Biden to Toughen Auto Emissions Limits to Counter Climate Change

by Jennifer A Dlouhy (Bloomberg Quint) The Biden administration is preparing to impose more stringent limits on car and truck emissions in an effort to clamp down on a top U.S. source of the greenhouse gases fueling climate change. The standards, set to govern passenger cars and light trucks from model years 2023 through 2026, will reverse a Trump-era move to relax the mandates and are set to be issued within days, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Details of the shift were not immediately available, though EPA officials in recent months were considering boosting the stringency of requirements for model year 2026 by as much as 10 grams of carbon dioxide per mile beyond the proposed levels. The agency was also under pressure to tighten a suite of proposed credits and incentives that give automakers more flexibility to fulfill the standards.

Of particular concern were plans to revive double counting of electric vehicle sales and continue so-called flexibilities that give extra credit for technologies that make cars more fuel efficient but don’t necessarily show up in tailpipe readings. Administration officials have been considering doing away with the EV multiplier in the final rule but are unlikely to also upend other flexibilities at the same time.

Even with those possible changes outlined by the EPA, the final requirements would fall short of emissions reductions that could have been achieved under a more stringent path former President Barack Obama negotiated with automakers in 2012, said Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign. Some of those reductions were forfeited by the Trump administration’s decision to relax the standards. In charting new requirements for model year 2026, the Biden administration also has been mindful of making dramatic changes for cars that are already being designed. READ MORE

Excerpt from Vox: Biden’s plan could make buying and charging electric cars easier, but electric vehicles are only as clean as the grids that power them. Studies have shown that electric cars drawing power from coal-heavy grids can actually be worse for the climate than hybrids. And so far, the president’s attempts to clean up the grid have been repeatedly thwarted by Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who single-handedly gutted a proposal to replace coal- and gas-powered plants with solar, wind, and nuclear energy. Most of the energy policy that remains in Biden’s signature Build Back Better bill revolves around tax credits for clean energy, with few penalties for continued pollution-heavy energy production. READ MORE