EPA

The White House’s proposed EPA budget cuts nearly all of the Agency’s funding for vehicle emissions testing, as reported by Reuters.  The proposed cuts to the EPA’s budget would remove 99 percent of the agency’s $48 million in funding for vehicle testing, expecting automakers to pay increased fees to make up the difference.  But according to Margo Oge, former head of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, the proposed budget would require “pretty much shutting down the testing lab.”

We have a recent example of why this is a very bad idea.  In 2015, it was discovered that Volkswagen had been cheating on emissions tests in the US and Europe for years, installing cheat devices on their diesel cars to emit up to 40 times the allowable amount of some toxic pollutants. The scandal came to be known as “Dieselgate,” and a recent MIT study found that VW’s emissions cheating would likely result in 1,200 premature deaths in Europe alone.  This deceit was uncovered by a small lab in West Virginia and the data was turned over to the EPA and CARB for enforcement. Fiat Chrysler and Mitsubishi have also been implicated in similar emissions cheating schemes, and Daimler is currently under scrutiny.

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Just a few days ago we reported on the significant economic benefits the world will gain from the completion of the Paris Climate Agreement.  The Agreement, decided upon in 2015 and gradually signed and put into effect over the course of the last year, is a really big deal.  It could have been better, with more firm goals and specific milestones, but it’s a first in that it has been signed by 192 countries representing 99.21% of global CO2 emissions, pledging to keep global warming “well below 2ºC.”  The signatories to the Agreement include, most importantly, the world’s three largest emitters: the US, China, and India.

But yesterday on “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos, EPA-chief-and-oil-industry-talking-point-spouting-robot Scott Pruitt claimed that the Paris Agreement is a “bad deal” and that “China and India, the largest producers of [carbon dioxide] internationally, got away scot-free.”

The problem with that last statement is that, like much of what Pruitt says, it is demonstrably false.  And the person whose job it is to administer and implement these agreements ought to know it.

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The California Air Resources Board (CARB) voted unanimously to continue implementing higher emissions standards in their meeting on Friday.  This sets California’s clean-air agency up for a fight against the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which recently signaled that they aren’t too interested in doing their job of actually protecting the environment.

The emissions rules require automakers to average 54.5mpg (by the less stringent CAFE standard) over all new vehicles by 2025.

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Today, Scott Pruitt, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency appointed by President Donald Trump, penned a new opinion piece published in USA Today. In the piece, he seemed more worried about making sure U.S. automakers don’t have to invest $200 billion in electric vehicles and more efficient cars than the impact on the environment.
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As expected for the past few weeks and after months of lobbying from automakers since Donald Trump was elected, the EPA has confirmed that they will review the fuel consumption rules and decide on whether or not to modify them by April 1, 2018.

Trump made the announcement with new EPA Chief Scott Pruitt and a handful of automotive executives, like GM CEO Mary Barra and Ford CEO Mark Fields, who have both being calling for the EPA to walk back to strict rules.
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Back in 2012, the Obama administration came to an agreement with US-based automakers to accelerate the industry’s transition to more efficient propulsion systems. They agreed that each automaker should reach a fleet average of 54 mpg by 2025. That would mean for them to produce more efficient gas-powered cars and electric vehicles in order to compensate for their trucks and SUVs.

The EPA reviewed the standard in January before Donald Trump took over and decided to maintain it. But as we recently reported, the automakers have since asked Trump to roll back the requirements and now they are reportedly about to get their way.
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Automakers have officially submitted a letter asking the new head of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt, to abdicate his responsibility for protecting the environment by loosening the fuel efficiency standards they agreed upon with the Obama administration in 2011.  Pruitt, who calls himself a “leading advocate against the EPA” and has spent much of his life fighting against the agency, has received over $270,000 in lifetime campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry.  Incidentally, Pruitt also denies that burning oil and gas causes global warming.  Surely there’s no connection between that opinion and the campaign contributions he’s received.

The automakers claim that the 54.5mpg CAFE standard would be too costly to implement by 2025, and that consumer demand isn’t there for more efficient vehicles, even as EV sales continue to experience massive growth.
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Last month, we reported on the EPA filing its midterm review of the fuel consumption standard early (before Trump takes over) in order to put in place a fleet requirement of 54.5 mpg by 2025, which would force automakers to add more electric vehicles to their fleet in order to compensate for their more gas-guzzling vehicles, like SUVs and pickup trucks.

Despite lobbying from virtually all automakers (except for Tesla), the agency went ahead with making the rule official last week and it could result in a significant acceleration of the rate of investments in EVs from current automakers.
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today issued a notice of violation to Fiat Chrysler (FCA) over alleged violations of the Clean Air Act for installing and failing to disclose engine management software that changed the emission results of their vehicles – just like several other automakers over the past year.

While those ‘DieselGate’ scandals are disappointing for the light they shine on what is an unscrupulous corporate culture of cheating, they also clearly show that the best way to reduce emissions from vehicles is electric propulsion and not increasingly more deceivingly efficient diesel engines.
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Through their lobbying efforts since Donald Trump’s election and the EPA’s move to rush its new fuel consumption rules, automakers are sending a clear message that they don’t want to mass produce electric vehicles – at least not on the timeline suggested by the agency.

As we reported earlier this week, the EPA filed its midterm review of the fuel consumption standard early (before Trump takes over) in order to put in place a fleet requirement of 54.5 mpg by 2025, which would force automakers to add more electric vehicles to their fleet in order to compensate for their more gas-guzzling vehicles, like SUVs and pickup trucks.

Now several automaker lobbying groups representing nearly all major automakers (except Tesla Motors and a few French automakers) are now lobbying for the agency to delay finalizing the new rule until Trump takes over and replaces the head of the EPA.
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Donald Trump is currently considering several candidates with close ties to the fossil fuel industry for the role of US Secretary of Energy. While that’s far from being progressive since renewables are widely considered to be the future of energy, it makes some sense from a conservative point of view since fossil fuels are currently the main source of energy in the US.

It is a whole lot more difficult to justify the nomination of someone with close ties the fossil fuel industry to the head of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Yet in an obvious ‘fox guarding the henhouse’ metaphor, that’s exactly what Donald Trump did yesterday. Several news outlets are reporting that Trump finally chose Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the agency. 
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Update: Elon Musk said in a tweet today that the American Enterprise Institute meeting was not secretive and that he was not there to talk about Trump.

The AEI meeting wasn't secret and I was only there for a few hours to talk about Mars and sustainable energy. Nothing to do with Trump.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 9, 2016

According to a report from the Huffington Post, Elon Musk was among a handful of tech CEOs and Republican establishment members who recently met at the American Enterprise Institute’s World Forum to discuss how to best stop Donald Trump.

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Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and 38 company and environmental group leaders signed a letter proposing that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) lets VW off the hook in California for having cheated on reporting emissions in its diesel cars and in return, VW would be forced to significantly invest in electric vehicles or other zero-emission vehicles manufacturing in the state.

According to German newspaper Welt am Sonntag (via Reuters), the EPA, potentially inspired by the proposal, asked Volkswagen to manufacture electric vehicles at its Tennessee plant as part of the current negotiation over the fix of the more than 500,000 diesel vehicles in violation of pollution limits in the US.
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