EPA sends auto emissions rule for White House review, signaling progress toward final rule

The Biden administration's vision of a more than tenfold increase in light-duty electric vehicle adoption by 2032 may be closer to fruition with the Environmental Protection Agency sending a draft final rule expected to require significant cuts in tailpipe emissions to the White House Office of Management and Budget for interagency review.

Moving the regulation to OMB is a key step before the EPA can issue a final rule applying what EPA Administrator Michael Regan has called "the strongest-ever federal pollution standards" to cars and medium-duty vehicles such as trucks and SUVs. The rule would apply to vehicle model years 2027-2032.

As proposed in April, the standards sought to build on tailpipe emission rules finalized in December 2021 that require US automakers to achieve a combined fleetwide reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 28% from model year 2023 to 2026. The EPA's new proposed standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles would require additional reductions of 56% and 44%, respectively, by 2032 compared with the standards for model year 2026.

The emissions standard for model year 2026 would translate to a fleetwide target of roughly 57 miles per gallon, which the EPA has said could by achieved through compliance flexibility and producing zero-emission vehicles such as EVs.

In fact, the proposal estimated that EVs would account for 67% of new light-duty vehicle sales and 46% of new medium-duty vehicle sales by 2032.

However, the proposal has garnered pushback. Republicans last month pushed legislation through the House of Representatives that would bar the EPA from implementing and enforcing the rule. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents auto manufacturers that produce nearly 99% of cars and light trucks sold in the US, called the rule "neither reasonable nor achievable." And a host of energy, fuel retailer, auto parts and agriculture groups have criticized the rule's heavy focus on EV technology with no accounting for the carbon intensity reductions that biofuels and other vehicle technologies could spur.

Democrats, on the other hand, have praised the rule's potential impact on climate change and transportation sector decarbonization efforts and noted that innovation has already led to more than 100 EV models hitting the US market. And Tesla argued in comments to the EPA that there was "sound legal basis for an even more stringent set of standards than EPA's current proposal."

The ultimate stringency of the final rule remains unclear as the EPA received more than 250,000 public comments on its proposal.

But the White House last month vowed to veto the Republican-backed bill blocking the rule if it came to President Joe Biden's desk and more recently touted new funding for EV chargers and battery research to help meet Biden's goal of deploying 500,000 chargers across the country by 2030.

With 167,000 EV chargers in the ground, Biden administration officials have expressed confidence that the US is well on its way to meeting that goal and even suggested it could be met four years early, despite naysayers' concerns about infrastructure buildout and the strain charging demand could put on the power grid.

The EPA's car rule, which OMB received Jan. 18, is slated to be finalized in March, according to a regulatory agenda from the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.