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Health & Science

New vehicle rules to curb greenhouse gas emissions spark debate

By Juliet Eilperin,July 03, 2011

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Obama highlighted the fuel economy standards in a speech Tuesday at an aluminum plant in Iowa, as he has done before.

But instead of mentioning climate change directly, he described how he and others told U.S. automakers that in exchange for government aid, “they’d have to make some changes to compete, so we brought people together and set the first new fuel-mileage standards in more than 30 years. And that means fewer trips to the pump and less harmful pollution.”

Although the George W. Bush administration had sought to block regulation of vehicles’ greenhouse-gas emissions — which California and more than a dozen states had pushed to do — Obama embraced it. In May 2009, he brokered a deal between automakers, California officials, environmentalists and unions that incorporated California’s standards into a national program, an agreement that all sides hailed as breaking a decades-long stalemate over fuel efficiency.

That deal set greenhouse-gas emission limits for vehicles in the 2012 through 2016 model years. Now, officials are working on the rules for later models — and those are more ambitious.

By 2030, the current standards are slated to cut the nation’s annual greenhouse-gas emissions by the equivalent of 307 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and cut oil consumption by 1.8 million barrels a day. But the second round of rules, which will apply to cars and light trucks for model years 2017 through 2025, are proving more contentious because the emission cuts could more than double, and some domestic automakers question whether they can build much more efficient cars at a price consumers are willing to pay.

Truckers and their suppliers, however, have largely embraced greenhouse-gas limits as a way to cut their future fuel costs. This month, the government will finalize the first-ever greenhouse-gas rules for medium and heavy-duty trucks between the 2014 and 2018 model years. Depending on the final standards, by 2030 the truck and passenger vehicle rules combined could cut annual emissions by 725 million metric tons, or 13 percent of the nation’s current net emissions.

One of the wild cards in the current negotiations is whether the California Air Resources Board — which imposed the nation’s first-ever limits on vehicles’ greenhouse-gas emissions — will endorse a second national standard or opt to pursue stricter limits on its own.

“If we are not on a pathway to solving the global problem of climate change with the national program, we reserve the right to set our own standards,” said Tom Cackette, CARB’s deputy chief executive, who did not specify what those standards might be.

While domestic auto manufacturers have privately pushed for a much lower efficiency target than 56.2 mpg, at least one — General Motors — has indicated it could meet strict standards.

“We’re willing to be pushed by a tough national standard,” Greg Martin, GM’s Washington spokesman, said in an interview. But he added: “The devil is in the details.”

Car companies suggest the average cost of a vehicle would increase by as much as $6,000 if it had to average 56.2 mpg 14 years from now; federal agencies put that increase at $2,375.

Environmentalists such as Roland Hwang, transportation program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, note that consumers would save an average of $6,412 in fuel costs over the vehicle’s lifetime. Hwang said NRDC and other groups are still pushing for at least 60 mpg as the 2025 standard, adding: “We are very concerned about loopholes that can substantially undermine the 56.2-mpg target benefits.”

Meanwhile, in a brief filed by Texas and other states in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the plaintiffs questioned the EPA conclusion that vehicle emissions “contribute to the perceived but undefined danger variously referred to as ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming.’ ” They questioned whether the greenhouse gases coming from tailpipes qualify as air pollutants.

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