Auto Mileage and Carbon Emissions Agreement: Harbinger of Good Things to Come?
This week, President Obama announced a plan to increase national automobile emissions and mileage standards for cars and trucks in the United States starting in 2012. If it survives a public review process, this agreement will create a single new national standard for the US car and light truck fleets that is almost 40 percent cleaner and more fuel-efficient by 2016 than it is today -- an average 35.5 miles per gallon (as reported in the NY Times).
The announcement resonates loudly in national climate change policy, because it marks the first federal regulatory standard for carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. It will also mean federal regulation of a sector (transportation) which accounts for a third of the nation’s carbon emissions.
The announcement also resonates in the energy community, since President Obama predicted that as result of the agreement, demand for oil would fall by 1.8 billion barrels over the lifetime of the vehicles sold over the next five years.
It is also significant in the broader national quest for overall air quality improvements because per-mile-traveled particulate, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxide emissions will drop as well.
For automakers, the agreement is also a much-needed win. They need no longer fear multiple standards across the states of the nation. The autos will obtain long sought-after certainty over the regulatory future of their businesses.
Dave McCurdy, head of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said:
What's significant about the announcement is it launches a new beginning, an era of cooperation. The President has succeeded in bringing three regulatory bodies, 15 states, a dozen automakers and many environmental groups to the table. We're all agreeing to work together on a National Program.
Some may see the agreement as a long-overdue revival of regulatory negotiation, a means of reaching agreement that last saw effective use in the 1980s. But the times, they are a-changing, and others see an entire new consensus-based approach to reaching accords on important issues of public policy. The President and the key participants managed to bring together and obtain the “yesses” of a remarkable group of historic adversaries, including those who were locked in litigation that for the most part now will be dismissed if the agreement holds.
One wonders if President Obama sensed this opportunity from his administration’s earliest days. One of the EPA’s first public actions was to announce a review California’s request for a Clean Air Act waiver to allow it to pursue stricter limits on tailpipe emissions. In his remarks, Obama suggested that it was the prospect of complying with and enforcing of a patchwork of state and federal regulations that ultimately brought the parties to the table.
Another fact that amazes me: they reached this deal without a word leaking to the press.
Finally, keep in mind that even if the agreement holds in the concept stage, the fine print is yet to come. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation will have to propose rules to implement the agreement, and anyone will be able to comment then. Will the consensus survive that process? In one notorious “reg neg” of the early 90s, corn ethanol interests first agreed on rules for implementing the renewable fuels standard of the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act. Later, they reneged and the rulemaking turned much more difficult and contentious.
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