Clean Vehicles Update - Summer 2009
Contents:
Program Updates
Clean Energy
Clean Vehicles
Food and Agriculture
Global Warming
Nuclear Weapons and Global Security
Scientific Integrity
Summary
This summer, UCS and our supporters helped achieve two major victories in the effort to reduce global warming emissions from cars and trucks. First, the White House announced new, national clean car standards where all the key players—the auto industry, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Transportation, and state regulators—agreed to move forward with a single standard through 2016. The EPA then went even further and protected states’ rights by granting the state of California the waiver needed to develop and implement state-based global warming pollution standards for future vehicles. UCS activists have played a key role in making these historic victories possible. We also continue to push for a Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) that accounts for global warming pollution from the entire lifecycle of biofuels—from seed to tank. But opposition is pushing back hard, so we will need to continue pressuring the EPA to uphold the science behind global warming emissions from fuel production.
Fuel Economy, Global Warming Pollution and Automobiles
Years of dedicated, outspoken work from UCS and its activists and allies paid off with two game-changing announcements about global warming pollution and vehicles. On May 19, President Obama announced an agreement to move forward with a single national clean car standard. The new standard will bring the fleet average fuel economy to roughly 35 miles per gallon by 2016. This is sufficient to meet the state clean car standards called for in California and other states, and puts fuel economy requirements called for in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 four years ahead of schedule. The agreement also presumes an end to the bitter legal battles between states and automakers on the 2016 standards and preserves states’ authority to regulate global warming emissions from vehicles.
On June 30, the EPA affirmed this authority by granting California and other states the right to develop and implement global warming pollution standards for post-2016 vehicles. Since 2002, California and a growing list of states had been pushing for the right to regulate global warming emissions from cars and trucks sold in those states, but the EPA had denied their request. In early 2009, President Obama instructed the EPA to revisit this request, and this time, the decision landed in favor of the states, the environment, and our activists who want to drive cleaner cars.
Cool Fuels
More than 14,000 UCS activists have thus far weighed in on the side of science in the EPA’s proposed plan to implement the RFS, which includes the first national global warming pollution criteria for ethanol, biodiesel, and other renewable fuels. The EPA proposal does count all the direct and indirect global warming pollution associated with fuels, including growing, producing, distributing, and using the fuels. The most current peer-reviewed science on biofuels and land use clearly shows these emissions not only exist, but are substantial. In fact, the emissions from clearing a forest in order to grow biofuels can outweigh the emissions reductions from using biofuels over gasoline. The RFS public comment period ends on September 25th.
Unfortunately, the conventional biofuels industry is fighting to remove the accounting of indirect global warming emissions associated with converting forests to farmland. And their champions in Congress are intent on slowing or halting altogether the EPA’s scientific assessment as part of the RFS. UCS activists were loud and clear about the need to implement a plan based on the best available science that does not ignore this major source of global warming pollution. Through our Smart Bioenergy Initiative, UCS will continue to follow the process and will call on its activists when they are most needed. UCS is also mobilizing scientists and economists to rally behind this effort. Following on our successful effort to support a Low Carbon Fuel Standard in California, UCS has helped to create a National Scientists’ Statement on Biofuels and Land Use that has already been signed a group of more than 200 prominent scientists and economists from across the country. We will continue to mobilize both citizen and scientist effort to ensure that the future of biofuels is a plus for the planet.
