Obama Administration Finalizes Historic Clean Car Standards

Standards Will Slash Pollution and Cut Oil Use

Environment Missouri

Saint Louis, MO—Today the Obama administration is finalizing new clean car standards that will double the fuel efficiency of today’s vehicles by 2025, drastically reducing emissions of carbon pollution and cutting oil use nationwide. The standards will cover new cars and light trucks in model years 2017-2025, and require those vehicles to meet the equivalent of a 54.5 miles-per-gallon standard by 2025. A recent joint analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Union of Concerned Scientists projects that by 2030 the standards will cut carbon pollution from vehicles in the United States by 270 million metric tons—the equivalent of the annual pollution of 40 million of today’s vehicles—and save 1.5 million barrels of oil every day.  In Missouri, the standards alone will cut as much global warming pollution in 2030 as is emitted by 728,000 of today’s vehicles.

Together with the Obama administration’s standards covering vehicles in model years 2012-2016, the new standards and their projected cuts in carbon pollution represent the largest single step the U.S. has ever taken to tackle global warming.

“The new clean car standards being announced today by the Obama administration are a monumental leap forward in the must-win battle to tackle global warming and get the U.S. off oil,” said Margie Alt, Executive Director of Environment America. “I believe future generations will look back on this as a decisive step the nation took toward breaking our destructive oil addiction.”

The NRDC/UCS analysis also projects that consumers will save more than $50 billion due to savings at the gas pump that will result from the fuel efficiency improvements required by the new standards.

More than 282,000 Americans submitted comments in support of the standards as they were being developed, and they enjoy the support of the major automakers, consumer groups and the environmental community. In addition, hundreds of national opinion leaders, from state legislators to Members of Congress, have come out in strong support of this historic initiative.

Alt pointed out that just as important as the standards themselves is the story of how they came to be. Long before the Obama administration took office, California and 13 other states were developing and implementing their own state-level clean car standards, and Environment America’s federation of state-based-groups worked alongside local decision makers and other public interest and environmental advocacy organizations across the country to help make them a reality. Beyond charting a path for pollution reductions for those states, these standards also pushed automakers to begin developing the cleaner cars that we see on the road today. That paved the way for the Obama administration to first set the first-ever federal carbon pollution standards for vehicles in model years 2012-2016, followed by today’s standards for model years 2017-2025.

“Without the leadership of the states that adopted state-level standards, we likely wouldn’t have any federal standards to celebrate today,” said Alt. “Those states should take pride in knowing that the Obama administration is following their lead in getting cleaner cars on the road.”