Colorado Adopts California Clean Car Standards in Defiance of Trump Admin

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Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper announced Tuesday that his state would join 13 states and the District of Columbia in adopting Californiaโ€™s clean car emissionsย standards.

โ€œColorado has a choice,โ€ Gov. Hickenlooper said in a statement. โ€œThis executive order calls for the state to adopt air quality standards that will protect our quality of life in Colorado. Low emissions vehicles are increasingly popular with consumers and are better for our air. Every move we make to safeguard our environment is a move in the right direction.โ€

Under the Clean Air Act, states have the right to adopt Californiaโ€™s emissions standards for motorย vehicles.

Currently, Californiaโ€™s standards for greenhouse gas emissions are harmonized with national standards, under โ€œThe National Programโ€ that was negotiated by the Obama administration, automakers, and the state of California back inย 2011.

However, the Trump administration is threatening to roll back the national standards, freezing limits on greenhouse gas emissions at model year 2022 levels for cars sold inย 2022-2025.

Californiaโ€™s state air regulators have said that they have no intention of weakening their state standards, even if the federal government goes forward with its plan to abandon the harmonizedย plan.

โ€œCalifornia will not weaken its nationally accepted clean car standards, and automakers will continue to meet those higher standards, bringing better gas mileage and less pollution for everyone,โ€ Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, wrote in a statement emailed to reporters when Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that his agency would revisit the Obama-eraย rules.

States’ Right to Regulate Auto Emissions Through California’sย Waiver

States have the right, under Section 177 of the Clean Air Act, to adopt Californiaโ€™s standards. Even before Coloradoโ€™s announcement, the thirteen states and District of Columbia that have signed onto Californiaโ€™s standards represent a full one-third of the American autoย market.

However, Californiaโ€™s right to set these standards depends on a waiver, mandated by the Clean Air Act, to be granted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) if the state has โ€œcompelling and extraordinary circumstances.โ€ California successfully argued for such circumstances a decade ago, and the Obama EPA approved theย waiver.

In the history of the Clean Air Act, such a waiver has never beenย revoked.

A number of conservative groups, many with ties to the petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers and other oil interests, have been lobbying Pruitt and the EPA to try to strip Californiaโ€™s right to self-regulate. And a leaked plan from the EPA signaled the agencyโ€™s intention to try to revoke theย waiver.

Despite his oft-repeated support of โ€œcooperative federalism,โ€ Pruitt has argued that โ€œCalifornia is not the arbiterโ€ of emissions standards for theย country.

Air regulators and attorneys general in California and other of the so-called โ€œ177 statesโ€ have countered that the Clean Air Act is unambiguous in granting Golden State authorities the right to set standards for the state โ€” not the nation โ€” and in granting other states the right to choose between Californiaโ€™s or nationalย standards.

Whether Pruitt will be around to make the call on the waiver is uncertain. The administrator’s mounting scandals have become so toxic that even the prominent trade magazine Automotive News has recently called for Pruitt’s ousting:

Political views aside, a serious industry deserves a serious regulator, a public servant of proven integrity who lives by at least a baseline standard ofย propriety.

Scott Pruitt is none of those things. He may be a handy political ally, but his conduct in office at the EPA, marked by an unending string of tawdry scandals, is anathema to everything the auto industry would expect of its ownย employees.

He should resign before he embarrasses the auto industry, and the nation,ย further.

Auto Alliance Attacksย Colorado

Now that Colorado has exercised its right as a state to adopt Californiaโ€™s air quality standards for vehicles, it is being attacked by the same car companies who are simultaneously lobbying for one nationalย standard.

โ€œColorado’s governor today signed an Executive Order committing the state to adopting California’s low emission vehicle standard. This could impose many burdens on the state’s drivers & taxpayers,โ€ the Auto Alliance tweeted on Tuesday.

Along with Colorado’s Chamber of Commerce, the Auto Alliance also launched a website, TheColoradoWay.org, that features a number of claims about how California’s standards would hurt Colorado’s economy and reduce consumerย choice.

This is despite the fact that California’s standards are currently harmonized with the national program, and Colorado’s order doesn’t include any mandates for sales of any particular class ofย vehicle.

The Auto Alliance, through this website, also claims paradoxically that stronger fuel efficiency standards would cause gas prices to go up inย Colorado.

According to a recent analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientistsย (USC), however, the economic impacts of the current fuel economy and emissions standards are overwhelmingly positive. The standards that Gov. Hickenlooper hopes to maintain with this executive order have saved Coloradans $550 million to date, and are projected to save another $2,700 per household through 2030, according to the USCย analysis.

Main image: Colorado 1966 – Truck Credit: Jerry โ€œWoody,โ€ย CC BYSAย 2.0

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Ben Jervey is a Senior Fellow for DeSmog and directs the KochvsClean.com project. He is a freelance writer, editor, and researcher, specializing in climate change and energy systems and policy. Ben is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Vermont Law School. He was the original Environment Editor for GOOD Magazine, and wrote a longstanding weekly column titled โ€œThe New Ideal: Building the clean energy economy of the 21st Century and avoiding the worst fates of climate change.โ€ He has also contributed regularly to National Geographic News, Grist, and OnEarth Magazine. He has published three booksโ€”on eco-friendly living in New York City, an Energy 101 primer, and, most recently, โ€œThe Electric Battery: Charging Forward to a Low Carbon Future.โ€ He graduated with a BA in Environmental Studies from Middlebury College, and earned a Masterโ€™s in Energy Regulation and Law at Vermont Law School. A bicycle enthusiast, Ben has ridden across the United States and through much ofย Europe.

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