This story is part of The Salt Lake Tribune’s ongoing commitment to identify solutions to Utah’s biggest challenges through the work of the Innovation Lab.
When it comes to clean cars, the Biden Administration only gets more ambitious.
The EPA rolled out a new proposal this week that would require two-thirds of all cars sold in the United States to be electric in less than a decade, a timetable that even EV proponents say will be a challenge.
That comes on the heels of earlier, aggressive commitments to convert the nation’s fleet away from climate-wrecking fossil-fueled vehicles. Even those earlier goals were a reach for several reasons, including auto manufacturers’ ability to retool their production lines, the availability of resources for batteries and the car-buying public’s appetite for electric.
“Where’s the data to support that we can get there?” asked Craig Bickmore, executive director for the New Car Dealers of Utah.
The EPA says previous government initiatives and a growing commitment from automakers puts the new standards within reach.
“These ambitious standards are readily achievable thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, which is already driving historic progress to build more American-made electric cars and secure America’s global competitiveness,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement.
EPA estimates the benefits of the new rules — including less air pollution-related disease, lower energy costs and less imported oil — will exceed the costs by at least $1 trillion
“The auto industry will likely face challenges in meeting these requirements,” said Kelbe Goupil, senior associate for electrification at the nonprofit Utah Clean Energy.
But she said the plan’s reduction in greenhouse gas emissions makes it worthwhile. “We’re talking about reduction of 10 billion tons of CO2. ... While it’s ambitious, we need to be ambitious.”
The proposed targets, which face a public review process before they become policy, come a month after the latest report from the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change, which puts the planet on the edge of irreversible disaster if drastic reductions in fossil fuel burning don’t happen in the next decade.
Led by General Motors and Ford, the U.S. auto industry has already made a massive commitment to converting to electric. Ford last year introduced an electric version of the most popular vehicle in the country, the F-150 pickup truck. GM has set 2035 as the year it would stop producing gas-powered vehicles.
John Bozzella, president and CEO of the auto industry trade group Alliance for Automotive Innovation, reacted in a blog post: “... Even given the industry’s embrace of electrification, the short-term goals of the EPA proposal are “very high. ... In fact, the proposal exceeds the administration’s own 50 percent electrification target announced in August 2021 – with auto industry support – by requiring more than one EV for every new gas vehicle sold by 2030 and potentially two EVs for every gas vehicle just two years later.”
Bozzella also wrote that with just 100,000 publicly available charging stations in the country, there are 29 EVs for every charging station. That lack of infrastructure is already playing into car-buying decisions. EVs sales last year rose dramatically, but they were still only 5.7% of total U.S. vehicle sales. That is driven in part by the lack of charging and by the generally higher prices of electric vehicles.
In Utah, electric vehicle registrations went up 35% between 2021 and 2022, but the 25,532 EVs registered at the end of 2022 were still less than 1% of vehicles in the state.
A recent public opinion poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago found that only 19% of U.S. adults thought it was very likely or extremely likely they will buy an EV next time they buy a car. Another 22% said it’s somewhat likely, and 47% said it was not likely.
Customer sentiment is not easily changed, Bickmore said. “Consumers are very wise. They’ll purchase what meets their goals.”
In a separate proposal, EPA also rolled out new targets for heavy vehicles, including delivery trucks, dump trucks, public utility trucks, transit and school buses and freight haulers. EPA estimates those rules would remove another 1.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases and save between $180 billion and $320 billion.
According to the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, the proposal for heavy vehicles is aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, not pollutants like those clogging the Wasatch Front, but an earlier rule that came out last December is projected to produce an 82.5% reduction in NOx emissions and a 50% reduction in particulate emissions over the previous standard for heavy vehicles.
The proposal for cars and light-duty trucks also could significantly improve Utah’s air quality by lowering levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulates.
“While DAQ is still reviewing the latter proposal, a preliminary review reveals that the proposed standards represent a 60% reduction in combined VOCs and NOx emissions and an 83% reduction in particulate emissions from Tier 3 levels for light- and medium-duty passenger vehicles by 2032. Such reductions would help Utah in addressing its summertime ozone and wintertime particulate pollution challenges, but further analysis using a yet-to-be released EPA emissions model will be required to estimate the effect of such changes on Utah’s pollution levels,” DEQ said in a statement.
Tim Fitzpatrick is The Salt Lake Tribune’s renewable energy reporter, a position funded by a grant from Rocky Mountain Power. The Tribune retains all control over editorial decisions independent of Rocky Mountain Power.
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