Stricter air rules touted

Delaware Online by Jason Dearen
View Original Article Here

California regulators have decided to take away choice in vehicles and drive up the price in California. Thanks to DNREC, now that we have to have the same cars as California, we'll get the same thing. Our state won't even get to vote on it. Welcome to the brave new world!



SAN FRANCISCO -- The head of California's air-quality board on Thursday called proposed rules that would require automakers to build less-polluting cars and trucks by 2025 a historic move for a cleaner environment.

California Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols said she hopes the rules to require that vehicles emit about 75 percent less smog-producing pollutants will "lead the nation and the world."
The new standards, which also include big cuts in greenhouse-gas pollutants, would begin with new cars sold in 2015, and get increasingly more stringent until 2025. The rules also mandate that one of every seven new cars sold in 2025 in the state be a zero-emission or plug-in hybrid vehicle.
"We can't afford to wait. We have to act on these issues now," she said at the panel's meeting.
The state's smog emissions standards are often more strict than federal ones.
Fourteen other states, including Washington, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts, have adopted California's current emissions goals, which is why the new regulations could have a wide-ranging effect. Of those states, 10 also adopted the zero-emission vehicle standards as well.
The regulations will continue the state's first-in-the-nation greenhouse-gas emissions standards for cars and trucks, which went into effect in 2009. This time, the greenhouse-gas reduction element was designed with federal regulators so that it will match national standards expected to be passed later this year.
In addition to new smog and greenhouse-gas emissions limits, the regulations being voted on also include a new zero-emissions vehicle mandate. The goal is to have 1.4 million zero-emission and plug-in hybrids on California roads by 2025. But the program also looks ahead to 2050, laying groundwork for a goal of having 87 percent of the state's fleet of new vehicles fueled by electricity, hydrogen fuel cells or other clean technologies.
"This regulation is planned over a 40-year horizon, and that is extremely unusual," said board spokesman David Clegern. "The individual companies can plan for changes and develop the technology, and over the long haul, it will shift us away from reliance on petroleum."
The board's meeting comes just three days after federal regulators met in San Francisco to hear public comment on the Obama administration's national fuel economy standards, the most far-reaching in history. If passed later this year, they would require the average passenger car to reach a 54.5-mph standard by 2025.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 13 automakers, the California Air Resources Board and others worked together so that when the federal government passes its greenhouse gas emissions limits later this year, they will match California's and create one national standard.
Some automakers said the market for clean car technology is already spurring the technology and innovation the regulations seek to influence.
"Yes, the cars will be lighter, compact, far more fuel efficient. That's what the mandate will be. It's not enforced by the government but really by the economics of the future," said Michael Dobrin, a spokesman for Toyota.
But Forrest McConnell, director of the National Automobile Dealers Association, testified during the federal hearing Tuesday that tightening fuel efficiency standards will result in unaffordable cars.
"We all want better fuel economy, but it is not free. By adding $3,200, if not more, to the average cost of a car, over 7 million Americans will be priced out of the market, fleet turnover will be reduced, and public policy benefits will be delayed," McConnell said.
The air board's research and environmental advocates dispute those cost increase estimates.