EPA announces roll-back of Obama-era fuel emissions standards

Roll-back of Obama-era fuel emissions standards

This week, Scott Pruitt, the EPA Administrator, announced that the agency will roll back Obama-era fuel efficiency and emissions standards for automobiles. In what is said to be another step in President Trump's regulatory agenda, Pruitt called the standards “inappropriate” and said they “should be revised.” The proposed change in policy will relax the standards for vehicles manufactured between 2022 and 2025, but no revised standards have yet to be provided.

The current regulations, which went into effect just before President Trump took office, required automakers to increase the fuel economy of vehicles being manufactured by almost 40 percent. The required gas mileage is 36 miles per gallon in real-world driving by 2025 for the fleet of new cars. This standard is touted as unattainable, making it difficult for automakers to meet. In turn, this can and will raise the prices of automobiles, which is not desirable for the consumer. In partnership with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the EPA hopes to develop more practical standards that will apply to vehicles manufactured in the next few years, beginning with the release date of 2022.

While automakers unanimously support this decision for obvious reasons, environmentalists warn that the rollbacks will still affect the American consumer negatively by making U.S. cars even more expensive to fill up. Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, strongly believes that pushing for more fuel-efficient and lower emission-producing vehicles will help everyone in the long run. “No one in America is eager to buy a car that gets worse gas mileage and spews more pollution from its tailpipe,” Krupp went on record to say. “Designing and building cleaner, more cost-efficient cars helped automakers bounce back from the recession and will be the key to America's global competitiveness in the years ahead.”

These changes herald the beginning of a lengthy legal showdown in California, a state allowed to create its own gas mileage and pollution regulations. The nearly half-century-old federal waiver enabling California to set its own standards also allows other states to opt in to the stricter rules if they choose. Currently, 12 other states have decided to enact these stricter tailpipe emissions standards, meaning that up to 40 percent of cars on the roads nationwide already conform to the stricter regulations. California and the states following suit are adamant that these standards not be lowered as is currently being proposed by the EPA. Pruitt did indeed mention the EPA would be addressing the waiver, and, likely, California will eventually be forced to conform to the new less strict regulations. This waiver which was written into the original Clean Air Act back in 1970 allows California to set their own emissions standards as long as they were at least as strict as federal standards. This waiver has been renewed dozens of times over the years following, by both Democratic and Republican administrations, so if the Trump administration decides to block the waiver, they will be facing the same challenges faced by the Bush administration, who attempted the same course of action back in 2007 and failed.

Not only did the California Attorney General Xavier Becerra decry the EPA's announcement, but a joint statement released by the governors of California, Oregon, and Washington (collaborated by mayors in all the major cities) did as well. “This move sets us back from years of advancements by the automotive industry put in motion by states that took the lead in setting emissions standards.” Of course, Pruitt's official statement is just the beginning. It will take years to rewrite and enact new fuel efficiency and emissions standards. Only time will tell whether this regulation change is a step forward or a step back for the American people.