The Environmental Protection Agency is moving ahead with a plan to weaken fuel efficiency standards, taking aim at an Obama-era regulation that would have compelled automakers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions starting 2020.
The plan would end efforts to make cars and trucks average more than 50 miles per gallon by 2025—a standard estimated to reduce carbon pollution by an amount equal to 134 coal power plants burning for a year, according to California Governor Jerry Brown’s office. The proposal would also likely strip California of its power to set more stringent standards, a Clean Air Act waiver that the state has leveraged to fight climate change nationally.
“Cooperative federalism doesn’t mean that one state can dictate standards for the rest of the country,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in a statement.
California is already suing the EPA to defend the national standard. Now it will likely respond with another lawsuit on behalf of the 13 other states that follow its standard, representing more than a third of cars sold nationwide, the Los Angeles Times reports.
