Sacramento--The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has issued a technical study demonstrating that California's clean-cars law (the Pavley regulations) achieves 41 percent greater total reductions of greenhouse gases nationwide compared to the recently proposed federal fuel economy standards by 2020.
In 2020, California's clean-car law will result in the equivalent of removing an additional 14 million cars compared to the federal standards, the study said.
"We applaud the federal fuel economy standards," said ARB Chair Mary Nichols. "They will help reduce our use of fossil fuels. But they simply do not provide us with adequate protection against climate change.
"The California regulation is the only one that deals directly with greenhouse gases, and it stands head and shoulders above the federal standards," Nichols said. "It will ensure that auto manufacturers provide consumers with cleaner cars using readily available technology to reduce pollution and fight global warming."
The new CARB study is based on a comparison of greenhouse gas reductions from cars and trucks under the California standards and under the fuel economy standards proposed for 2011 through 2015 by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration.
The CARB study also shows that:
• By 2016, California regulations will have prevented a total of 55 million metric tons (MMT) of CO2 from being emitted into the air in California as compared to 36 MMT under the proposed federal fuel economy standards--50 percent more and a difference of 20 MMT.
• By 2020, California's rules will have prevented a total of
158 MMT of CO2 from being emitted in California as compared to 106 MMT of CO2 under federal regulations--almost 50 percent more.
• If the Pavley rules are implemented in all 50 states, by 2020 a cumulative total of 1,283 MMT of CO2 will have been prevented from being emitted into the air compared to 912 MMT if only the proposed federal fuel economy standards were implemented--a difference of 41 percent.
Twenty other states with almost half of all the registered vehicles in the nation have either formally adopted the California regulations or are in the process of doing so.
Despite the clear benefits of the California standards, but those states are prevented from enforcing them because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has refused to grant a waiver that allows the more stringent tailpipe emissions standards to take effect.
California and other leadership states have taken the federal government to court to overturn the denial of that waiver.
The proposed fuel economy standards issued by the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration on April 22 also included language that attempts to rewrite existing law and prevent California (and all states that wished to follow
California) from ever enforcing standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars. That prompted a letter from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the governors of 11 other states to the U.S. secretary of transportation expressing their outrage and opposition.
"NHTSA has no authority to pre-empt states from regulating greenhouse gases. Congress and two federal district courts have rejected NHTSA's claim to such authority," the letter said. "Furthermore, this attack completely undermines the cooperative federalism principles embodied in the Clean Air Act, and is an end run around 40 years of precedent under that law."
The report can be found at http://www.arb.ca.gov.