ATA Maintains Fight Against California's Fleets Rule
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In a new round of written comments, American Trucking Associations is among a group of trade organizations that continue to oppose a request for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to grant a waiver allowing implementation of California’s Advanced Clean Fleets regulation that would transition fleets to electric trucks.
“ATA remains adamantly opposed to California’s ill-conceived, unattainable regulation,” ATA President Chris Spear said in a Sept. 16 statement. “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.”
Spear said 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. In the past, EPA has consistently approved California Air Resources Board waivers.
“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,” Spear said. “Given the wide range of operations required of our industry to keep the economy running, a successful emission regulation must be technology neutral.”
Spear
ATA said California’s ACF regulation represents a sharp departure from this successful track record of productive collaboration.
“Rather than setting achievable vehicle emissions targets,” the federation said. “California has crafted a regulatory scheme that is impossibly complicated, capricious and counterproductive.”
In addition to Spear’s comments, San Francisco-based law firm Holland & Knight filed a 63-page document outlining more detailed and technical comments, tables and graphics on behalf of ATA.
The ACF regulation requires that all new California-certified medium- and heavy-duty vehicle sales be zero emission starting in 2036. However, along the way, CARB regulations also require graduated compliance to begin as early as this year. As a result, the trucking industry has been extremely critical of the requirements.
Other trucking trade organizations continued to file public comments, which closed Sept. 16, generally agreeing with ATA. EPA conducted a public hearing recently that drew about 200 public commenters, many of them highly critical of the new regulation.
CARB requested the waiver by letter, dated Nov. 15, 2023.
Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association: “CARB has no authority to apply its standards without a waiver from EPA, and its stated intent in its ‘Enforcement Notice’ to apply the waiver retroactively violates both the Clean Air Act and basic principles of due process.
“To guard against any further erosion of the notice and comment process, EPA should make clear in all of its pre-emption waiver determinations — including this one — that CARB may only commence to enforce its mobile source regulations for which a waiver has been granted prospectively after the date that the waiver determination is published in the Federal Register, not retroactively.”
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Penske Truck Leasing: “The reality is that California’s commercial trucking fleets are struggling to comply with the state’s new regulation. The development of the market and anticipated benefits and utilization of zero-emission vehicles that CARB predicted are failing to materialize.
“ZEV trucks remain significantly more expensive than conventional models, and their prices continue to rise. The performance, range and payload capabilities of the current generation of ZEVs create unavoidable inefficiencies that require more vehicles for the same work.”
American Truck Dealers: “When emissions standards are too stringent and rushed, they result in business closures, job losses and delayed environmental benefits. That is precisely the situation California truck dealers are facing today due to CARB’s technology-forcing emissions standards.
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“ATD could conceivably benefit dealers in due course, but we believe CARB’s combined rules move too far too fast.”
Truck Rental and Leasing Association: “CARB’s rush to finalize the ACF rule has created a regulation that remains open to arbitrary interpretations, projections and countless unknowns, none of which CARB has accounted for in its determination. TRALA and its members oppose EPA granting a Clean Air Act waiver for the ACF rule.”
TRALA said the ACF rule does not satisfy the waiver requirements, multiple lawsuits regarding the rule are awaiting resolution, EPA lacks authority to mandate truck technology pathways disguised as emission standards, and the rule violates multiple federal statutes.
“Among TRALA’s objections to the rule include the fact that compliance costs were not adequately considered, the rule is technologically infeasible, and there are problems with the required lead time and stability,” the organization wrote.
