The Biden Environmental Protection Agency garnered widespread, often effusive, praise on Wednesday for unveiling what it described as the "strongest-ever pollution standards for cars and trucks."
But the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) argued that, in their current form, the proposed rules "fail to address carbon pollution from new gas-powered cars and trucks" because they don't require automakers to adopt technologies to reduce the amount of CO2 that such gas-guzzling vehicles will spew into the atmosphere for decades to come.
"This is Biden's chance to take the biggest single step of any nation to confront the climate crisis, but the EPA's proposal stalls out when it comes to new gas-guzzlers," Dan Becker, the director of CBD's Safe Climate Transport Campaign, said in a statement. "The draft rule fails to require any improvement in the tens of millions of new gas-guzzlers, and even the strongest option falls well short of the 75% pollution cut necessary to protect our planet."
As The Washington Post reported Wednesday, EPA officials acknowledged that the new federal emission standards "won't mandate any particular technology" to slash vehicle pollution because the agency "wants to find flexible ways for the industry to comply."
"These rules are limits on the emissions each auto company's fleet of sold vehicles will produce," the Post explained. "So while the rule changes wouldn't order or require auto companies to sell a certain number of electric vehicles, it would set emissions limits so tightly that the only way to comply would be to sell large percentages of EVs—or some other type of zero-emissions vehicle."
During a Wednesday event touting the new rules, EPA Administrator Michael Regan confirmed that the administration is not "prescribing any mandates" or "driving any particular technology out of business," referring to gas-powered vehicles.
"We're giving the markets and the automobile industry and the private sector the options to choose on how we best move forward to reach the very, very, very ambitious climate goals that we must reach if we are to protect this planet," Regan continued.
Becker said it is "unfathomable" that the EPA crafted rules that do nothing to force car companies to implement specific pollution-cutting changes to new gas-powered vehicles.
"This is auto mechanics, not rocket science," he added.
The EPA projects that under the strongest version of its proposed rules—which, if finalized, would take effect in 2027—electric vehicles could account for 67% of all new light-duty vehicle sales by model year 2032. Last year, just 6% of new vehicles sold in the U.S. were electric.
In a phone interview with Common Dreams, Becker said the 67% EV figure would represent "a lot of progress" but stressed that it's far from certain the administration will ultimately finalize the most aggressive option—meaning the best-case scenario highlighted by the EPA may be overly optimistic.
"If the auto companies continue to churn out tens of millions of new gas-guzzlers, which they will, and those have to make no improvements, then it's like squeezing a balloon," Becker argued. "You're getting improvements from the switch to EVs, but not everything's going to be an EV. So a lot of these vehicles will continue to guzzle and pollute until the middle of the century."
The International Energy Agency has said that automakers around the world must stop selling new gas-guzzling vehicles by 2035 in order to keep critical warming targets within reach.
"We're in a climate emergency," Becker said. "The president needs to act like it and strengthen this draft rule to require 67% EVs by 2030 and 3.5% annual improvement for new gas cars and trucks. Together those moves would slash auto pollution 75%."
"Automakers talk out of both sides of their tailpipes, promising electric vehicles while delivering mostly the same old gas-guzzlers and lobbying for weak, loophole-riddled rules."
CBD, which said the new rules "fail to meet" the climate emergency, emphasized in its statement Wednesday that automakers "already have cost-effective technologies to dramatically cut pollution from gas-powered cars, such as improved engines, transmissions, and aerodynamics."
"Instead of installing these technologies in new vehicles," the group said, "car companies successfully lobbied for loopholes that will allow them to keep making polluting cars, SUVs, and pickups."
As Becker put it: "Automakers talk out of both sides of their tailpipes, promising electric vehicles while delivering mostly the same old gas-guzzlers and lobbying for weak, loophole-riddled rules. A strong standard will make them keep their word."
Other climate organizations were far less critical of the proposal, with Environment America calling it "among the most significant actions on climate by the Biden administration to date" and echoing projections laid out by the EPA, which says its proposed rules would "avoid nearly 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions" through 2055.
Matt Casale, director of U.S. PIRG's environment campaigns, thanked the Biden administration for "embracing the promise of clean cars."
"These new vehicle pollution standards will pay off in cleaner air and a healthier future for all Americans," Casale said.
But some of the groups that celebrated the new rules as a vast improvement over the untenable status quo said more ambition is necessary, specifically when it comes to regulating pollution from heavy-duty vehicles such as buses and freight trucks.
"Heavy-duty trucks only make up 10% of the vehicles on the road but create 28% of the global warming emissions from transportation, as well as 45% of nitrogen oxide emissions and 57% of particulate matter emissions," said Dave Cooke, senior vehicles analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"The proposed heavy-duty rules are significant," Cooke added, "but the market for electric trucks is moving quickly and there is both an urgent need and an opportunity to go even further to facilitate the transition to electric trucks with no tailpipe pollution."
