The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed "the nation’s most ambitious climate regulations to date," two plans designed to ensure two-thirds of new passenger cars and a quarter of new heavy trucks sold in the United States are all-electric by 2032, says The New York Times.
"The new rules would require nothing short of a revolution in the U.S. auto industry, a moment in some ways as significant as the June morning in 1896 when Henry Ford took his 'horseless carriage' for a test run and changed American life and industry,” the Times says.
If the two rules are finalized as proposed, "they would put the world’s largest economy on track to slash its planet-warming emissions at the pace that scientists say is required of all nations in order to avert the most devastating impacts of climate change,” the Times says.
"The government’s challenge to automakers is monumental,” says the Times. "Last year, all-electric vehicles accounted for just 5.8 percent of new cars sold in the United States. All-electric trucks were even more rare, making up fewer than 2 percent of new heavy trucks sold.”
EPA’s proposal follows even more aggressive moves by California regulators, who last year banned new gasoline-powered car sales by 2035, and Japan, which has said it plans to stop the sale of such vehicles in the middle of next decade, says The Wall Street Journal. The European Union also is debating a measure to effectively prohibit sales of vehicles with internal combustion engines at about that time.
The proposed tailpipe pollution limits don’t require that a specific number of electric vehicles be sold every year but instead mandate limits on greenhouse gas emissions, says The Associated Press. Depending on how automakers comply, EPA projects that at least 60 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the United States would be electric by 2030 and up to 67 percent by 2032.
For slightly larger, medium-duty trucks, EPA projects that 46 percent of new vehicle sales would be EVs in 2032.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan says the proposal has “the strongest-ever federal pollution standards for both cars and trucks.″
The proposed standards for light-duty cars and trucks are projected to result in a 56 percent reduction in projected greenhouse gas emissions compared with existing standards for model year 2026, EPA says. The proposals would improve air quality for communities across the country, avoiding nearly 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2055, more than twice the total U.S. CO2 emissions last year, EPA says.
Transportation is the biggest source of carbon emissions in the United States, accounting for about 27 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, according to EPA. Electric power generates the second biggest share of greenhouse gas emissions, at 25 percent.
Automakers and environmentalists say the administration is moving quickly to finalize new rules by early 2024 to make it much harder for a future Congress or president to reverse them, Reuters reports. President Trump rolled back tough emissions limits through 2025 set under President Obama, but the Biden administration reversed the rollback.
To help spur the transition, the federal government is planning to spend $7.5 billion to expand the EV charging network as part of the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed in 2021. And next week, it plans to issue criteria for tax credits of up to $7,500 for consumers who buy qualified EVs, funded by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.
EPA estimates that net benefits through 2055 from the proposal range from $850 billion to $1.6 trillion. By 2032, the proposal would cost about $1,200 per vehicle per manufacturer but save an owner more than $9,000 on average on fuel, maintenance, and repair costs over an eight-year period.
John Bozzella, CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation representing General Motors, Volkswagen, Toyota and others, says, "Factors outside the vehicle, like charging infrastructure, supply chains, grid resiliency, the availability of low carbon fuels and critical minerals will determine whether EPA standards at these levels are achievable.”
Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign, says EPA's proposal should have been tougher.
The proposed regulations surely will face legal challenges from those who see them as government overreach, says the Times.