This week, the Trump administration announced a revised rule that weakens fuel efficiency standards for new cars and light trucks. The rule scaled back the Biden-era requirement of an annual 2% increase in fuel efficiency to 1%, aiming for an average of 34.9 miles to the gallon in model year 2031 as opposed to 50 miles to the gallon. The Allegheny Friends Julie Grant spoke with Flora Cardoni, Deputy Director at PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center, about what this could mean for Pennsylvanians.
LISTEN to the interview
Julie Grant: In terms of the auto emission standards and the Trump administration, what’s happened?
Flora Cardoni: The Trump administration announced on Monday that it is moving to loosen minimum fuel efficiency standards for American cars. This is really unfortunate because these standards have saved Pennsylvanians and Americans energy, money and lives by lowering air and climate pollution and protecting our health. This rollback certainly means that that progress is at risk.
Julie Grant: Do we know why they are doing this now?
Flora Cardoni: [There are] a lot of reasons this could be happening now. There’s certainly a legacy of rollbacks currently at the EPA of things that were put in place or strengthened under the Biden administration. But in fact, fuel economy standards or fuel efficiency standards of some kind or shape have been implemented since 1975 when Congress first put them in place. Since then, fuel efficiency standards have helped reduce America’s vehicle related carbon emissions or planet warming emissions by about 14 billion metric tons. The standards have really helped clean up our air and protect our health and climate.
I’m coming at this from an environmental perspective, so I will just say, even if fuel efficiency standards didn’t save people money, I would think they would still be worth it to protect our health and planet. But it is true that really past clean car policies have saved consumers billions of dollars because you’re spending less when you go to the pump for gas. Opponents of these critical clean air protections say that these standards cost consumers money because cleaner cars sometimes cost more up front, but because of the lowered costs at the pump, ultimately, they end up saving people money.
Julie Grant: How do you see the decision by the Trump administration to roll back these standards, how is this significant for air pollution, for climate change?
Flora Cardoni: That’s a great question. I think what’s striking about it is that it’s the 21st century, and we know how to reduce air pollution from cars by improving vehicle efficiency or switching to electric vehicles with no tailpipe pollution. We know that we can make it easier for people to bike and walk and use transit and in recent years a lot of policies have been put in place to help us reduce this pollution that are now being rolled back, and there’s a few ways this rollback will impact us here.
One, we will pay with our health. A couple hundred thousand American lives are cut short each year by air pollution – the same type of air pollution that fuel efficiency standards can help reduce. Cars and trucks contribute a lot to air pollution by emitting particulate matter that enters our lungs and causes diseases, toxic substances like benzene that are linked to cancer. When we’re talking about air pollution, parts of Pennsylvania have extremely polluted air, including obviously in Allegheny County. There’s a long legacy of air pollution in the Pittsburgh region and throughout Allegheny County, as well as in other parts of the state, because of industrial pollution, because of geography, because of climate change, hotter temperatures, trapping smog, making our air worse. Given the air pollution we already deal with that’s making us sick, it is even more important here that we’re doing everything that we can to reduce air pollution and fuel efficiency, that we are polluting less from our cars, is one simple way that we could do that to protect Pittsburgh’s health and our kids’ health.
Air pollution is particularly harmful to kids because their lungs are still developing, and certainly here in Pennsylvania, we have a lot of asthma hotspots. Kids are already suffering from this air pollution. We should be doing whatever we can to make sure current and future generations enjoy clean air instead of going in reverse and polluting our air even more.
Then in terms of climate pollution too, although the exact numbers of what this rollback will mean, those numbers haven’t been crunched, but these clean car standards have reduced carbon pollution, as I said, by 14 billion metric tons. That’s basically the amount of pollution that’s produced by 3,000, almost 3,700 coal plants in a year. So it’s quite a bit of pollution that instead of getting reduced is going to be warming our planet. That number, 14 billion, is how much has been saved over the lifetime of these standards. That’s not how much additional we’ll see with them getting rolled back, just to be clear.
Julie Grant: Pennsylvania, other states and the federal government, under the Biden administration, were all moving forward, building electric vehicle charging stations and other infrastructure. So what’s the status of that?
Flora Cardoni: I think there’s still opportunity. Pennsylvania did receive some money from the federal government to build out a network of electric vehicle chargers and PennDOT is still working to do that. There’s a round of funding actually open right now for a lot of the state, including Allegheny County, to install more electric vehicle chargers. There’s some state tax credits that exist if you buy an electric vehicle, But it’s true on the other hand that at the federal level we’ve been moving backwards, rolling back funding for chargers, rolling back electric vehicle tax credits and now rolling back these fuel efficiency standards. But it doesn’t need to be that way. These federal standards are really the floor. That’s important. We don’t want more pollution than we need. Being more efficient just makes sense. Why would we be wasting resources we don’t need to be using in the first place? The cleanest and cheapest energy is the energy we don’t use. And so, you know, getting more miles per gallon is only a win-win. But there are still a lot of things that we can be doing. Congress should be making it as easy as possible for people to use less gas by restoring those federal EV tax credits.
We, of course, could encourage Congress to direct the EPA to restore these clean car standards and to adequately fund public transit and bike lanes and sidewalks. Automakers should still offer smaller, more affordable, and efficient cars, like they used to, and embrace electric options. Part of the reason we’re not sure how much pollution will be generated is because automakers could do more than the standard says anyway. They could invest in more efficient vehicles. We definitely encourage automakers to offer smaller, more affordable, more efficient cars and all of us, all Americans, all Pennsylvanians, when weighing these things should also think about the fuel efficiency of the cars that you’re purchasing. Considering an electric vehicle to reduce those emissions means that you don’t have to pay for gas to the pump at all while protecting our health and planet at the same time. I just think we should remember that when we pay at the pump or the dealership, we should think about the cost of human health and the planet we depend on too when we’re making these choices.
Julie Grant: What do you think Pennsylvania and other states could do to mitigate the impacts of this decision on the federal level?
Flora Cardoni: Local officials should think about investing in electric fleets for their own government fleets. At the state level, I would certainly encourage there to be even more incentives for electric vehicles to make it easier for people to make that switch. Of course, everyone can make their voices heard to their elected officials at the state and federal level and make it clear that you care about the planet, you care about pollution, you care about preserving Pennsylvania for future generations.
Flora Cardoni is deputy director at Penn Environment Research and Policy Center.
