WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Monday proposed strict new limits on pollution from buses, vans, tractors and other heavy trucks — the first time in more than 20 years that exhaust standards have been tightened for the biggest polluters on the road.
Under the Environmental Protection Agency’s new draft rule, heavy trucks must reduce nitrogen dioxide emissions by 90 percent by 2031. Nitrogen dioxide has been linked to lung cancer, heart disease and premature death.
The EPA also announced plans to slightly tighten carbon dioxide emissions from trucks, a greenhouse gas that causes climate change. The new nitrogen oxide pollution rules would apply to trucks from model year 2027, while the CO2 rules would apply to trucks from the 2024 model year.
The truck pollution rule is the latest in a series of new pollution policies under President Biden, which seeks to cut emissions that are dangerously warming the planet and rebuild environmental standards that had been toned down by President Donald J. Trump.
Vice President Kamala Harris announced the proposal, along with a series of other federal clean transportation actions, including spending $5.5 billion to help states purchase low- or zero-emission transit buses, and $17 million to build diesel school buses. replaced by electric versions in disadvantaged communities.
Late last year, the EPA tightened automotive pollution standards and announced new regulations for methane, a climate-warming gas leaking from oil and gas wells. This year, the agency is expected to introduce new restrictions on greenhouse gases and on industrial soot released from power plants.
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The government is depicting the truck rule announced Monday as central to Mr. Biden for environmental justice, as many communities of color are located along highways and subject to increased levels of pollution.
“Seventy-two million people are estimated to live near truck routes in America, and are more likely to be people of color and lower-income people,” said EPA administrator Michael S. Regan. “These overburdened communities are directly exposed to pollution that causes respiratory and cardiovascular problems, among other serious and costly health effects. These new standards will dramatically reduce hazardous pollution by leveraging recent advances in vehicle technologies from across the trucking industry as they move towards a zero-emission transportation future.”
Public health experts welcomed the move. “Cleaning up trucks is a critical step in making the president’s vision a reality, not just on environmental justice, but also on the ‘moonshot’ of cancer,” said Paul Billings, senior vice president at the American Lung Association. . “Diesel gas is known to be carcinogenic.”
The new limits would prevent up to 2,100 premature deaths, 6,700 hospitalizations and emergency room visits, 18,000 cases of childhood asthma, 78,000 days lost at work and 1.1 million lost school days, according to EPA estimates.
The agency estimates the economic benefits of the rule could amount to $250 billion and said those benefits would “exceed the costs by billions of dollars.”
But truck drivers and manufacturers say the rule is too strict and expensive, and compliance could send higher prices through the economy.
“This new standard may not be technologically feasible,” said Jed Mandel, president of the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association industry association. “We are concerned about costs. There is a potential of negative impacts on the economy and employment. Nobody wants union jobs to be fired. Regular lunch bucket, workers.”
Jay Grimes, director of federal affairs for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, said new restrictions would be especially tough on small truck drivers, who he says make up 90 percent of the industry.
“Since the start of the pandemic, we have seen the efforts truck drivers make every day to keep the supply chain stable,” said Mr Grimes. “Higher prices on the small business side will be passed on to consumers in the supply chain.”
The federal government last updated the truck emissions rule in 2001, when the EPA required trucks to reduce nitrogen dioxide emissions by 95 percent over 10 years. That contributed to a 40 percent drop in national nitrogen dioxide emissions, the agency said. It estimates the new rule will help cut emissions by 60 percent by 2045.
The EPA called the new rule the first in a three-step plan for clean trucks — a set of regulations for clean air and climate change over the next three years designed to reduce pollution from trucks and buses and transition to a future of all-electric vehicles. without pollution.
After a first year in which President Biden tried to push ambitious climate legislation through Congress but saw it stall, the government is using its regulatory machine to curb pollution.
The EPA is working on new limits on car pollution, due out next year, which it hopes will accelerate the transition to electric vehicles. mr. Biden has promised that half of all new cars sold in the United States by 2030 will be electric vehicles.
While the new truck regulations will reduce pollution that harms human health, they won’t do much to reduce emissions that warm the planet, climate experts say.
The proposed regulations require some trucks, 17 of 33 heavy truck categories, to reduce their CO2 emissions. That is intended to boost sales of all-electric trucks in the United States, from less than 1,000 in 2020 to about 1.5 percent of total truck sales, or about 10,000 trucks, in 2027.
But to put the United States on the path to a transition to all-electric trucks, upcoming truck regulations would need to be much stricter, experts say.
“It’s great to see the rule cut air pollution in heavy vehicles by 90 percent while opening the door to reducing greenhouse gas pollution,” said Drew Kodjak, executive director of the International Council on Clean Transportation, a research organization. . “But we have something called climate change and we really need to start pushing electrification in the heavy truck industry. My major concern is that the proposal as it is written will not.”
Supporters of warehouse workers, many of whom are exposed to constant diesel pollution, said they would like rules replacing diesel trucks with electric or zero-emission vehicles.
“It’s good to reduce emissions everywhere,” said Yana Kalmyka, an organizer at Warehouse Workers for Justice. “But if you think of a community that tens of thousands of trucks pass through every day, electrification is the only right solution. The rule does not target other industrial truck pollutants, such as soot, and we know that black and brown communities face cumulative burdens from these pollutants.”
Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases generated by the United States, accounting for 29 percent of the country’s total emissions.
The EPA has said it plans to create a new set of greenhouse gas regulations for trucks, starting from model year 2030, that will be “significantly stronger” than current standards, and designed to accelerate the transition to all-electric trucks. .
“Waiting a few more years to do the next set of greenhouse gas standards for trucks is wrong. We just don’t have the time,” said Margo Oge, an electric vehicle expert who led the EPA’s Office of Energy from 1994 to 2012. Transportation and Air Quality. “I hope they will use this time to strengthen the standard now.”
The rule announced Monday will be open to public comment for 46 days, and the EPA is expected to finalize it by the end of 2022.