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April 2020
Via the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy
Rolling Back Clean Car Standards Will Cost Consumers, Cut Jobs, Increase Pollution, and Thwart Climate Progress
In the midst of a global pandemic, the Trump Administration has rolled back clean car standards designed to save consumers money, inc, reduce transportation pollution, and spur innovative climate solutions. While our nation confronts the challenges of a virus that attacks the respiratory system, and while 40% of citizens live in communities where unhealthy air makes it more difficult to breathe, the Trump administration is making America’s air dirtier and further compromising Americans’ health.
The Trump Administration’s Flawed Analysis
The core issue is the flawed science and economics behind the Trump administration’s rationale for the rule changes. The Clean Car Standards, enacted by the Obama Administration in 2012, were designed to raise the corporate average fuel economy to 54.5 MPG by 2025. The standards were developed through rigorous analysis led by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in order to cut auto greenhouse gas emissions in half, reduce oil consumption by 2 billion barrels per day, and save American consumers $1.7 trillion in fuel costs.
Shortly after Trump took office, he tasked the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to redo the research and issue a new report on the costs and benefits of the clean car standards. The NHTSA blocked EPA participation, not allowing EPA to perform even its most basic functions like engine testing.
Alarmingly, when the NHTSA’s shared their calculations with the EPA, experts began warning these rollbacks would be an economic, environmental, and public health disaster. As highlighted in the New York Times, the Trump Administration manipulated data, particularly the economic calculation knows as the “discount rate,” in order to justify the public policy change they sought:
As an example, other experts pointed to the fact that, in the administration’s own analysis, the overall economic impact of rolling back the auto rule could range from a net cost to the economy of $22 billion to a net benefit of $6.4 billion.
That wide range comes from using two different variables in an economic calculation known as the discount rate. Using a 3 percent discount rate, which would place a high value on lost benefits like improved public health from cleaner air, the new Trump plan would cost the economy $22 billion. Under a 7 percent discount rate, which would place a low value on those benefits, the rule would create a net economic benefit of $6.4 billion.
Analysts said those calculations demonstrated that the rule was likely to be more costly to society.
“It is highly unusual to emphasize the 7 percent discount rate — typically we always did calculations with the 3 percent discount rate,” said Margo Oge, a former top official in the E.P.A.’s vehicle emissions program. “That is more representative of the way the federal government does these calculations.”
Southern Alliance for Clean Energy’s Executive Director, Dr. Stephen Smith, called foul on manipulating data and the public trust in order to create public policy...
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Trump Kills Obama’s Clean Car Standards
WASHINGTON, DC, April 3, 2020 (ENS) – The Republican administration of President Donald Trump has not let the deadly coronavirus crisis stop it from getting rid of Obama-era federal fuel efficiency standards and replacing them with a less ambitious plan. The Trump plan is estimated to increase carbon emissions by 2.2 billion metric tonnes and cost Americans a total of US$300 billion.
In 2010 under President Barack Obama, the U.S. government established a National Clean Car Standards program to coordinate greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy standards for light-duty vehicles, including cars and small trucks. The program established standards that increase in stringency every year from Model Year 2012 through Model Year 2025.
The Trump administration fuel rule allows fuel economy and emission standards to increase by just 1.5 percent annually, rather than the five percent annual increases in the 2012 rule adopted under President Obama.
Under the new fuel rule, the standard will increase to just 40.4 miles per gallon by vehicle model year 2026, about six miles a gallon less than the standard required by the 2012 rule...
Trump’s less stringent fuel efficiency rule will have major environmental consequences and undermine President Obama’s work to combat the climate crisis.
The fuel economy emissions standards put in place by the Obama administration were projected to save nearly 2.5 million barrels of oil a day by 2030, as well as save consumers over $1 trillion and reduce global warming pollution by six billion metric tons.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also a Democrat, said, “The Trump Administration’s anti-science decision to gut fuel standards will unleash massive amounts of pollution into the air at the worst possible time. The American people need and expect strong action to protect public health during the coronavirus pandemic, not corporate giveaways that devastate the air that we breathe.”
“This rule endangers economic security as it harms public health, stealing hundreds of billions of dollars out of the pockets of workers and families during a time of massive uncertainty and job loss,” Pelosi said. “The decision weakens America in the fight against the climate crisis, which is the existential threat of our time, imperiling public health, economic security and national security.”
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American Lung Association
For 21 years, the American Lung Association has analyzed data from official air quality monitors to compile the "State of the Air" report.
Visit State of the Air at the American Lung Association website and select your location to view data by state, county, and metropolitan statistical areas.
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Many States and Auto Manufacturers Oppose Rollbacks of Clean Air Standards
California fighting Trump for Clean Air
Where did the Clean Air Standards come from? A Look Back at the History, Accomplishments and Actions to Improve Air Quality
Fifty years ago, when the Nixon administration and Congress were working to strengthen the Clean Air Act, they looked to California to see how it could be done. In tackling the Los Angeles area’s awful smog, state officials had already established emissions standards for vehicles, mandating the use of cutting-edge technology like crankcases that recirculate exhaust into the emissions system rather than simply spew it into the air. Later, they introduced catalytic converters and lights that warn drivers when their engines are malfunctioning and thus overpolluting. By 1967, when then-Governor Ronald Reagan signed the act creating the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the Golden State had an infrastructure for environmental regulation second to none.
Two years later, California wanted national environmental regulations locked into law as well. But it knew the rest of the country wouldn’t go as far as the West Coast, and Reagan didn’t want to have to water down his state’s standards in order to see the Clean Air Act passed. So state and federal officials hashed out a compromise. Under Section 209 of the Clean Air Act, the federal emissions standards that were about to kick in would serve as a baseline; states would not be permitted to go below that baseline, but through a series of waivers California would be allowed to maintain its higher standards if it could present a good scientific and technological case for them. Two decades later, under Section 177 of the revised Clean Air Act of 1990, other states were given the option to follow California’s stricter standards over the federal ones.
Since that compromise, California—whose Justice Department can call on the expertise of dozens of in-house environmental law attorneys—has been granted more than 100 waivers, allowing it to introduce an array of standards that exceed those put in place by Washington. And more than a dozen states, accounting for roughly one-third of the American population, have chosen to follow those tougher standards.
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