Final EPA National Pollution Standards Show Promise for an Expanded EV Market
While the EPA's final emissions rule falls far short of where we need to be, imagine an administration that denies the science of climate change and minimizes the climate emergency.
Have you noticed an increase in electric and hybrid vehicles on the roads lately?
Are you ready for electric vehicles, aka “EVs”?
Well, ready or not, they’re here.
Last year, EV sales totaled 7.6% of all new vehicles sold. This is an increase from 5.8% the year before.
Thanks to provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that invest $385 billion in energy and climate change incentives including tax credits for electric vehicle purchases, and the auto industry’s embracing of it, EVs are going to become more ubiquitous over the next several years.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just helped accelerate EV manufacturing when it announced last week new, and final, automobile emissions standards some officials are calling “the most ambitious plan ever to cut planet-warming emissions from passenger vehicles”.
In a press release, the agency explained:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced final national pollution standards for passenger cars, light-duty trucks, and medium-duty vehicles for model years 2027 through 2032 and beyond. These standards will avoid more than 7 billion tons of carbon emissions and provide nearly $100 billion of annual net benefits to society, including $13 billion of annual public health benefits due to improved air quality, and $62 billion in reduced annual fuel costs, and maintenance and repair costs for drivers. The final standards deliver on the significant pollution reductions outlined in the proposed rule, while accelerating the adoption of cleaner vehicle technologies. EPA is finalizing this rule as sales of clean vehicles, including plug-in hybrid and fully electric vehicles, hit record highs last year.
These standards will provide greater certainty for the auto industry, catalyzing private investment, creating good-paying union jobs, and invigorating and strengthening the U.S. auto industry. Over the next decade, the standards, paired with President Biden’s historic Investing in America agenda and investments in U.S. manufacturing, will set the U.S. auto sector on a trajectory for sustained growth. Additionally, the final standards will lower costs for consumers. Once fully phased in, the standards will save the average American driver an estimated $6,000 in reduced fuel and maintenance over the life of a vehicle.
While these new standards actually dial back tailpipe emissions limits initially proposed last year due to reported slower than expected auto sales, the EPA explained the auto industry could meet the expected limits “if 56% of new vehicle sales are electric by 2032, along with at least 13% plug-in hybrids or other partially electric cars, as well as more efficient gasoline-powered cars that get more miles to the gallon.”
A significant feature of the final rule is the emissions standards it establishes for heavy-duty trucks, buses, and other large vehicles like construction vehicles and garbage trucks, many of which will be required to be emission free in under a decade.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan stated:
Heavy-duty vehicles are essential for moving goods and services throughout our country, keeping our economy moving. They’re also significant contributors to pollution from the transportation sector — emissions that are fueling climate change and creating poor air quality in too many American communities.
Earthjustice president Abigail Dillen said in a statement “the EPA did not go far enough to protect communities from dangerous health impacts linked to heavy-duty truck pollution.”
She added:
Diesel trucks not only spew tons of carbon dioxide into the air; they also choke communities all along our freight corridors with deadly air pollution, including nitrogen oxides and soot emissions. This rule could have provided relief to communities across the country by driving a more ambitious transition to zero-emissions technology, which is also what the climate crisis demands. Instead, truck manufacturers have pushed EPA to slow-walk this change.
We must keep pushing for more progressive environmental measures, but while we’re doing so we should also acknowledge progress when it occurs. While the EPA’s final emissions rule falls far short of where we need to be, imagine an administration that denies the science of climate change and minimizes the climate emergency.
Taking further inspiration from President Franklin Roosevelt, President Joe Biden in September signed an executive order creating the American Climate Corps.
While he has not yet formally declared a climate emergency, nor shut down the Willow oil project, President Biden is heeding the groups, lawmakers, and scientists in their insistence that “the climate crisis demands a whole-of-government response at an unprecedented scale”.
This comes at a time when scientists warn Earth is “well outside the safe operating space for humanity” since human activity has caused us to cross six out of the nine environmental barriers securing a habitable planet.
This comes at a time when this past July was the hottest ever in recorded human history, producing 21 of 30 days with the highest recorded temperatures, breaking more than 3,200 global daily temperature records. At least 26 cities broke or tied previous daily records three or more times.
This comes at a time when last year we experienced the ninth warmest August on record.
This comes at a time when this year’s weather disasters shattered records and cost us nearly $58 billion at least 253 deaths. The United Nations estimates climate-related deaths will surpass cancer deaths in our children’s lifetimes.
This comes at a time when the worst heat wave on the planet ever recorded happened in 2022— in Antarctica.
Hawaii is still crawling out from the deadliest wildfires in United States history in more than a century.
California confronted the first tropical storm in 84 years.
Phoenix, Arizona is looking at a future where it could become America’s first unlivable city.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are at 425.04 parts per million (ppm). The last time there was that much CO2 in the atmosphere, human beings didn’t exist yet and palm trees grew in the South Pole.
As each year gets hotter and the weather crises become more destructive, the urgency for an official climate emergency declaration becomes more dire.
With El Niño pressing a summer heatwave all across the northern hemisphere, this year is predicted to be the worst so far.
Joe Biden is the most pro-climate president the United States has ever had. Imagine the alternative.
This is what a good government looks like.