EPA Admin. Regan Announces Strict Vehicle Emissions Rules: ‘This Is Historic News for Our Children’

REGAN: “That’s why today I’m pleased to announce that EPA is proposing the strongest ever federal pollution technology standards for both cars and trucks.
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Together, today’s actions will accelerate our ongoing transition to a clean vehicles future, tackle the climate crisis head-on, and improve air quality for communities all across the country. Light, medium and heavy-duty vehicles are some of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas pollution. The first set of proposed standards focus on light and medium-duty vehicles. It builds on EPA’s existing standards for Passenger cars and light trucks for model years 2023 to 2026. EPA estimates that this proposal would reduce our cumulative CO2 emissions by 7.3 billion metric tons from the years 2027 through 2055. That’s equivalent to eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions from the entire current United States transportation sector for four years. Overall, projected benefits could reach $1.6 trillion. The second set of proposed standards would apply to heavy-duty vocational vehicles such as delivery trucks, dump trucks, public utility trucks, transit, school buses and more. The proposed standards are the final pieces of EPA’s clean trucks plan and will complement the heavy-duty nitrogen oxide standards we established last December. Like the light and medium-duty proposal, the heavy-duty proposal uses performance-based technology standards that enable manufacturers to achieve compliance efficiently, based on the composition of their fleet. EPA estimates that the second proposal would reduce vehicle emissions of CO2 by 1.8 billion metric tons from the years 2027 to 2055. Overall, the projected net benefits of the heavy-duty proposal could reach $320 billion. So, folks, that’s close to $2 trillion in net benefit and over 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions avoided. This is historic news.
(Applause)
This is historic news for our children. It’s historic news for our climate. It’s historic news for our future.”