By Kevin Tuerff
My personal history with vehicle emissions standards and air quality goes back 17 years. That’s how long it’s taken to move the auto industry significantly forward to reduce pollution from gas-powered engines. More on this later.
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With the Easter holiday weekend, you may have missed this big news from the Obama administration. From the US Environmental Protection Agency announcement: “Responding to one of the first major directives of the Obama Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today jointly established historic new federal rules that set the first-ever national greenhouse gas emissions standards and will significantly increase the fuel economy of all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States. The rules could potentially save the average buyer of a 2016 model year car $3,000 over the life of the vehicle and, nationally, will conserve about 1.8 billion barrels of oil and reduce nearly a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the lives of the vehicles covered.”
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said, “leaner car standards will mean 950,000,000 tons of carbon pollution cut from our skies. They will mean as much as $3,000 dollars in savings for drivers of 2016 model clean cars. And they will mean $2.3 billion dollars that can stay at home in our economy rather than buying oil from overseas.
Why is this big news? Cars, SUVs, minivans, and pickup trucks are responsible for almost 60 percent of all U.S. transportation-related greenhouse gas GHG emissions. And it’s the first set of national emissions standards to address the climate issue. All done without an act of Congress.
Back in 1993, I worked for state Senator Rodney Ellis (& now Rep. Strama) on Texas legislation that would do what the President & EPA finally did today: adopt the California Air Resources Board’s vehicle emission standards that reduce air pollution. California was already requiring automakers to build a small percentage of their vehicles with new fuels and technologies, including electric catalytic converters that reduce engine emissions. The industry complied in California, but vehemently fought expansion of cleaner cars legislation to other states, including Texas. You see, if the two largest states in the US both had these requirements, it would have only made sense to make vehicles with the same technology for the entire country.
I personally witnessed the Texas auto and oil lobbyists kill the bill. We tried to rally environmental groups, hold news conferences and hold hearings to pass the Texas Low Emissions Vehicles Act. But the Texas Automobile Dealers Association lobbyist cried, “It’s impossible to mandate these new standards, Detroit doesn’t have the technology.” (Did I mention that I’ve driven an ultra low-emission vehicle (ULEV) from Honda for the last eight years?) and “It will force the price of cars to increase for consumers by at least $3,000.” As Gov. Ann Richards used to say, “That’s Hawgwarsh.” The actual cost of the new technology was said to be around an extra $400. Who wouldn’t pay that much extra on top of their $20-40,000 sticker price if it meant cleaner air? The new rules announced this week by DOT and EPA are estimated to increase the price of new cars by $1,000. If we had only acted in 1993, auto dealers!
Thirty-five is the new magic number. That’s the number of miles per gallon that new cars should be running on when they hit the lot in 2016. Some of today’s vehicles are still on the roads getting less than 15 mpg. Those drivers should take that 35 number to the bank.
