Environmental Laws and the Trump-Cartesville Plane: a Scenario for a Synergy of Auto and Energy Laws
The Transportation Department has announced a new rule that is supposed to achieve the same goals as a proposal from the EPA. That plan would require automakers to limit the planet-warming tailpipe pollution generated by the total number of cars each manufacturer sells.
Legal experts say the two measures might also work in tandem to defend the administration’s climate policies against an expected wave of legal challenges. If the courts strike down one, the other might remain standing.
And the nation’s Republican attorneys general, who have banded together to challenge many other climate rules in court, are expected to do the same with the auto rules.
Michael Gerrard, an environmental law expert at Columbia University said this is belt and suspenders. “The fact that we have two different rules from two different agencies under two different statutes increases the odds that at least one will survive.”
The final rules are almost certainly going to end up before the Supreme Court. But, should a Republican win the White House in 2024, the new president could begin the legal process of rolling back the rules.
Implications of the California Highway Safety and Environmental Protection Proposal for the Future of Fuel Economism for the Auto Industry: How Much Can We Spend on Gas and Electric Vehicles?
The federal highway regulators are considering new standards that would force cars and light trucks to improve their fuel economy by 2% each year through 2032.
The department also estimates that the combined benefits of the proposal would exceed costs by more than $18 billion, chiefly by saving consumers money on fuel.
The Transportation Department estimates that the proposal would reduce the use of gasoline in the United States by 88 billion gallons through 2050 and avert more than 900 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
Large trucks are a big money-driver for the Detroit 3. General Motors and Stellantis (formerly known as Fiat Chrysler) have each paid out more than $100 million in fees for CAFE non-compliance over the last six years, according to NHTSA’s public data.
The improved efficiency can be driven by vehicle standards. But critics have noted that by having looser standards for larger vehicles, those same rules also contributed to the increase in SUVs and trucks.
“Given the pace of technological change and urgent need to conserve energy, it’s clear that these standards could be even more ambitious than NHTSA’s proposal,” Dave Cook, senior vehicles analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Clean Transportation Program, said in a statement.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, while still parsing the rules, noted that it appears “at first glance” like NHTSA tried to align its standards with the EPA’s standards. On the other side, the Alliance has objected to the standards being unrealistic. On the other hand, the group does strongly prefer for the various standards to match up as much as possible.
Behind the new standards is a big question for the auto industry: how much money needs to be put into improving gas-powered vehicles if the future is mostly electric? Some automakers argue that money spent improving their gas-powered vehicles will just hamper their ability to switch to EVs. Revenue from internal combustion vehicles is funding EV investments and gas-powered vehicles are more profitable than electric ones.
The EPA rules were created so that they would be hard to meet without the production of zer0-emission vehicles. The fuel economy standards of the NHTSA have to be designed so they are not met by making gas and diesel cars more efficient.
Environmentalists and the EV industry largely celebrated the EPA’s proposal, while the trade group representing legacy automakers has called the proposal “neither reasonable nor achievable.”
Currently, EVs make up just over 7% of sales. BloombergNEF recently projected they’re on pace to hit 28% by 2026. That’s rapid growth — but not on track to hit the EPA’s target. Analysts have also found that even recent, significant announcements in charging infrastructure fall short of what a rapid transition to EVs would require.
fleet-wide fuel economy for new vehicles could be as high as 58 miles per gallon by 2032. That’s up from the 49 mpg required by 2026 under the current iteration of the rules. If fuel economy is calculated for these regulations, drivers will see a much lower mileage per gallon on the road, even for compliant vehicles.