Washington—Today, the American Trucking Associations submitted comments to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency panning California’s Advanced Clean Fleets Rule and urging EPA to deny the Golden State’s improper waiver authorization request.
“ATA remains adamantly opposed to California’s ill-conceived, unattainable regulation,” said American Trucking Associations President & CEO Chris Spear. “This destructive rule sets wildly unrealistic targets and timelines that are already creating confusion on the West Coast and threaten to cause severe disruptions to our supply chain nationwide.”
“Under the Clean Air Act, EPA is obligated to consider California’s request in light of the available technology and the ability of fleets to comply with the regulatory requirements,” said Spear. “This evaluation will find that the requirements are unworkable, and the available technology and infrastructure fall woefully short of meeting California’s one-size-fits-all, zero-emission vehicle purchase mandate. Given the wide range of operations required of our industry to keep the economy running, a successful emission regulation must be technology neutral."
“To protect our supply chain and achieve the cleaner future that we all want, EPA should reject this waiver,” Spear said.
Over the past four decades, the trucking industry has worked with regulators to set ambitious yet technically feasible regulations that deliver emissions reductions. As a direct result, 60 trucks today emit what one truck emitted in 1988, reducing criteria pollutants by 99 percent and delivering carbon reductions.
California’s ACF rule represents a sharp departure from this successful track record of productive collaboration. Rather than setting achievable vehicle emissions targets, California has crafted a regulatory scheme that is impossibly complicated, capricious, and counterproductive.
Complicated.
In its current form, California’s ACF rule is difficult to decipher and impossible to implement. The convoluted determination for classifying which trucks are affected and the technologically unachievable mandates set by California directly conflict with the waiver requirements set by the Clean Air Act.
Under ACF, the same truck would have a different standard to comply with depending on whether it is (1) operated in a fleet greater than 50 trucks or a fleet less than 50 trucks, or (2) operated in a fleet with an entity with greater than $50 million revenue or less than $50 million revenue. California has provided no explanation as to how vehicles require different emissions standards merely as a function of their ownership.
Additionally, zero-tailpipe-emission trucks cannot be utilized by fleets unless the infrastructure necessary to support them, including both depot and public charging; the necessary substation and transmission line upgrades; and sufficient power to meet the demands of an all-electric fleet, also exist. These conditions are not even close to being met in California, much less the rest of the country. California would need to build almost three quarters of a million chargers in the next six years—almost 350 chargers per day—just to keep up with the regulatory adoption timeline laid under the ACF.
Capricious.
ACF was adopted in April 2023, became effective in October 2023, and has statutory deadlines for compliance which purportedly began on January 1, 2024, even though California knew or should have known at the time it adopted ACF that it could not obtain a waiver of preemption or authorization from EPA by this date.
Through various exemptions and exceptions, California has tacitly admitted that it failed to determine in advance which technologies will be available for each class or category of vehicles in each model year. These equivocal determinations have left motor carriers in limbo about what California may ultimately be allowed to enforce, and that uncertainty is affecting fleet purchase decisions.
Counterproductive.
ACF will result in impacts both in and outside of California that render the regulation less protective of the public than federal standards. California did not conduct a sufficient life-cycle analysis to evaluate increased pollutants from battery electric vehicles.
The American Transportation Research Institute found that the trucking industry could decrease greenhouse gas emissions more quickly and cost effectively through a variety of vehicle types. Among other findings, ATRI concluded that Class 8 battery-electric vehicle production results in more than six times the carbon dioxide emissions as compared with a Class 8 clean-diesel truck due to the size and replacement cycle of lithium-ion batteries necessary to support long-haul trucking.
All of these factors are creating uncertainty for motor carriers, prompting them to keep equipment longer. By delaying the normal turnover cycles, California’s ACF regulation is holding back the transition to newer, cleaner trucks.
Sep 16, 2024