Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Biden Restores California’s Power to Set Stringent Tailpipe Rules

The state is expected to write strict auto pollution standards designed to significantly speed the transition to electric vehicles and influence new federal rules.

Traffic around the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Twelve other states are following California’s mandate to sell only zero-emissions vehicles after 2035. Credit...Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Wednesday restored California’s legal authority to set auto pollution and mileage rules that are tighter than federal standards, a potent climate policy that had been stripped away by former President Donald J. Trump.

The return of one of California’s most powerful environmental prerogatives could have a significant impact on the type of cars Americans will drive in the coming decade, the amount of gasoline the nation consumes and its ability to reduce the tailpipe emissions that contribute heavily to climate change.

As the most populous state, and with the world’s fifth-largest economy, California has been able to influence automobile makers and set the pace for the rest of the country. Seventeen other states and the District of Columbia have adopted the California rules, turning them into de facto national standards. Twelve other states are following California’s mandate to sell only zero-emissions vehicles after 2035.

With that leverage, California’s actions become pivotal to Mr. Biden’s broader push to accelerate the transition away from gasoline-powered vehicles toward electric vehicles, which require no oil and produce no emissions.

“Today we proudly reaffirm California’s longstanding authority to lead in addressing pollution from cars and trucks,” said Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. “Our partnership with states to confront the climate crisis has never been more important. With today’s action, we reinstate an approach that, for years, has helped advance clean technologies and cut air pollution for people not just in California, but for the U.S. as a whole.”

California’s leaders say they intend to write an auto pollution rule that will phase out the internal combustion engine and replace it with zero-emission batteries.

“I thank the Biden Administration for righting the reckless wrongs of the Trump administration and recognizing our decades-old authority to protect Californians and our planet,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, adding that the move “comes at a pivotal moment underscoring the need to end our reliance on fossil fuels. California looks forward to partnering with the Biden Administration to make a zero-emission future a reality for all Americans.”

Electric vehicles today make up just 4 percent of new car sales in the United States.

Image
Michael S. Regan, the E.P.A. administrator, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at the White House last year.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

The moves come as many of the world’s largest automakers, which for years opposed federal rules to cut tailpipe pollution, have now publicly embraced a future built on electric vehicles.

“Automakers are committed to working cooperatively and constructively with California and other states to ensure vehicles are efficient, clean, and affordable for all,” said a statement from John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which lobbies on behalf of more than a dozen automakers, including Ford, General Motors, Stellantis, Toyota and Volvo. “Collaboration between governments at all levels will be essential to achieving our shared goals for a cleaner transportation future that benefits all communities and enhances U.S. economic competitiveness.”

During the Trump administration, five auto companies — Ford, Honda, BMW, Volkswagen and Volvo — signed a deal with California in which they voluntarily committed to continue to follow a tighter emissions standard in the state, even though Mr. Trump had eliminated California’s authority to enforce it.

Mr. Trump’s 2019 decision to revoke California’s ability to set its own limits on tailpipe emissions stood as one of his biggest moves to raze climate change policies. The regulation of vehicles is central to combating climate change: Transportation is the largest single source of greenhouse gases generated by the United States, representing 29 percent of the nation’s total emissions.

A recent report by the International Energy Agency found that nations would have to end the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035 to keep average global temperatures from increasing 1.5 Celsius, compared with levels during the Industrial Revolution. That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say Earth faces irreversible damage. The planet has already warmed an average of about 1.1 degrees Celsius since the late 1800s.

Under the 1970 Clean Air Act, Congress gave California authority to set tailpipe standards tougher than the federal limits in order to address its problem with smog.

In 2009, President Barack Obama set federal auto emissions standards based on the California rule, requiring passenger vehicles to reach an average mileage of 51 miles per gallon by 2025, up from roughly 38 miles per gallon at the time.

Those rules put the auto industry on a path to aggressively ramping up electric vehicle production by 2025, until Mr. Trump revoked them in 2020. He wrote on Twitter, “The Trump administration is revoking California’s Federal Waiver on emissions in order to produce far less expensive cars for the consumer, while at the same time making the cars substantially SAFER.” He said the change would lead to increased auto production and new “JOBS, JOBS, JOBS,” and claimed that the newer cars would be “extremely environmentally friendly.”

Of his clash with Mr. Trump over the waiver, Mr. Newsom recalled last month: “There was no more important fight for us, in terms of addressing climate change. You’re not serious about climate change unless you’re serious about completely transforming the transportation sector.”

Image
A prototype all-electric Ford F-150 truck at a plant in Dearborn, Mich. Credit...Rebecca Cook/Reuters

Late last year, Mr. Biden enacted a federal standard that effectively reinstated and slightly strengthened the Obama-era auto pollution rule. It requires new vehicles to average 55 miles per gallon by 2026. That is designed to prevent the release of 3.1 billion tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide through 2050, according to the E.P.A. It would also save about 360 billion gallons of gasoline from being burned, leading to a 15 percent annual reduction in the nation’s gasoline consumption by 2050.

Mr. Biden has set a goal that, by 2030, half of all new vehicles sold in the country be electric. The E.P.A. is writing a new tailpipe emissions rule to achieve that goal, and it is likely to be influenced by the forthcoming California rule.

“This is huge,” said Margo Oge, an expert on electric vehicles who headed the E.P.A.’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality from 1994 to 2012. “For the past 50 years California has led the way for cleaner cars and cleaner trucks. This reinforces California’s leadership and moves the state forward to implement the California order that all cars sold in California should be E.V.s by 2035. And it really supports Biden’s car standards and his executive order that half the cars sold in the nation will be E.V.s by 2050. It helps a lot.”

Fossil fuel companies and Republican states are expected to fight back against all new rules designed to cut oil use and promote electric vehicles, with coordinated lawsuits against each of Mr. Biden’s policies.

“States that don’t feel that they should be forced into the worldview of the state of California would be the primary litigants,” said Thomas Pyle, the president of the Institute for Energy Research, an organization that supports the use of fossil fuels.

Last month, the Republican attorneys general of 15 states filed a suit against the Biden administration’s reinstatement of the Obama-era auto pollution rule, claiming that it exceeded the authority granted to the federal government under the Constitution. The group is expected to try to block any additional rules that would lower the demand for oil or promote electric vehicles.

“At a time when American gas prices are skyrocketing at the pump, and the Russia-Ukraine conflict shows again the absolute need for energy independence, Biden chooses to go to war against fossil fuels,” said Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas, who led the suit against the new Biden auto rules. “These severe new rules proposed by the E.P.A. are not only unnecessary, but they will create a deliberate disadvantage to Texas and all states who are involved in the production of oil and gas. I will not allow this federal overreach to wreak havoc on our economy or the livelihoods of hard-working Texans.”

Coral Davenport covers energy and environmental policy for the climate desk from Washington. She was part of a Times team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished public service journalism in 2020, and part of a Times team that received Columbia University’s John B. Oakes award for distinguished environmental journalism in 2018. More about Coral Davenport

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: President Restores California’s Power to Set Stringent Tailpipe Standards. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT