EPA Clears Way for California Clean Car Standards

(Washington, D.C. – December 18, 2024) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today granted California’s requests for Clean Air Act preemption waivers for the Advanced Clean Cars II (ACCII) Standards and the Heavy-Duty Low NO_x Omnibus Standards. The standards will protect millions of people from dangerous pollution emitted by new passenger cars, trucks and SUVs, and from new heavy-duty vehicles like freight trucks. 

“These standards will have profound benefits for protecting people from traffic pollution. They’ll help curtail pollution from new cars and trucks, while also incentivizing broader deployment of clean technologies and helping to create thousands of new jobs,” said Alice Henderson, Director and Lead Counsel for Transportation and Clean Air Policy for Environmental Defense Fund. “EPA’s approval of these standards for California and numerous other states is a welcome action to reduce pollution, including in communities where it’s most needed.”

For more than half a century, the Clean Air Act has included a waiver provision that allows California to adopt clean transportation standards that are more protective than the national standards, which has allowed the state to protect Californians from air pollution from new cars and trucks. Across Democratic and Republican administrations alike, EPA has repeatedly recognized California’s leadership in addressing harmful tailpipe pollution. Most of the key U.S. advances in motor vehicle air pollution control debuted in California, including: the first leaded-gasoline phase-out requirements; the first emission standards for hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, diesel particulates, and greenhouse gases; and essential pollution-control technologies like three-way catalytic converters, fuel injection, and zero-emission technologies. EPA’s approval today of California’s request for these two waivers is in line with this long history. 

The transportation sector is one of the biggest sources of harmful pollutants, including deadly particle pollution and smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx). It is also the largest source of U.S. climate pollution, responsible for nearly a third of U.S. emissions annually. 

As the map below illustrates, California continues to experience particularly harmful levels of air pollution, including elevated levels of smog. California projects that just one of these standards, ACCII, will help to cut this pollution across the state, reducing it by more than 30 tons per day of NOx, two tons per day of particle pollution, and more than 58 million metric tons per year of climate pollution by 2040.

Source: EPA November 30, 2024

The ACCII standards include two sets of requirements, each beginning with model year 2026 vehicles: “LEV IV” standards to reduce exhaust and evaporative emissions from engines and fuel systems; and “ZEV” standards for sales of zero-emission vehicles. Under the ACCII ZEV standards, automakers will sell a gradually increasing proportion of ZEVs through model year 2035, when all new light-duty vehicles sold in California must be ZEVs or plug-in hybrids. In each model year, up to 20% of a manufacturer’s ZEVs may be plug-in hybrids.

Eleven other states – Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington – and the District of Columbia have adopted ACCII under Clean Air Act authority. Those regions make up 33% of the U.S. new vehicle market. 

The Heavy-Duty Low NO_x Omnibus Standards will help ensure that conventional diesel vehicles, like freight trucks, run as cleanly as possible and provide safer air to the communities close to ports, railyards and distribution centers. Under the standards, manufacturers of heavy-duty trucks will meet tougher emissions standards, overhaul engine testing procedures, and further extend engine warranties. Once it is fully phased in by 2031, the standards are expected to reduce NOx emissions across the state even further – by more than 23 tons per day, the equivalent of taking 16 million passenger cars off the road.

Nine other states – Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington – have adopted the Heavy-Duty Low NOx Omnibus Standards.  

The U.S. is seeing steady growth in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing. An August 2024 report by Environmental Defense Fund and WSP USA found that electric vehicle manufacturing investments over the last nine years has now reached $199 billion (63% of that came after passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.) The report also found that manufacturers have announced 201,900 U.S. EV-related jobs linked to that investment. EV and battery manufacturing could also generate up to 931,000 additional jobs in the broader economy.