California Argues for Waiver to Adopt More Stringent Vehicle Emissions Standards Under the Clean Air Act
By Michael Akman, michael.akman at gmail.com

On 22 May 2007, California went before a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency panel to argue for a waiver to the federal Clean Air Act that would allow the state to impose more stringent regulations on vehicle tailpipe emissions and would reduce emissions by 30% by 2016.

California is permitted under the Clean Air Act to set its own, more stringent, air pollution standards, but the state must be granted a waiver by the EPA for those regulations to take effect. California has requested waivers more than 40 times over the last 30 years and has been granted full or partial approval for most of them, yet EPA has delayed action on this request, for which California first applied in December 2005.

Eleven other states have adopted the California standards and six others are expected to adopt them shortly. Together those states will encompass approximately 45% of the United States’ population and approximately 40% of the nation’s automobile market. The regulation would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 536 million metric tons by 2020, and would reduce gasoline consumption by as much as 11.2 billion gallons per year in 2020. The regulation cannot go forward without the EPA waiver.

The new regulation is opposed by automobile manufacturers, who argue that California has not proved that reducing vehicle emissions in the state would slow global warming, and that the regulation would be counterproductive by making cars more expensive, reducing the types and sizes of vehicles available to consumers, costing jobs, and resulting in many different standards throughout the country. Instead, the industry is arguing for a one nation-wide standard, and has sued in three states to prevent the regulation from going forward.

The Clean Air Act requires that California’s new standard be intended to meet “compelling and extraordinary conditions.” Previous waivers were granted to deal with soot and smog, which were particular problems for southern California, but opponents of the new regulation argue that climate change is a global problem, not one that is “compelling and extraordinary” to California.

EPA has held two public meetings on the waiver request and has opened it for public comment, but has not committed to any timetable to resolve the issue. In an April 25 letter, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger informed EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson that California will file a lawsuit against the agency if it does not grant the waiver by October.