Environmentalists are using the Obama administration’s new emission rules for big trucks to renew their opposition against the contentious Keystone XL pipeline project and drilling in the Arctic.
The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation issued the new standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks on Friday.
“This new policy will slash oil consumption and cut dangerous carbon pollution, further proving that we don’t need new extreme oil projects like Arctic drilling or the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune.
The Keystone XL pipeline, if built, would move crude oil from Canada’s tar sand fields 1,400 miles south to U.S. refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. The project has been politically contentious, driving a wedge between a majority of Republicans who support it and the many Democrats who say it would contribute to global warming.
The project has been in limbo for years, with the president having the power to ultimately approve or deny the project. The GOP attempted several times to approve it legislatively earlier this year, as the administration has been reviewing it for more than six years.
Arctic drilling also has become a hot-button target for environmentalists after the administration approved new licenses for oil company Shell to begin offshore drilling in Alaska. The approval stoked the ire of activists as a step backward for the environment.
But the Sierra Club says the need for more oil, and thus those projects, disappears with tighter regulations for how much fuel a tractor-trailer rig can consume and how it carbon dioxide it can emit. Many scientists say carbon dioxide is causing manmade climate change.
The EPA says 20 percent of all fuel use and emissions from the transportation sector come from medium- and heavy-duty trucks, which comprise only 5 percent of the total vehicles on the road.
The new truck rules propose to cut fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions by 24 percent by 2027, using model year 2018 trucks as the baseline for the reductions.
Brune says the new rules are a good start, but wants them tightened further to cut fuel use and emissions by 40 percent in less time than the rules propose.
“The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation have worked diligently on this proposal to reduce fuel consumption by much as 24 percent, which is a step in the right direction,” Brune said. “However, analysis shows that we can reduce new truck fuel consumption 40 percent by 2025 — faster than the administration suggests. We look forward to engaging with the agencies to strengthen these standards.”
The rules are a proposal and not a finished product. EPA and the Transportation Department could change the rules by the time they are made final next year. But it is uncertain if the trucking industry is willing to accept nearly doubling the EPA target in less time than the EPA laid out.
The New York Times and others had reported that EPA was on track to make the standard 40 percent. But industry officials told the Washington Examiner in the weeks leading up to the rule’s release that the EPA was not proposing to set the standard that high and that earlier reports appeared to be citing numbers coming from environmental groups, not the administration.
