The Trump administration moved Thursday to replace strict Obama-era fuel efficiency standards for vehicles with weaker ones, claiming that less stringent mandates would make cars more affordable and safer.
The Environmental Protection Agency, with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said that the preferred outcome of the administration’s proposed plan would freeze fuel-efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions targets at 2020 levels through 2026, instead of raising them each year as previously required.
This approach could prevent 1,000 fatalities from crashes annually, and save Americans an average of roughly $2,340 on every new vehicle purchased, the administration claims.
A proposal by the two agencies, which jointly administer the corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, program, lays out eight options for new national fuel-economy standards for model years 2021-2026, with the freeze being its recommended action.
“We are delivering on President Trump’s promise to the American public that his administration would address and fix the current fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards,” EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement Thursday. “Our proposal aims to strike the right regulatory balance based on the most recent information and create a 50-state solution that will enable more Americans to afford newer, safer vehicles that pollute less. More realistic standards can save lives while continuing to improve the environment.”
The proposal sets up a fight with California, which has a waiver that allows it to set its own tougher fuel efficiency rules that other states may follow.
It also puts automakers in an awkward position. Automakers had lobbied the Trump administration for more flexibility in the fuel rules. But they fear facing a patchwork of regulations preventing them from selling the same cars in every state, and have said they support a year-over-year increase in fuel efficiency standards.
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, and the Association of Global Automakers applauded the administration’s action, and called in a joint statement for “substantive negotiations to begin” between the federal government and California.
Despite the call for unity, the Trump administration lays out a legal argument for revoking California’s waiver, to keep it following the national standards.
“Eliminating California’s regulation of fuel economy will provide benefits to the American public,” EPA and NHTSA say in their nearly 1,000 page proposed rule.
California could move to formally separate its rules from the national program if EPA weakens the standards. That effectively would create two separate rules for automakers to follow when producing cars for sale in the U.S.
The states that follow California, including New York and Pennsylvania, account for roughly a third of the nation’s auto market.
California officials, and the Trump administration, could still negotiate a way to mesh their standards, and maintain one national program that fulfills both of their goals.
“There is no justification for California to have its own standards,” EPA Assistant Administrator Bill Wehrum told reporters on a press call Thursday. “Having said that, we are committed to working with California to find mutually satisfiable regulations.”
But California and 17 other states already sued the Trump administration in May for rejecting the Obama administration’s fuel-efficiency rules and beginning the process of weakening them.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, vowed Thursday to fight for the right to have tougher fuel efficiency standards.
“The Trump Administration has launched a brazen attack, no matter how it is cloaked, on our nation’s Clean Car Standards,” Becerra said in a statement. “The California Department of Justice will use every legal tool at its disposal to defend today’s national standards and reaffirm the facts and science behind them.”
The Obama administration, seeking to cut greenhouse gas emissions from oil to combat climate change, negotiated with automakers, and California, to reach a deal in 2011 that set fuel efficiency at 54-mile per gallon standard by 2025 for cars and light trucks.
The Trump administration’s plan would freeze the standard at 2020 levels, or 43.7 miles per gallon. In practical terms, the change would reduce real-world fuel economy from about 36 miles per gallon to 30 miles per gallon.
EPA and NHTSA argue the Obama standards would not have significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions. They concede weakening the standards would lead to more oil use, but the agencies claim the impact on emissions of carbon dioxide would be “negligible.”
The agencies note that lower fuel prices have encouraged consumers to buy less fuel-efficient SUVs and light trucks, and demand for hybrid-electric and more fuel-efficient models has suffered.
The Obama administration’s rules did not require the development of electric cars, but encouraged automakers to speed their development.
Sales of electric vehicles are starting to increase but still total about 1.5 percent of U.S. car sales.
“In terms of greenhouse-gas emissions and climate change, the last administration admitted its requirements would have minimal impacts,” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Wheeler said in an op-ed posted in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday night. “None of the options outlined in this administration’s proposed rule would have more than a negligible environmental impact either.”
Former Obama administration officials contest that view, and say rolling back the fuel standards would be a setback in combating climate change.
“They are wrong, and misstating the record, apparently purposely,” Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law School who served as counselor for energy and climate change in the Obama White House, told the Washington Examiner. “The fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas standards they want to unravel are the most significant U.S. policy to combat climate change ever adopted.”
The Trump administration claims that higher fuel standards make newer cars unaffordable, forcing drivers to use older, less-safe vehicles. It projects that owners of more efficient vehicles would drive more, because it would cost less to do so.
To a lesser extent, it also says that less fuel-efficient cars can reduce traffic fatalities because they are heavier.
Experts say that it’s difficult to attribute traffic fatality numbers to how a car is designed, and how old it is.
Carla Bailo, president for the Center of Automotive Research, said that 94 percent of accidents are caused by human error.
“Honestly, saying there will be an impact to safety because people aren’t buying new cars is difficult to accept,” Bailo told the Washington Examiner.
A memo produced in March by Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE), a nonprofit that seeks to reduce oil use, contends that making a more efficient “when done properly, poses no overall increased safety risk.”’
“Saving lives while saving fuel can be accomplished simultaneously,” Robbie Diamond, SAFE’s president and CEO told the Washington Examiner.
The Trump administration counters that strict government fuel efficiency mandates raise costs for consumers, and limit their freedom to buy safer cars.
“We want to make sure consumers who may have very different lifestyles, live in different areas of the country, and have different needs, can choose to get fuel efficient, clean vehicles to replace their existing vehicle,” NHTSA Deputy Administrator Heidi King told reporters Thursday.
