Energy Program News

December 19, 2007

 Bernadette Del Chiaro

Clean Energy Advocate, Environment California

Today, the US EPA has chosen to ignore the science behind global warming and the Clean Air Act and bowed to political pressure from automobile industry and their friends in the White House.   In doing so, the Bush Administration is blocking state efforts to solve global warming and clean up the air for California and twelve other states.

In denying the California Clean Cars waiver, the US EPA is blocking one of the most effective tools the states have in reducing global warming pollution. While President Bush signed into law fuel economy standards today, the two policies are not comparable with regards to global warming pollution reductions by 2020. In fact, California will emit 3 times more global warming pollution per year by 2020 under the fuel economy standards signed into law today by President Bush, than it would have under the Clean Cars Program had the waiver been granted. 

One key difference between the two policies is that the Clean Cars Program would begin with model year 2009, a full decade before the federally mandated 35 miles per gallon standard kicks in. Even when multiplied out nationally, the federal standards only achieve 9 million tons more global warming reductions per year than the clean cars standard – and these reductions come a decade later. When it comes to solving global warming, time is of the essence and delaying real reductions by a decade is to deny the science behind climate change.=

Nationwide, establishing a federal fuel economy standard of 35 miles per gallon by 2020 will:

• Save 1.1 million barrels of oil per day by 2020
• Save consumers $22 billion annually by 2020. 
• Reduce annual global warming emissions by 83 million tons a year, the equivalent of taking 14 million of today’s cars off the road. 

In California, these standards will:

• Reduce oil consumption by 136,243 barrels per day by 2020
• Save consumers $3 billion annual dollars at the pump by 2020
• Reduce global warming emissions by 9 million tons per year, the equivalent to taking 1.6 million cars off the road

In contrast, the clean cars standards waiver that was denied by US EPA today, would have:

• In California, reduced 29 million metric tons of CO2, per year by 2020.
• If you include the 12 other states that also adopted the California standard, the standards would cut global warming pollution by 74 million tons per year by 2020.
• Cumulative emission reductions from this program in all 12 states would have been 369 million metric tons by 2020.

Looking ahead, we encourage California’s top officials to do everything they can to fight today’s EPA decision and we call on all presidential candidates to pledge, within the first 100 days in office, to overturn today’s decision and allow California and the other states to implement our clean cars regulations.