DETROIT (AP) — The US government’s most ambitious plan to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from passenger cars is facing skepticism about how realistic it is and whether it goes far enough.
In April, the Environmental Protection Agency announced strict new limits on emissions that the agency says are vital to curbing climate change suffered by people around the world. record temperatures, raging forest fires and intense storms.
The EPA says the industry could meet the limits if 67% of new vehicle sales are electric by 2032, a rate the auto industry considers unrealistic. However, the new rule would not require automakers boost electric vehicle sales directly. Instead, it sets emissions limits and allows automakers to choose how to meet them.
Even if the industry increases EV sales to the level the EPA recommends, any reduction in pollution could turn out to be more modest than the agency expects. The Associated Press has estimated that nearly 80% of the vehicles driven in the US, more than 200 million, will continue to run on gasoline or diesel.
ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS SAY IT’S NOT ENOUGH
aiming at rising temperatures and Canadian wildfire smoke that polluted the air in parts of the US this summer, Dan Becker, director of the climate-safe transportation campaign at the Center for Biological Diversity, said: “We need to do a lot more.”
He wants the EPA to further reduce emissions.
Carbon dioxide and methane levels in the atmosphere continue to rise. scientists say July will end up being the hottest month on record and probably the warmest human civilization I have ever seen. Earth is only a few tenths of a degree away from the goal set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.
Although a United Nations panel scientists said in March While there was still time to prevent the worst damage from climate change, scientists said the world would need to rapidly cut nearly two-thirds of carbon emissions by 2035. to avoid weather that is even more extreme.
Peter Slowik, a senior electric vehicle researcher at the nonprofit Council for Clean Transportation International, calculated that to reduce emissions enough to meet Paris Agreement targets, the share of new electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles sold it would have to reach 67% by 2030. The EPA has projected 60% by then.
“The EPA proposal is a great start to put us on a Paris-compatible path,” said Slowik, whose group provides research and analysis to environmental regulators. “But no, it’s not enough to comply with the Paris agreement.”
The council calculated that carbon dioxide pollution from passenger vehicles would have to be reduced to 57 grams per mile by 2030 to meet the Paris targets. EPA’s preferred regulation would reduce those emissions to 102 grams per mile by 2030 and to 82 by 2032.
In addition, Slowik warned, carbon emissions from new gasoline-powered vehicles would need to fall 3.5% each year between 2027 and 2032. The EPA’s preferred regulation does not provide reductions for gasoline-powered vehicles. But recently proposed fuel economy standards by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration could.
WHAT DOES THE EPA SAY?
The EPA maintains that its proposal will significantly reduce pollution. He estimates that carbon dioxide emissions from passenger vehicles would fall 47% by 2055, when the agency expects most gasoline-powered vehicles to disappear.
As the largest source of pollution in the United States, transportation generates about 29% of heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EPA. Passenger vehicles are by far the worst polluters in transportation, spewing out 58% of greenhouse gas pollution from that sector.
EPA is also proposing large reductions from other sources, including heavy trucks, electric power plants and the oil and gas industry.
Using EPA and industry analyst sales projections from 2022 through the 2032 model year, AP calculated that Americans will likely buy approximately 60 million electric vehicles. With 284 million passenger vehicles on US roads today, at that rate, only about 22% of them would be electric in nine years. Two million are already in use, and the vehicles now stay on the road for an average of 12.5 years.
Dave Cooke, a senior vehicle analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that even with slow vehicle turnover, studies show that the EPA proposal would be an important step toward a zero-carbon transportation system by 2050. Power plants that power electric vehicles, he noted, will be converted to renewable energy such as wind and solar.
“We know that electric vehicles provide a combined benefit as we dramatically reduce emissions from the (electric power) grid,” Cooke said.
His group is among those lobbying the EPA for stricter standards than those the agency is pursuing.
EPA will consider such comments before adopting a final regulation in March 2024.
THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY SAYS THE LIMITS CANNOT BE MET
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing companies like General Motors, Ford and Toyota that make the majority of new vehicles sold in the United States, argues that the EPA’s standards “are neither reasonable nor achievable in the covered time frame.
The alliance says the agency is underestimating the cost and difficulty of manufacturing electric vehicle batteries, including scarce supplies of critical minerals which are also used in laptops, cell phones and other items. Significant gaps in the charging network for long-distance travel and apartment dwellers represent another hurdle.
Although automakers continue to downsize engines and produce more efficient transmissions, the alliance says they need to use their limited resources more on producing electric vehicles than developing more fuel-efficient technology for gasoline engines.
ARE ELECTRIC VEHICLES REALLY CLEANER?
Studies by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology show that switching to electric vehicles results in a 30-50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to combustion vehicles, depending on how the electricity is obtained.
Jessika Trancik, a professor of power systems at MIT, said electric vehicles are cleaner over their lifetime, even after accounting for pollution from mining metals for batteries. the university has a website listing automobile emissions per vehicle.
Trancik believes that once EV sales accelerate, more people will want them, and the percentages could exceed the EPA’s predictions. Electric vehicle sales, he pointed out, are growing much faster in many other countries.
“You often see exponential growth,” he said.