EPA restores California's authority to set its own auto pollution rules
The Biden administration on Wednesday reinstated the state’s authority to set motor vehicle pollution standards stricter than the federal government’s. That includes tighter restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions.
The decision, announced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, reverses an attempt by the Trump administration to block the state from using its vast market power to push the auto industry in a greener direction. The 2019 revocation of its waiver from the federal standard put California and the states that follow its lead on pollution limits into regulatory limbo, casting a mood of uncertainty across the automobile industry.
“This is truly important,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan told the Los Angeles Times. “Not just for the people in California but for the nation as a whole. We are proudly reaffirming California’s longstanding authority to lead in this area.”
Important, yes, said Mark Wakefield, who heads the automobile group at consulting firm AlixPartners, but not shocking. It wasn’t even certain the Trump-era decision would survive court challenges, he said, and very few automakers had assumed California would lose the battle with Trump. “It’s the world as we knew it returning,” according to Wakefield, pointing the U.S. auto industry in the direction of “a market more integrated with global trends.”
Related Knowledge Center: Air emissions
More than 30 years after the last major update of the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Supreme Court has upended the ability of Congress to give the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies broad scope to combat air pollution, including the emission of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, further Biden administration efforts to limit emissions face opposition in the courts.