The EPA’s recent denial of California’s request for a waiver that would allow it to set its own GHG emissions requirements for vehicles has stirred up a fair bit of controversy over the past week. In fact, in addition to widespread criticism in the media and blogosphere, the EPA and the Bush administration have also come under fire in the legal and political arenas.

In a recent piece, the LA Times describes the political maneuvering between senior EPA officials, the White House, and auto industry executives that preceded the EPA’s December 19 ruling. Possible linkages between the auto industry’s support of last month’s energy bill and the subsequent rejection of the California waiver petition has raised eyebrows, and now Democrats are threatening congressional hearings.

Jurist has been following these developments, as well as the EPA’s decision to turn over all correspondence between the agency and the Bush Administration that pertains to the California decision.

Stay tuned - it looks like there’s a controversy brewing.

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Photo by mocodragon.

While the fuel economy standards in the latest energy bill are a welcome first step, giving us some relief from stagnation in fuel economy from vehicle fleet, the California approach, which treats greenhouse gases as pollutants, and sets performance standards, is the right way to go for the longer term.

In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, we need to get to a full systems approach, looking at fuels and vehicles as a system, and set up a regulatory approach that can keep steady downward pressure on allowable emissions from the fleet of vehicles on American roads.

The EPA’s decision to deny California the waiver to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes of passenger cars and trucks doesn’t bode well for the EPA’s own proposed rule making on the same issue.

Since the US EPA won’t lead, California - and the 17 other states that want to join it - will. And with past as prologue, the courts are likely to support California. Then the EPA will follow and we’ll have a national emissions standard for greenhouse gas emissions, eventually.

It’s just too bad that the Bush Administration is going to force everything into the courts, before the inevitable occurs.

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Photo by mj*laflaca

In 2002 the National Academy of Sciences wrote a report suggesting a modest raise in new car fuel efficiency - from 28 miles per gallon to around 32 - was justified. The Bush Administration ignored this finding. A few years later it thumbed its nose at the environmental community by dissolving the “Partnership for a new Generation of Vehicles,” a joint government-auto industry initiative to put a super fuel-efficient, low-emissions diesel car on the road by the end of this decade. As if that weren’t enough, the Bush Administration has constantly opposed higher fuel taxes, ruling out an important step for reducing what the president calls our ‘addiction’ to oil. I must say that it’s strange that after repeatedly acknowledging the current energy problem he has so passively ignored or actively obstructed almost every effort to find a solution.

So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise yesterday when the EPA announced that it opposes California’s 2002 initiative to regulate CO2, a move that will once again put off the reckoning this country has with oil and carbon. Since this initiative in its original form has been law in California since 2002, it’s goals are no surprise to the Administration or automobile manufacturers. They’ve had roughly five years and little to show; perhaps instead of hiring the engineers to make their cars comply with the law, the auto industry hired the lawyers to take the law down.

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In all likelihood corn from fields like this one in Iowa will be used to fuel American cars. Photo by Homemade.

In the last few months, high-profile senators like Obama, Clinton, Kerry, McCain, and Lieberman have all introduced important climate legislation, and consequently Congress has found itself center-stage in the struggle to find a solution to global warming. But while Congressional leaders continue to shine in the public spotlight, it’s important not to overlook recent developments in the other two branches of government.

The first happened earlier this year when the United States Supreme Court ruled that, under the Clean Air Act, CO2 and other greenhouse gases could be regulated as pollutants. This was a major setback to the Bush Administration, which had argued before the Court that C02 and the like aren’t pollutants and therefore can’t be regulated. This is particularly important because without the court’s ruling, the executive branch would be just twiddling its thumbs. But after the court’s ruling, President Bush was legally obliged to act. Issuing an executive order, he called on the EPA to work with other relevant agencies to protect the environment with respect to greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, non-road vehicles and non-road engines, in a manner consistent with sound science.

The policy target set by the president’s so-called 20 in 10 plan aims to reduce US gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next 10 years. How does he plan to do this? By bringing in 35 billion gallons of renewable or alternative fuels by 2017 and improving efficiency of cars and light trucks by up to 4 percent per year.

If you look at the EPA’s public presentations on this, the EPA is taking an integrated systems approach, regulating both vehicles and fuels. Using green house gas performance standards for each, it will then allow for inter-industry trading. The EPA used a similar approach when it set the clean diesel rules, which have yielded among the highest benefit to cost ratios of any rules in US regulatory history. So this shows great promise! Read the rest of this entry »

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