WASHINGTON — The Trump administration finally will tip its hand this week about how it intends to treat fuel efficiency rules in place for early next decade, but clear answers on potential changes likely will take several months.
Clean-air advocates expect the White House to significantly water down Obama-era standards aimed at addressing global warming, throwing into doubt the unified national program that automakers say protects them from the cost and complexity of building vehicles to disparate government specifications.
Automakers lobbied a year ago for a second look at the EPA's tailpipe emission standards for the 2022-25 model years and got their wish with the new Republican administration. But the outcome of that effort is replete with risks for all stakeholders -- not least the automakers themselves.
The forthcoming decisions may be anticlimactic. The EPA has a regulatory deadline to issue a final determination by Sunday, April 1. The administrator widely is expected to announce that the standards are not appropriate, which would then kick off a new rule-making process. The explanation for the decision could provide insight into which way the agency is headed. A proposal for new standards could take months, although some reports say officials are shooting for a release this summer.
Bloomberg and Reuters, both citing anonymous sources, reported Friday that EPA officials have decided that the 2022-2025 standards should be relaxed.
Car companies insist they only wanted the government to stick to the original timetable for evaluation of the corporate average fuel economy standards, rather than the Obama administration's accelerated review, in hopes of gaining some flexibility with compliance. But environmentalists say the gambit could backfire if an administration with strong deregulation instincts and skepticism about climate change opts for greater revisions.
"Based on what we've seen from this administration, it's entirely within the realm of possibility that the standards will be completely rolled back and flatlined," said David Cooke, senior vehicles analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Automakers should have recognized ... this was always a possibility. If all they wanted was minor tweaks, they didn't need to roll back the final determination."
Decision time
