasing out the use of diesel-powered trucks.”
After California’s 2022 implementation of regulations that would ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles in the state by 2035, Washington and the European Union also adopted regulations that would do the same. The Post said, citing state projections, that the new regulations on heavy-duty vehicles are anticipated to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 307 million tons by 2050.
An EPA representative told the Post that the agency was working “as expeditiously as possible” to make judgments on all waivers presently under review, even though the precise timing for when the waivers would be authorized is uncertain.