The Biden administration finalized long-awaited regulations targeting emissions generated from heavy-duty vehicles, including trucks and buses, the latest salvo in President Biden’s sweeping climate agenda.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced the new regulations Friday morning, and officials said they represent the strongest-ever greenhouse gas emissions standards of their kind. The rules will kick in beginning in 2026 for model year 2027 vehicles and progressively become more stringent through model year 2032, forcing a larger number of trucks and buses to be zero-emissions in that time frame.
Overall, EPA said the aggressive standards will avoid a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions and provide $13 billion in annualized net societal benefits related to public health, the climate and business savings. The agency claims that the regulations will set the heavy-duty vehicle industry on a “trajectory for sustained growth.”
The new regulations apply to short-haul and long-haul tractor-trailer trucks, in addition to vocational trucks like delivery vehicles, garbage trucks, school and public transit buses, concrete trucks and fire trucks. EPA previously projected that the standards could lead to 50% of vocational trucks, 35% of short-haul tractor-trailers and 25% of long-haul tractor-trailers produced in 2032 being electric.
Less than 1% of new truck sales in the U.S. are zero-emissions, according to the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association, which represents the world’s leading manufacturers of heavy-duty vehicles.
However, the announcement immediately received pushback from the trucking industry and energy producers, who argued that it would lead to higher costs for trucking companies.
“Small business truckers, who happen to care about clean air for themselves and their kids as much as anyone, make up 96% of trucking,” said Todd Spencer, president of Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, an organization that represents more than 150,000 members across all 50 states and Canada. “Yet, this administration seems dead set on regulating every local mom-and-pop business out of existence with its flurry of unworkable environmental mandates.”
In a joint statement, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers President and CEO Chet Thompson and American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Mike Sommers called on Congress to immediately overturn the regulations. They also said they were prepared to take the administration to court over the rule.
“This is yet another example of the Biden administration’s whole-of-government effort to eliminate choices for American consumers, businesses and industries,” Thompson and Sommers said. “There is significant uncertainty regarding the technological and infrastructure capability to comply with this rule, which may threaten the speed and cost of goods moving throughout the country.”