California will bar the sale of new gas-powered cars and trucks starting in 2035, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, announced Wednesday.
The move is a bold step for the largest U.S. auto market. California already has aggressive climate change goals and zero-emissions transportation goals, but this would be the first ban on internal combustion engines within the United States.
More than a dozen countries, including the United Kingdom, have already made similar commitments to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars.
Transportation represents more than 50% of California’s greenhouse gas emissions, Newsom said on Wednesday before signing the executive order. The governor added that the state won’t be able to achieve its goal of a carbon-free economy by 2045 without accelerating actions to reduce emissions from the transportation sector.
Newsom said the move to bar new sales of internal combustion engines is also an economic opportunity for California, which alone has 34 manufacturers of electric cars.
He praised Ford Motor Company in particular for moving more quickly toward electric vehicles and even signed the executive order on the hood of a Ford electric car. Ford and a handful of other automakers have struck a deal with California to follow stricter greenhouse gas tailpipe standards than federal limits, spurning the Trump administration’s weakening of national fuel economy standards.
Other car companies are lagging behind, Newsom said. Several automakers, including Fiat Chrysler, General Motors, and Toyota, are siding with the Trump administration and fighting California’s efforts to maintain stricter tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions standards.
Newsom stressed that the executive order doesn’t mean California officials are “denying people the ability to keep” their gas-powered cars.
“You can still keep your internal combustion engine car. You can still have a market for used cars. You can still trade and transfer those cars,” Newsom said.
“We’re not taking anything away,” he added. “We’re providing an abundance of new choices and new technology.”
Oil industry groups and conservatives, however, slammed Newsom’s move, arguing it would rob people of the ability to choose which cars they want to drive.
“Right now, 97% of Americans decide to buy a car with an engine powered by gasoline,” said Thomas Pyle, the president of the American Energy Alliance. He added people make vehicle decisions for several reasons, including safety, size, cost, and comfort.
Chet Thompson, CEO of American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, argued Newsom doesn’t have the authority to prohibit internal combustion engine sales.
“Regardless, pursuing this goal would be among the most inefficient, unpopular, and regressive methods to reduce carbon emissions,” Thompson said, adding that gas-powered vehicles continue to get cleaner and more efficient.
To implement the order, the California Air Resources Board will craft regulations requiring that all new passenger car and truck sales be zero-emissions vehicles by 2035. The move would slash greenhouse gas emissions by 35%, according to the governor’s office.
California air officials will also require that medium- and heavy-duty trucks be zero-emissions where possible by 2045, according to the order.
The executive order “will transform the California transportation picture completely in 15 years,” said Mary Nichols, head of the California Air Resources Board. “It will have dramatically reduced the emissions from this industry and brought in a whole new generation of cleaner, more efficient vehicles that are exactly the kind of vehicles that people around the world want.”
The executive order also signals a turning point on California’s approach to fracking natural gas. As wildfires have scorched the state in recent weeks, environmentalists have slammed Newsom’s administration for continuing to approve new oil and gas leases.
The order directs the California legislature to begin phasing out fracking in the state, ending the issuance of new permits by 2024, Newsom said.
