The effects of President Barack Obama’s executive order made one week ago, which instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider California’s rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, are still being felt throughout the automotive industry.
Under current laws, automakers are required to bring their fleets to an average of 35mpg by 2020 – but California’s regulations could bring this target forward with a new 40mpg benchmark set for 2020.
Now, the non-profit Aspen Institute has stated that is has convened with representatives from General Motors, Ford, the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Natural Resources Defence Council, Honda and Toyota to explore ways to achieve the national and state goals for both the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and improvements in fuel economy.
According to a report in the New York Times, a meeting will be held this week in Los Angeles with the mid-level auto executives as well as state regulators and environmental leaders in an effort to achieve a compromise.
Car manufacturers are expected to argue that the objectives outlined by the Bush regime in 2007 are sufficiently stringent. According to Charles Territo, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, applying the California standards across the country would actually “produce lower fleet-wide fuel efficiency standards than the federal standards proposed under the Energy Independence and Security Act”.
A comparison study conducted by the California Air Resources Board in February last year showed that California rules would produce a fleet fuel efficiency average of 31.3mpg in many states – while federal guidelines would produce an average of 31.8mpg.
However, these numbers do not win any favour with John DeCicco, a senior analyst at the Environmental Defence Fund. He said that the California standards are “far more effective in reducing emissions” and that its rules would provide “superior greenhouse gas benefits”.
Though the debate is likely to continue one thing is for certain – the need to produce fuel efficiency improvements quickly is finally being taken seriously by the Detroit carmakers.
