Report: Clean Car Rules Coming Soon

July 20, 2018

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by Kelsey Tamborrino (Politico's Morning Energy)Mark your calendars, readers. An EPA official told E&E News that the Trump administration will propose its plans for weakening Obama-era clean car standards next week. The plan will provide several options for public comment, but will stop short of revoking states' ability to set their own, tougher standards. Instead, the administration will take comment on California's Clean Air Act waiver, and whether it applies to greenhouse gases. And while the plan will offer options, EPA will make clear its preferred choice: freezing fuel economy targets at 2020 levels through 2026. READ MORE

Trump to propose weakening Obama-era clean car rules (E&E News)

Trump to propose blocking California’s clean car standards: report (The Hill)

SCOOP: Trump will propose dialing back Obama fuel economy standards next week (@ZCollman)

The Interaction of the Clean Air Act, California’s CAA Waiver, Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards, Renewable Fuel Standards and California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (Advanced Biofuels USA)

Let’s Regulate CO2 Emissions, and Forget the 55.4 MPG 2025 Corporate Annual Fuel Economy Standard: The Inexpensive Way to Quickly Reduce Green House Gase s (Advanced Biofuels USA)

AUTO RULE ROLLBACK COULD HINGE ON HIGHWAY DEATHS: (Politico's Morning Energy)

Trump to Seek Repeal of California’s Smog-Fighting Power (Bloomberg)

Harmonizing a Three-Headed Regulatory Monster (Biofuels Digest)

UPDATE 2-U.S. to propose revoking California authority to set auto emissions rules -source (Reuters)

Excerpt from Politico's Morning Energy: The Transportation Department and EPA are gearing up to release a proposal rolling back Obama-era rules requiring significant gains in car fuel efficiency as soon as this week — and the Trump administration appears ready to argue that less efficient cars are safer for human lives.

Newly posted OMB meeting records show for the first time that the EPA version is called the "Safer and Affordable Fuel Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule." (The rulemaking previously had a more generic name.) Former Administrator Scott Pruitt made it clear in April when he announced plans to roll back EPA's greenhouse gas standards that lowering the up-front costs of new vehicles was a major concern, in part because he said higher prices could motivate consumers to continue driving older, dirtier cars.

But the safety reference in the rule's name is a new and apparently key feature of the rollback. The debate over whether increases in fuel efficiency — which are often driven by downsizing and lightweighting — mean that those vehicles are less safe has been raging for about as long as fuel economy standards have existed. The forthcoming proposal is expected to analyze whether lowering the fuel efficiency targets means fewer traffic fatalities — potentially more than 1,000 of the nearly 40,000 annual highway deaths in the U.S., according to sources familiar with a draft that circulated earlier this year. It is not clear whether the proposal will factor in the costs related to increased air pollution associated with rolling back the standards, but the Trump administration has already been relying on much lower figures to estimate the cost effects of climate change in rolling back other Obama-era rules. Advocates of lower efficiency note that traffic deaths per capita and per miles driven have decreased significantly since fuel economy standards were first created by Congress in the 1970s.

OMB update: Newly posted records at OMB show the White House, DOT and EPA held at least four meetings on the vehicles rules in June with: the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which has warned the Trump administration against freezing the standards; pollution control companies and trade groups that have called for more long-term certainty about vehicle rules and a single national standard; the National Association of Clean Air Agencies and Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, which represent many areas struggling with air quality amid increasing car use; and Environment America. READ MORE

Excerpt from Advanced Biofuels USA: Clean Air Act—California Authority

During the drafting of the 1970 Clean Air Act, California pointed to its decades of experience restricting tailpipe emissions as air pollution control measures; and to its unique air quality problems. Written into the 1970 CAA, California can ask the EPA administrator for a waiver to restrict tailpipe pollution from cars more stringently than the federal government. EPA shall grant a waiver unless it finds that California, under the Clean Air Act Section 209 – State Standards :

was arbitrary and capricious in its finding that its standards are in the aggregate at least as protective of public health and welfare as applicable federal standards;
does not need such standards to meet compelling and extraordinary conditions; or
has proposed standards not consistent with Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act.

EPA must approve this waiver before California’s rules may go into effect. Once California files a waiver request, EPA invites and reviews public comments then determines whether California has satisfied the law’s requirements.

This waiver process applies only to California, however, any other state can choose to adopt California’s more stringent standards. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia currently opt for the tougher rules. These “Section 177” states are: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. Arizona took itself off the list in 2012.

CAA waivers have been granted to California for 45 years. Most recently, in response to a 2005 request to the George W. Bush Administration, the Obama Administration’s EPA granted a waiver to California for regulations that added carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gas emission standards for motor vehicles beginning with the 2009 model year.

This came after lengthy litigation.

In 2009, after the Supreme Court’s 2007 finding that EPA had legal authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, EPA granted California’s 2005 waiver request. In 2012 the Supreme Court ruled that the Obama Administration’s EPA relied upon adequate scientific evidence when it found that carbon dioxide and similar “greenhouse gases” endanger public health and could be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

What is in California’s current waiver? Legislated in 2006, California’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction program including the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, Advanced Clean Car (ACC) standards (Low Emission Vehicle (LEV) program and Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program) and cap-and-trade program combine control of smog and soot causing pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions into a single coordinated package of requirements. This GHG package constitutes portions of California’s implementation of it’s current CAA waiver.

Revoking California’s Current Waiver

As the Trump Administration reviews California’s CAA waiver, it might seem that one way that the current EPA might revoke California’s waiver would be to find, from reviewing scientific evidence, that CO₂and other greenhouse gases or pollutants previously regulated no longer cause harm to the public health or welfare.

However, the Clean Air Act includes no mechanism for revoking a waiver.

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In the final 2012 rules, EPA, NHTSA and California announced a “harmonized” national pollution control and fuel economy program.

Because testing CO₂ tailpipe emissions were part of EPA’s vehicle tests related to mileage (fuel economy) under CAFE, instead of setting new procedures designed to analyze pollution similar to those designed for other CAA pollutants (carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, etc.), NHTSA, EPA and California decided to use just the CAFE tailpipe mileage test procedures to assess both mileage and pollution.

Thus, vehicles that have no tailpipes appear, for purposes of CAA pollution assessment, to emit no emissions from energy used to power the vehicles. For example, there is no assessment at all of pollution from electricity produced (from coal, natural gas, biomass, etc.) to power electric vehicles.

In a strange twist, this new “harmonized” system allowed pollution standards, which under previous CAA regulations had to be met by every vehicle class, now, for CO₂using CAFE procedures, could be spread across a manufacturer’s fleet. Thus, vehicles with no tailpipes might balance out heavy tailpipe polluting vehicles where previously each vehicle class had to meet standards.

To prevent the unwanted result of the “no tailpipe emissions” EVs balancing out high-CO₂-tailpipe polluting/low mileage vehicles, the auto manufacturers agreed to the 54.5 MPG CAFE goals, with a midterm evaluation, due in April 2018, to determine if this was a fair compromise.

Also as a part of this “harmonization” incentives for design and production of engines and fuels which produce low life cycle pollution have been decimated. Lack of the F-Factor and R-Factor and lack of life cycle comparisons of actual transportation power sources prevents vehicle manufacturers from taking advantage of the characteristics of biofuels, such as high octane/high ethanol blends.

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As a result of the blended, double purpose effect of the CO2 measurements to meet fuel economy AND emissions control goals, California’s CAA waiver appears to serve also as a CAFE waiver.

This may provide the Trump Administration a justification for unraveling the 2012 compromise and effectively withdrawing California’s waiver due to the EPCA’s prohibition of states regulating fuel economy standards. READ MORE / MORE