Low-carbon fuel standard legislation being debated in the Oregon legislature would cost truckers more than $7 billion a year in extra fuel costs and eliminate 29,000 jobs, according to the Oregon Trucking Associations.
Senate Bill 488 would extend beyond 2015 a law passed by the Legislature in 2009 authorizing development of a low-carbon fuel standard.
Modeled after a standard developed in California, it calls for oil refiners and distributors to reduce carbon in diesel fuel by at least 10% by 2020.
OTA President Debra Dunn said the trucking industry expects refiners and distributors to pass on to consumers the cost of removing the carbon intensity from diesel if the legislation passes.
“Our economy is improving every day, but we’ve got a long ways to go,” Dunn said. “We’re just getting back on our feet. We can’t take any increased costs on the backs of the industry.”
Dunn said she and other opponents of the legislation paid a visit to legislators last month to inform them that passage of the bill would “force trucking companies to cut costs, defer hiring, raise rates and find other ways to offset paying more for fuel.”
The California standard is at the center of a legal battle among the California Air Resources Board and American Trucking Associations, petrochemical manufacturers and other business groups that are arguing that interstate commerce laws prohibit the state from enforcing stricter fuel standards than the federal government.
