California and 18 states said they would sue to stop a weakening of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy likened to ‘firing up 30 coal power plants’
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration on Thursday announced plans to freeze fuel efficiency requirements for the nation’s cars and trucks through 2026 – a massive regulatory rollback likely to create potential upheaval in the nation’s automotive market.
California and 18 other states said they would sue to stop the Trump administration proposal to weaken Obama-era federal fuel efficiency standards, arguing the United States has an obligation to protect the environment for future generations.
“California will fight this stupidity in every conceivable way possible,” Governor Edmund Brown, a Democrat, said in a news release on Thursday.
The administration billed the rollback it announced on Thursday, which would also revoke California’s authority to set its own strict vehicle emissions rules, as a way to lower auto prices for consumers. Critics said it would accelerate climate change and increase fuel prices.
The 19 states, and Washington D. C, announced what is likely to be a legal showdown over the proposal.
“We are prepared to go to court to put the brakes on this reckless and illegal plan,” the coalition of states attorneys, led by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, said in a news release.
The states that have adopted California’s emission rules together make up about one third of the U. S. auto market.
The proposal to roll back anti-pollution efforts is in line with President Donald Trump’s decision last year to abandon the 2015 Paris Agreement, under which countries agreed to take steps to mitigate global warming.
It also dovetails with the Republican president’s broader effort to unwind green regulation that he views as onerous to business.
The Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards require automakers’ cars to average about 50 miles per gallon by 2025. The standards, enacted in 2012, get stricter every year leading up to 2025.
The proposal from the U. S. Transportation Department and Environmental Protection Agency would freeze fuel efficiency standards at 2020 levels through 2026, and require dramatically fewer electric vehicles as more people continue to drive gasoline-powered vehicles.
The administration said the freeze would boost U. S. oil consumption by about 500,000 barrels of oil a day by the 2030s, and argued it would prevent up to 1,000 traffic fatalities per year by reducing the price of new vehicles and so prompting people to buy newer, safer vehicles more quickly.
The proposal represents an abrupt reversal of the findings that the government reached under Obama, when regulators argued that requiring more fuel efficient vehicles would improve public health, combat climate change and save consumers money without compromising safety.
Public health experts and environmental groups condemned the White House proposal even before its official release, arguing that it overlooks how much money Americans would save at the pump if cars were more efficient and also squanders a chance to cut pollution from the transportation sector, which has become the nation’s largest source of carbon dioxide emissions.
“By 2030, the pollution equivalent of this rollback will be like firing up 30 coal power plants,” Paul Cort, an attorney at the advocacy group Earthjustice, said in a statement. “It’s a boon for big oil that ordinary Americans will pay for with their health and their wallets.”
The Transportation Department says the proposal would shrink regulatory costs for automakers by $319 billion through 2029, reducing by more than $60 billion what General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV each would have been expected to spend to comply with the Obama-era rules. Toyota Motor Corp would save $34 billion and Volkswagen AG $20 billion.
The Trump proposal estimated that under Obama-era requirements, about 70 percent of light trucks would be required to have some form of electrification by 2026 – a level it described as unrealistic – versus just 1 percent under the Trump proposal.
The administration also contends that hiking U. S. oil consumption by 2 to 3 percent over forecast levels would have a minimal impact on the environment, boosting global average temperature by just “3/1000th of a degree Celsius by 2100.”
Representatives of the U. S. auto industry praised the administration’s proposal, even as some automakers privately have expressed unease at the prospect of abrupt changes in fuel standards and having to meet different standards in different states.
