Fuel Economy Standards Under Threat

The Environmental Protection Agency faces an April 1 deadline to decide whether Obama-era corporate average fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks from 2022 to 2025 are attainable or should be revised. The earlier conclusion issued by the Obama EPA that no changes to the 2025 standards are needed has already been abandoned by Administrator Scott Pruitt. He also dismissed the possibility of setting standards beyond 2025. “Being predictive about what’s going to be taking place out in 2030 is really hard,” Pruitt said. “I think it creates problems when you do that too aggressively. That’s not something we’re terribly focused on right now.”

In the meantime, Pruitt signaled a showdown with California who has a waiver from the federal law allowing it to set its own air pollution requirements. California set more stringent CAFE targets for both 2025 and 2030. “California is not the arbiter of these issues. California regulates greenhouse gas emissions at the state level, but that shouldn’t and can’t dictate to the rest of the country what these levels are going to be.”

The transportation sector has taken over from electrical power generation as the leading emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the U.S. SGI joined many investors within the Ceres Investor Network earlier this year to send letters to the EPA and members of Congress, as well as to GM and Ford, in support of strong Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. More recently, SGI signed on to letters addressed to GM and Ford urging them to call out the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers to end its lobbying and public advocacy that questions climate science. The Alliance efforts to roll back the CAFE standards are in opposition to the auto industry’s support of actions to reduce GHG emissions. The letter also urges Ford and GM to publicly express opposition to changes to the CAFE standards that would lead to increases in GHG emissions.

SGI members continue to advocate that business and our government leaders take immediate action to avert climate change.