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The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday it plans to undo a landmark Obama-era rule tightening fuel standards for vehicles, weakening the only major federal policy to reduce planet-warming emissions from the nation’s top source of greenhouse gas pollution.
The decision, announced in a press release, hands a victory to automakers who lobbied the Trump administration to declare the previous standard too strict.
“The Obama administration’s determination was wrong,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in a statement, adding that the standards were “too high.”
The federal rule required vehicles to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, nearly double today’s standard. The new standard provided significant environmental and financial benefits if fully implemented. Under those rules, oil consumption would fall by12 billion barrels, tailpipe emissions would halve and fuel efficiency would nearly double, saving consumers$3,200 to $5,700 in gasoline costs over a vehicle’s lifetime. The regulation would have prevented six billion metric tons of planet-warming gases ― equivalent to a year’s worth of pollution from 150 power plants ― from ever entering the atmosphere.
Automakers agreed to the rule in 2012 as part of the first major overhaul of fuel efficiency standards since the 1970s. But the policy set an April 2018 deadline to review the standards and tweak them if they proved too expensive or impossible to meet. In January 2017, the Obama administration attempted to lock the regulation in place by issuing a positive assessment of the costs and feasibility of the regulations.
Despite overwhelmingly supporting the agreement seven years ago, carmakers began lobbying then-President-elect Donald Trump to reverse the Obama ruling almost immediately after the 2016 election.
Last March, the White Housetossed the assessment out at an event in Detroit, insisting the analysis was rushed. Trump vowed to “restore the originally scheduled midterm review.” The EPA’s latest announcement is the result of that review.
The decision to rewrite the rule puts the EPA at loggerheads with California regulators, who agreed in 2011 as part of the rule to align their tailpipe emissions standards with the national levels. The deal guaranteed consistent mileage and emissions rules nationwide, allowing automakers to save money by manufacturing vehicles to one standard.
Undoing the rule threatens to upend that uniformity. Under the Clean Air Act, California is allowed to set vehicle emissions standards higher than the rest of the country, and with nearly35.4 million registered vehicles, the state commands powerful influence over the American auto market. A dozen other states, including New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, have historically followed California’s lead.
The decision is also likely to face legal challenges from environmental groups.
The Trump administration’s onslaught against rules to cut planet-warming emissions has repeatedly hit snares in the courts.
The EPA never implemented the Clean Power Plan, the signature Obama-era rule to reduce emissions from the utility sector. But the law is still on the books, and the EPA has yet to propose a replacement that meets the legal requirements set by a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that found the agency is obliged to regulate any type of air pollution that “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare,” including greenhouse gases.
The EPA and the Department of the Interior moved to eliminate Obama-era rules restricting methane emissions from gas drilling sites. But, last July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuitruled against the EPA’s plan to suspend the rule. In February, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Californiaruled that the Interior Department’s plan to delay methane regulations was “untethered to evidence.”
“With the rollbacks, the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” David Doniger, senior director of the Natural Resource Defense Council’s climate and clean energy program, told HuffPost ahead of the EPA announcement. “They haven’t accomplished that much.”
“I don’t want to sound Pollyanna, like everything is OK, but I want to emphasize that not that much has been turned around,” he added.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
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