The Trump administration branded some of California’s recent regulation changes as the states’ “latest feeble attempt to revive its electric vehicle mandates” on Tuesday.
California was set to impose a national de facto electric vehicle (EV) mandate due to a Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) waiver until President Donald Trump signed congressional resolutions in June that overturned the waivers and blocked similar future rules. The EPA was “deeply troubled” over the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) recent regulatory moves, writing to the state agency on Sunday that the EPA has “exclusive authority” to issue emission standards for new vehicles and engines.
“CARB’s proposal appears to be nothing more than scare tactics to coerce car companies into limiting consumer choice and selling unaffordable and impractical electric vehicles that Americans do not want to buy,” said Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation Aaron Szabo Tuesday. “California appears dead set on wasting hard-earned taxpayer dollars and forcing their rejected standards on the rest of the country.”
USEPA Comment on CARB Emergency Amendment and Adoption of Vehicle Emissions Regulation by audreystreb
Just before the Trump administration took office, the Biden EPA approved CARB’s “Advanced Clean Cars II” plan, which aimed to ban the sale of new gas-powered vehicles in California and any other states that opted in by 2035. After Republicans in Congress passed resolutions repealing California’s authorization to set the severe standard, Trump ended Democrats’ de facto national mandate in June.
These “three pieces of legislation … will kill the California mandates forever,” Trump said on June 12. “They’re never coming back.”
California and ten other Democrat-led states almost immediately sued the administration for repealing the state’s authority to effectively impose the mandate.
In the letter, the EPA raises concerns over CARB’s proposed “emergency amendment and adoption of vehicle emissions regulations,” reminding the agency that under the Clean Air Act (CAA), California must obtain an EPA waiver before adopting or amending new emissions rules.
The proposed regulation amendments “would confirm that, until a court resolves the uncertainty created by the federal government’s actions, certain antecedent regulations (displaced by Advanced Clean Cars II and Omnibus) remain operative (as previously adopted) with the caveat that CARB may enforce Advanced Clean Cars II and Omnibus, to the extent permitted by law, in the event a court of law holds invalid the resolution purporting to disapprove those waivers,” according to CARB.
“If CARB wishes to adopt new or amended standards in this rulemaking that differ in any way from provisions already subject to an extant preemption waiver, CARB must submit a new waiver request and receive a waiver from EPA under [the] CAA,” Szabo wrote in the letter. “This includes adding standards in any new sections of the California Code of Regulations, or combining standards in regulations that were previously separate, or applying standards to different model years. Any such regulation cannot be finalized or enforced, including by requiring certification, until after submission to and review by EPA.”
Szabo adds that for the agency to issue a waiver, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin would need to deem that California’s standards were not “arbitrary and capricious.”
“Consistent with the express requirements of CAA section 209, EPA expects that CARB will submit any presumptively final regulation resulting from this emergency rulemaking to the Agency before adopting or attempting to enforce any new or amended standard applicable to new motor vehicles or engines. Until and unless EPA waives preemption for any such new or amended standard under CAA section 209(b), no such standard may have legal force or effect,” the letter states.
CARB did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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