NHTSA Says Federal Fuel Economy Rules Jeopardized by Bid to Void GHG Ruling
By John O'Dell February 25, 2010Move Also Would Reignite Controversial Plan by Major States to Set Own CO2 Standards
An effort by Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski to overturn the EPA's ruling that greenhouse gases endanger public health could disrupt plans to set a national standard for automotive greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy, according to the Department of Transportation.
In a letter sent Friday to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chief counsel for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration - NHTSA - said that if the EPA were stripped of authority to regulate greenhouse gases the result would cripple NHTSA's efforts to implement a national fuel economy standard.
NHTSA is the Transportation Department unit charged with drafting fuel economy rules - which are inextricably tied to greenhouse gas regulation because consumption of gasoline, diesel and other carbon-based fuels in cars and trucks is a major contributor to atmospheric carbon dioxide and other gases that can trap heat in the atmosphere.
Furthermore, NHTSA counsel O. Kevin Vincent wrote, approval of Murkowski's resolution, which was cosponsored by 35 Republicans and three Democrats, would throw open the specter of individual states imposing their own greenhouse gas standards -a nightmare scenario for federal regulators and for the auto industry.
President Obama last year brokered a deal in which California and a dozen states that use its tougher-than-federal emissions standards agreed to halt their own GHG regulation efforts if the federal government implemented a single national standard.
If the EPA can't regulate greenhouse gas emissions nationally, then California and the other sates "could move forward to enforce standards "that are inconsistent with the Federal standards, thus creating confusion, encouraging renewed litigation, and driving up the cost of compliance to automobile manufacturers and consumers alike," Vincent wrote.
Murkowski tried last year to bloc the EPA's so-called endangerment finding as well.
Her present resolution, if approved (unlikely as it requires 51 Senate votes and would face almost certain veto by Obama), wouldn't keep NHTSA from moving ahead on national fuel economy standards that would take effect in 2012.
Congress last year told NHTSA and the EPA to work together and set the April 1 deadline for them to finalize a rule that would require the national new-vehicle fuel economy average to rise to 35.5 miles per gallon between 2012 and 2016. The joint rule would also impose the first-ever greenhouse gas standard on the nation's cars and trucks.
But if the EPA were to be blocked from regulating greenhouse gases, NHTSA would have to move ahead alone and would not have "sufficient time to decouple its rulemaking from the joint rulemaking effort in time to meet the April 1 deadline," Vincent wrote in the letter to Feinstein..
Carol Browner, Obama's energy and climate adviser, said earlier this week that passage of Murkowski's resolution would mean "there is no car rule, because what sits underneath that comprehensive car rule is that [greenhouse gas] endangerment finding."
For her part, Murkowski sysd blocking the EPA's endangerment ruling wold have no real impact of the fuel economy rules.
Browner's statement may be appropriate from the administrator's perspective," said told the subscription-only Greenwire news service, "but it's not the only way we can implement these CAFE standards."
All she'd have to do would be figure out how to make an already insanely partisan and nonfunctional Congress agree all over again on the need to require automakers to increase fuel economy at a substantial clip.
And while she was doing that, California and a dozen other major states tired of federal inactivity would say "heck with it" and institute their own GHG controls, reigniting that conflagration.
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
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