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UPDATE: Adds details, comments from state officials.


By Scott Doggett, Contributor


The Obama administration announced today that it will give California the waiver it needs to begin regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from cars and trucks, ending the state's seven-year battle to enforce its own stringent tailpipe standards.


The decision comes a little more than a month after President Obama unveiled a suite of new national auto standards that weds federal fuel-economy standards with California's proposed emissions standards, making today's announcement anticlimactic.


Still, those federal standards will not take effect until model-year 2012, meaning the waiver will allow California and other states that choose to enforce their own emissions standards to begin with this year's models.


"This waiver is consistent with the Clean Air Act as it's been used for the last 40 years and supports the prerogatives of the 13 states and the District of Columbia who have opted to follow California's lead," EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a statement. "More importantly, this decision reinforces the historic agreement on nationwide emissions standards developed by a broad coalition of industry, government and environmental stakeholders earlier this year."


Under the Clean Air Act, California is the only state that can enforce its own standards -- but only with an EPA waiver. Now that California has been granted the waiver, other states will be allowed to enforce the same tailpipe standard. Thirteen other states and the District of Columbia have already moved to adopt the California's standards, and a handful of others have indicated they may follow.


"The waiver affirms California 's authority to set the standards for the cleanest cars in the nation and recognizes the ability of forward-thinking states to continue to adopt them," CARB Chairwoman Mary Nichols said in a statement. "Now we can begin to work with the manufacturers to make a new generation of cars that deliver all the comfort and power we have come to expect but with improved efficiency and far fewer greenhouse gas emissions."


The waiver gives California -- and states that choose to adopt California's standards -- permission to enforce its standards through 2009, 2010 and 2011; or three years earlier than the federal standards take effect.


Additionally, California is working on an extension beyond 2016 right now, CARB spokesman Stanley Young told Green Car Advisor. He said CARB officials are in communication with Obama administration officials regarding national fuel-economy standards, "but we're working independently in California as a kind of laboratory of innovation."


In other words, California's air-quality regulators are going to do what they feel is best for the state regardless of what the U.S. EPA does. Young said he's hopeful national regulators will follow California's lead.


"This is just the first step in a much longer journey to produce cleaner cars," he said.





California adopted the tailpipe standards in 2002 and had been fighting for a waiver since 2005. Under then-President George W. Bush, EPA denied the state's request, but Obama ordered a review of the decision soon after taking office.


The auto industry had challenged California's attempt to regulate tailpipe emissions, arguing it would create a "regulatory patchwork" that would depress overall sales and put some dealers at a competitive disadvantage. Car makers and dealers argued that because consumers buy vehicles in different quantities in different states, automakers' fleetwide greenhouse-gas averages would vary by state, forcing manufacturers to manipulate the amount of each model they make available in each state.


The litigation was unsuccessful in federal courts, and the industry agreed to drop their legal challenges as part of the compromise that led to the n

Tags: Courts, Emissions, Fuel Economy, Legislation, CAFE Standards, CARB, Climate Change, Fuel Economy, Fuel Efficient, Global Warming, Obama, Tailpipe Emissions

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EPA Grants California Waiver It Needs To Regulate Tailpipe Emissions in the State was originally published by Green Car Advisor. Read the full story by clicking here.