Latest news with #AirResourcesBoard
San Francisco Chronicle
5 days ago
- Automotive
- San Francisco Chronicle
Trucking companies sue California, seeking a release from Clean Truck Partnership
Major trucking companies have entered the legal war between California and President Donald Trump over vehicle emissions, asking a federal judge to decide whether they must comply with the state's clean-air standards that Trump and congressional Republicans have acted to repeal. Truck manufacturers 'are caught in the crossfire,' four companies said Monday in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Sacramento. While California's Air Resources Board demands that they comply with state emissions standards, 'the United States maintains such laws are illegal and orders (the manufacturers) to disregard them.' The companies asked the court to decide which laws they must follow, and to shield them from enforcement of conflicting laws. They include Daimler, which manufactures about 40% of U.S. trucks, and Volvo, which makes about 15%, along with Paccar and Traton. A related issue is already before the federal courts in San Francisco, where California sued the Trump administration in June after the president signed a law declaring an end to vehicle emissions standards that the state has been allowed to enforce since 1970. That suit seeks to preserve the state's mandate to phase out gasoline-powered cars and, by 2035, limit new-car sales to electric vehicles and hybrids that can run on either electricity or gasoline. The trucking companies' suit targets another California mandate imposing stricter standards on diesel emissions than those enforced nationwide, with a goal of a zero-emission fleet at a later date. The companies agreed to comply with those standards under a 'Clean Truck Partnership' they signed with the California Air Resources Board in 2023. The state enforces its standards under waivers granted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, actions that state officials maintain are still valid despite the new federal law. The waivers allow other states to follow California's standards, and 12 states have done so, while several others have adopted California's rules for truck emissions. In Monday's suit, the trucking companies said the Clean Truck Partnership they signed in 2023 gave them a 'woefully inadequate' period of only two years to comply with the state's emission standards. They said the Air Resources Board also required them to meet those standards regardless of the outcome of any legal challenges. After the recent congressional action, attorney Benjamin Wagner wrote in the lawsuit, the companies must learn 'within a matter of weeks' whether they need Air Resources Board approval to sell their trucks in California and other states following its standards, which together make up about 25% of the national market. The Air Resources Board did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the suit was criticized by the Sierra Club, a prominent environmental group. 'It is disappointing to see major truck manufacturers attempting to back away from their commitments in response to a hostile federal government,' said Jakob Evans, a policy strategist for the Sierra Club in California. Last week the Sierra Club, other environmental groups and the Electric Vehicle Association issued a letter to truck manufacturers in California urging them to 'reaffirm your commitment to this agreement and to the truck drivers, fleets, and communities who stand to benefit from electrification.'
Yahoo
14-06-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Trump Just Revoked California's EV Rules. How Much Is California To Blame?
President Donald Trump just revoked California's permission to enforce its nation-leading clean-car rules — and Mary Nichols understands why. "No one likes being regulated," she told me ahead of Thursday's Oval Office signing ceremony. Nichols knows that better than almost anyone. As head of California's Air Resources Board for 17 years, she brought the world's biggest automakers to heel using the state's unique authority to go further than the federal government in setting vehicle emissions standards. It's those same automakers who lobbied Trump to "rescue the U.S. auto industry from destruction by terminating California's electric vehicle mandate once and for all," as Trump put it Thursday. It didn't have to get to this point. California officials had been in talks with automakers prior to the November election about how to keep them on board, but the state overplayed its hand, Nichols said. "Many people were acting on the assumption that it was going to be the Democrats continuing in power," she said. "So the state felt like they had all the cards in their hand, and then after the election, it was pretty hard to reset the conversation." To hear Nichols tell it, California may have gone too far this time in nudging the industry to ever-higher sales of zero-emission vehicles. The rules would have required automakers to hit increasing percentages — 35 percent by model year 2026 and 68 percent by model year 2030 — before reaching 100 percent of new-car sales in 2035. Maybe that would have worked if it were just about California. But a dozen other states are signed on to California's targets, and they have been slower and less generous with incentives and EV charging infrastructure. Where California has more than a quarter of its new car sales coming from EVs, New Jersey is at 15 percent, and New York is under 12 percent, according to the industry's latest figures. "They were definitely having issues with the California program because they didn't think they could meet the sales numbers in the mandate, especially [Gov. Gavin] Newsom's target of nothing but ZEVs with a deadline attached to it," Nichols said. "That was scary, and even the interim targets were going to be hard to meet." The pendulum has swung against California before: The George W. Bush administration was the first to attempt to deny California's permission from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require automakers to sell increasing percentages of zero-emission vehicles, and Trump went further in his first term by attempting to revoke the state's already-issued authority. But Republicans had never resorted to doing it through Congress, via an untested maneuver that congressional watchdogs have warned is likely illegal but that still drew 35 Democratic votes in the House and one in the Senate (Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), in the tradition of Detroit's John Dingell). It's a far cry from the bipartisan consensus that reigned when President Richard Nixon famously signed the Clean Air Act, which set federal air pollution levels for the first time but gave California permission to continue going further, owing to its decade-plus of vehicle emissions rules aimed at the smoggy Los Angeles basin. The automakers have been steadily lobbying against the rules since then, with a brief ceasefire from 2009-16, when ten automakers and the United Auto Workers signed a nonaggression pact in President Barack Obama's Rose Garden with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the EPA. That it happened at the same time that the federal government was taking an equity stake in General Motors was no coincidence, said Nichols, who helped broker the pact. "They saved them from bankruptcy," she said. California has less recourse this time around. Where Newsom signed deals in 2019 with Ford, Volkswagen, Honda, BMW and Volvo to abide by the state's rules even in the event of federal cancellation, he now only has Stellantis, which signed a separate agreement last year that goes through model year 2030. And several of the state's allies are peeling off. California had 12 other states signed on to follow its lead as of last year, but it now has 10, after Republican-led Virginia dropped out and Vermont delayed enforcement by 19 months. And Democrats are getting cold feet, too: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed an executive order in April delaying enforcement, and Democratic lawmakers in New York introduced a bill this year to delay their participation by two years. (California and the other 10 states immediately sued Thursday to preserve the emissions standards.) "If it was only California, I think [automakers] wouldn't have been as eager to jump in on the federal level and work with the Republicans, but it's the fact it's the other states that had the California standards that were killing them, especially New York," Nichols said. That echoes the automakers' argument. "The problem really isn't California," John Bozzella, CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, said in a statement after the Senate's vote last month to overturn the rules. "It's the 11 states that adopted California's rules without the same level of readiness for EV sales requirements of this magnitude."
Politico
14-06-2025
- Automotive
- Politico
Trump Just Revoked California's EV Rules. How Much Is California To Blame?
President Donald Trump just revoked California's permission to enforce its nation-leading clean-car rules — and Mary Nichols understands why. 'No one likes being regulated,' she told me ahead of Thursday's Oval Office signing ceremony. Nichols knows that better than almost anyone. As head of California's Air Resources Board for 17 years, she brought the world's biggest automakers to heel using the state's unique authority to go further than the federal government in setting vehicle emissions standards. It's those same automakers who lobbied Trump to 'rescue the U.S. auto industry from destruction by terminating California's electric vehicle mandate once and for all,' as Trump put it Thursday. It didn't have to get to this point. California officials had been in talks with automakers prior to the November election about how to keep them on board, but the state overplayed its hand, Nichols said. 'Many people were acting on the assumption that it was going to be the Democrats continuing in power,' she said. 'So the state felt like they had all the cards in their hand, and then after the election, it was pretty hard to reset the conversation.' To hear Nichols tell it, California may have gone too far this time in nudging the industry to ever-higher sales of zero-emission vehicles. The rules would have required automakers to hit increasing percentages — 35 percent by model year 2026 and 68 percent by model year 2030 — before reaching 100 percent of new-car sales in 2035. Maybe that would have worked if it were just about California. But a dozen other states are signed on to California's targets, and they have been slower and less generous with incentives and EV charging infrastructure. Where California has more than a quarter of its new car sales coming from EVs, New Jersey is at 15 percent, and New York is under 12 percent, according to the industry's latest figures. 'They were definitely having issues with the California program because they didn't think they could meet the sales numbers in the mandate, especially [Gov. Gavin] Newsom's target of nothing but ZEVs with a deadline attached to it,' Nichols said. 'That was scary, and even the interim targets were going to be hard to meet.' The pendulum has swung against California before: The George W. Bush administration was the first to attempt to deny California's permission from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to require automakers to sell increasing percentages of zero-emission vehicles, and Trump went further in his first term by attempting to revoke the state's already-issued authority. But Republicans had never resorted to doing it through Congress, via an untested maneuver that congressional watchdogs have warned is likely illegal but that still drew 35 Democratic votes in the House and one in the Senate (Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), in the tradition of Detroit's John Dingell). It's a far cry from the bipartisan consensus that reigned when President Richard Nixon famously signed the Clean Air Act, which set federal air pollution levels for the first time but gave California permission to continue going further, owing to its decade-plus of vehicle emissions rules aimed at the smoggy Los Angeles basin. The automakers have been steadily lobbying against the rules since then, with a brief ceasefire from 2009-16, when ten automakers and the United Auto Workers signed a nonaggression pact in President Barack Obama's Rose Garden with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the EPA. That it happened at the same time that the federal government was taking an equity stake in General Motors was no coincidence, said Nichols, who helped broker the pact. 'They saved them from bankruptcy,' she said. California has less recourse this time around. Where Newsom signed deals in 2019 with Ford, Volkswagen, Honda, BMW and Volvo to abide by the state's rules even in the event of federal cancellation, he now only has Stellantis, which signed a separate agreement last year that goes through model year 2030. And several of the state's allies are peeling off. California had 12 other states signed on to follow its lead as of last year, but it now has 10, after Republican-led Virginia dropped out and Vermont delayed enforcement by 19 months. And Democrats are getting cold feet, too: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed an executive order in April delaying enforcement, and Democratic lawmakers in New York introduced a bill this year to delay their participation by two years. (California and the other 10 states immediately sued Thursday to preserve the emissions standards.) 'If it was only California, I think [automakers] wouldn't have been as eager to jump in on the federal level and work with the Republicans, but it's the fact it's the other states that had the California standards that were killing them, especially New York,' Nichols said. That echoes the automakers' argument. 'The problem really isn't California,' John Bozzella, CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, said in a statement after the Senate's vote last month to overturn the rules. 'It's the 11 states that adopted California's rules without the same level of readiness for EV sales requirements of this magnitude.'
Associated Press
21-02-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
California's controversial new fuel rules rejected by state legal office
In a surprising twist, California's controversial new fuel standard — a key part of its effort to replace fossil fuels — has been rejected by the state agency that reviews the legality of state regulations. The fuel standard enacted by the Air Resources Board last year was the subject of a rancorous debate, largely because it will potentially increase the price of gasoline and diesel fuels by an unknown amount. The rules were rejected by the state Office of Administrative Law, a state agency whose mandate is to ensure 'regulations are clear, necessary, legally valid, and available to the public.' The law office informed the air board that the rule does not conform with a provision in state code that requires 'clarity' in rulemaking 'so that the meaning of regulations will be easily understood by those persons directly affected by them.' The air board said it would review the order and then resubmit the rules, which would be required within 120 days. Any substantial changes, however, would require a delay, including a public comment period. The low carbon fuels program, which offers financial incentives to companies to produce cleaner transportation fuels, aims to help transition the state away from fossil fuels that contribute to smog and other air pollution and greenhouse gases that warm the planet. The program, which has existed since 2011, is a $2-billion credit trading system that requires fuels sold in California to become progressively cleaner, while giving companies financial incentives to produce less-polluting fuels, such as biofuels made from soybeans or cow manure. In an initial assessment released in 2023, the air board projected that the new rules could potentially raise the price of diesel by 59 cents per gallon and gasoline by 47 cents. But air board officials later disavowed that estimate, saying that the analysis 'should not be misconstrued as a prediction of the future credit price nor as a direct impact on prices at the pump. ' A report by the University of Pennsylvania's Kleinman Center for Energy Policy predicted that the fuel standard changes could increase the cost of gas by 85 cents a gallon through 2030. Republican legislators, who protested the rule and introduced a bill to repeal it, applauded the law office's decision to reject them. 'Families in this state are already grappling with soaring living costs, and a gas price hike of 65 cents or more will only deepen their financial strain,' Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, a Republican from Redlands, said in a statement. 'It's deeply frustrating that the governor's administration ignored calls for reconsideration from the start.' Supporters say the new rules are necessary to keep California on track for its ambitious climate goals, including net-zero emissions by 2045. But critics have warned that the new standards could push gas prices even higher in a state where drivers already pay some of the highest fuel costs in the nation. ___
