Economy and Public Health Will Benefit if Clean Car Standards Are Well-Designed, Group Testifies

(Los Angeles – October 27, 2009) California’s and the nation’s economy and environment will reap significant benefits—and avoid costly impacts—if proposed federal standards to establish national vehicle greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards for new cars and trucks sold in the United States “are rigorous and well-designed.” That was the testimony by a policy specialist from Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) today at the third and final hearing on the proposed rulemaking for the standards held by EPA and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). 

“The fundamental promise of the presidential accord – and the bedrock responsibility for the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation in finalizing the proposed standards – is to achieve profound and lasting progress in national security, climate stability and economic opportunity,” testified Erica Fick, clean energy fellow for Environmental Defense Fund. “Consumers should save an estimated $3,000 over the life of each of these cleaner vehicles. We respectfully request that federal policy-makers finalize rigorous and protective standards to ensure the promise of the president’s compact is realized.”

To establish one well-designed policy, EDF challenged the EPA to reconsider how it approaches accounting for greenhouse gas emissions resulting from generating electricity to power plug-in vehicles.

“The EPA’s proposal to assign a zero greenhouse gas emission rate for the electric portion of plug-in electric vehicles seriously misses the mark,” added Fick. “EPA must ensure that the pollution associated with the upstream electricity generation that powers plug-in vehicles is fully accounted for in the emissions assigned to these vehicles.”

The proposed federal standards – based on California’s clean car law - would apply to new model year 2012 to 2016 vehicles and reduce global warming pollution from transportation nationally by an estimated 21 percent by 2030. Transportation is a major sector of emissions that accounts for about 20 percent of all greenhouse gases nationwide.

The standards would apply to vehicles that are responsible for about 40 percent of all U.S. oil consumption and, if approved, would reduce consumption of oil by 1.8 billion barrels while achieving a five percent annual improvement in fuel efficiency for the nation’s passenger vehicle fleet.

Fick noted that California has more than 30 million registered vehicles that are a major contributor to global warming pollution in the state. California’s coastline spans more than 1,000 miles, and 70 percent of California’s population lives within 60 miles of the coast. Recent analysis predicts a 1.4 meter rise in sea level by 2100 putting 480,000 people at risk. Global warming is likely to make water management more difficult, contentious and expensive by disrupting snowmelt patterns that provide drinking water for over 20 million Californians and irrigation water for California’s $30 billion agricultural industry. Heat waves are projected to become longer, hotter, and more frequent, leading to more heat-related deaths. Hotter and drier weather also will lead to harmful wildfires that threaten lives and property.

When finalized and carried out, the standards will have important societal benefits, Fick testified. They include breaking our nation’s addiction to foreign oil, encouraging domestic clean energy technologies that will lead the way in the 21st century global marketplace, and significantly reducing the global warming pollution that imperils our planet and will harm our economy. Fick said the proposal represents an important step forward in addressing the grim impacts of a changing climate, but she cautioned that to secure these critical benefits, the final standards must be rigorous and well designed by:

• Accounting for Societal Benefits of Protective Action: To maximize benefits, it is essential to fully account for extraordinary and far-reaching protections that result from reducing emissions. The full range of environmental, social, and economic impacts of emissions should be factored in when calculating carbon’s societal costs and co-benefits of the proposed standards—such as health benefits from reductions in smog-forming air pollutants —must be incorporated in economic analysis, which must also account for catastrophic impacts. The final rule must reflect this through appropriate economic assumptions and use of ethical considerations beyond the scope of economic analysis alone.

• Ensuring Fleet Mix Assumptions. Reductions to be realized by these standards are dependent on assumptions about fleet composition in model years 2012-2016. EDF urges federal policymakers to find ways to ensure fleet mix assumptions reflect real-world fleet composition.

• Preparing for model year 2017 and beyond. The standards apply to model years 2012 through 2016. EDF urges the EPA to begin work as soon as possible to prepare standards for model year 2017 and beyond.

Information about the clean car standards rulemaking can be found at: www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/regulations.htm.

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Environmental Defense Fund, a leading national nonprofit organization, represents more than 700,000 members. Since 1967, Environmental Defense Fund has linked science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships to create breakthrough solutions to the most serious environmental problems. For more information, visit www.edf.org.