Climate 411

EDF Applauds New Fuel Efficiency and Emissions Standards for Cars and Trucks

By Vickie Patton / Published: November 17, 2011

America has driven a little bit further down the road toward clean and fuel efficient cars.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Transportation just announced their joint proposal to set new, stronger fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks – for model years 2017 to 2025.

EDF’s Fred Krupp said the announcement:

 … is more good news for American consumers, auto manufacturers, public health and the environment. By 2025 we’ll have cars that on average get more than 54 miles to the gallon, save their owners more than $8,000 in fuel costs, save our country more than two million barrels of oil a day, and drastically reduce the carbon dioxide pollution in our air.

This is the second phase of setting new fuel efficiency standards for cars. The Administration already set standards for model year 2012 to 2016 cars, which will reach an average of 35.5 miles to the gallon.

They also set new standards for trucks and buses. (Our experts have written about all of this before, of course – most recently here)

But the newly proposed standards are the biggest step forward yet. Together with the earlier improvements, they will:

  • Save Americans a total of $1.7 trillion in national fuel savings over the life of the program.
  • Reduce our oil consumption by an amount more than our 2010 oil imports from the entire Persian Gulf, by the year 2025
  • Reduce our carbon dioxide pollution, over the life of the program, by the equivalent to the emissions from the entire United States in 2010

You can get a lot more details, and a illustrative graph, on our new fact sheet.

Also posted in Cars and Pollution, Clean Air Act, News, Policy / Comments are closed

Broad Support for Cleaner Cars — Except from Some in Congress

By Peter Zalzal / Published: October 17, 2011

At a Congressional hearing last week, some members of Congress sought to undermine historic fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards that will save Americans money at the gas pump, help break our addiction to foreign oil, strengthen our economy, and reduce harmful pollution.   

 The shrill attacks on those historic standards were in sharp contrast to the broad support for cleaner cars, including support from the U.S. auto industry.

Automobile manufacturers have intervened to support the standards in the Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C.  In recent filings in federal court, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the Association of Global Automakers have characterized these standards as:

valid, mandated by law, and non-controversial

(That’s from a D.C. Circuit Court filing from September 30, 2011 — Brief for Intervenors Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and Association of Global Automakers, Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, Docket Number 10-1092) 

The State of Texas and its allies, along with an industry group representing coal mining interests, have sought to topple the landmark clean car standards.  The automakers — those directly regulated by the new standards –have forcefully countered that, if legal challenges are successful in overturning EPA’s clean car standards, it “would result in tremendous hardship to their companies” and that the associated costs would be “substantial.”

(Those two quotes above are both from court documents: the first is from the same brief I already cited, and the second is from a November 1, 2010 filing with the same D.C. Circuit Court: Intervenor Alliance for Automobile Manufacturers’ and Association of International Automobile Manufacturers’ Opposition to Motions for Stay, Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, Docket Number 10-1092).

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) standards govern greenhouse gas emissions, and not just fuel economy. That means EPA’s measures will create business opportunities throughout the vehicle supply chain.

Honeywell, a leading global manufacturer of air condition systems, filed an amicus brief in support of EPA’s standards, noting that :

technologies for reducing the United States’ carbon footprint have the potential to create the kind of ‘green jobs’ that are a priority for America in the 21st century

(That’s another quote from a D.C. Circuit court filing, this time from September 8,2011: Amicus Brief of Honeywell International, Inc., Coalition for Responsible Regulation v. EPA, Docket Number 10-1092). 

Honeywell recognized the possibility that innovative technologies spurred by these emission standards have the potential to spread throughout the global economy, creating business opportunities for companies at the forefront of this technological innovation.  The automobile industry developed the catalytic converter in response to clean air measures, and, through commonsense regulations like these vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards, the United States can remain at the forefront of technological innovation in the global automotive market.   

These benefits are echoed by members of the small business community — eventual purchasers of the new, more fuel efficient vehicles. 

In a press release, Small Business Majority founder and CEO John Arensmeyer emphasized the importance of strong emissions standards, stating that:

 [s]mall businesses understand that to survive in this tough economy they need to innovate, and that strong fuel efficiency standards will assist them in doing so by helping them save money in their own business and creating new market opportunities

In fact, in a recent survey, small business owners overwhelmingly supported stronger fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, with 87 percent stating that it was critical for the U.S. to take action now to increase fuel efficiency.

 The benefits to covered business are, of course, just a portion of the environmental and economic benefits associated with EPA’s clean vehicle rule:

  • More fuel efficient vehicles will save consumers money.  American families will save more than $3,000 on fuel costs over the lifetime of a model year 2016 vehicle, and, for families financing a vehicle, the savings will be immediate. 
  • The standards are projected to cut gasoline consumption by 75 billion gallons. 
  • The standards are also projected to cut harmful global warming pollution by over 20 percent, avoiding 960 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent

As a result of these myriad benefits, EPA’s vehicle standards have strong support from a diverse coalition, including auto manufacturers, states, environmental organizations, and veterans organizations.  Members of the veterans’ organization Operation Free testified at public hearings across the country about the vital importance of EPA’s clean vehicle rules in breaking our addiction to foreign oil. 

Despite these significant benefits and the strong, broad-based support for vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards, some in Congress are attempting to topple these common-sense rules on the theory that doing so would ease burdensome regulation.  Ironically, overturning these regulations would have precisely the opposite effect – constraining business innovation, burdening cash-strapped consumers, and harming the environment. That’s a result that would benefit no one.

 

Also posted in Cars and Pollution, Clean Air Act, Economics, Energy, Policy / Comments are closed

How Inhofe Turns Balloon Animals into ‘News’

By Eric Pooley / Published: September 30, 2011

The professional deniers are at it again. Every chance they get, the people who are paid to spread doubt and confusion about climate change take some minor report or news event, fill it with hot air and twist it up like a balloon animal, then try to persuade everyone that it is alive and kicking—that it “proves” that the planet isn’t warming or human activities aren’t the big reason why.

This time, the professional deniers are seizing on a report from the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general.

In reality, the IG’s report upholds EPA’s efforts to address climate change, affirming that the agency followed the law when it determined that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

But Senator James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who says he thinks global warming is a hoax, and his team of professional deniers have been trying to pretend that their latest balloon animal is living, breathing proof that the EPA process was faulty and the underlying science flawed. And some news organizations fell for it — again.

To make his claim, Inhofe had to ignore the crystal-clear opening sentence of the IG’s report, which concludes that EPA “met statutory requirements for rulemaking” when it issued its endangerment finding, the scientific basis for action under the Clean Air Act. The IG’s report takes issue with some bureaucratic minutiae—EPA procedures that have nothing to do with the validity of the agency’s conclusions. These procedures were created by the federal Office of Management and Budget, and OMB agrees with the way EPA followed them, not with the IG’s minor criticisms.

It’s one agency squabbling with another over which boxes got checked.

Here’s how my colleague Steve Hamburg, chief scientist at Environmental Defense Fund, put it yesterday. “Let’s be clear on what this report does not do: it does not call into question any of the underlying science. And the report affirmed that EPA complied with the law when making the endangerment finding.”

EPA’s endangerment finding is based on assessments by the National Academy of Sciences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program–assessments that considered tens of thousands of peer-reviewed articles and involved thousands of scientists.

Inhofe is peddling another balloon animal. No surprise there. But let’s pull back the curtain and see how a balloon animal gets treated like news.

Step One. It all starts when Inhofe himself demands that the IG look into the endangerment finding. “This evaluation was initiated based on a request from Senator James M. Inhofe,” the IG report says—and to carry it out, “the estimated direct labor and travel costs for this report are $297,385.” So Inhofe, a putative champion of small government and enemy of bureaucratic waste, triggered almost $300,000 in unnecessary spending for the report. That’s an expensive balloon.

Step Two. Inhofe breaks the IG’s embargo by putting out an overheated press release claiming that the report “calls the scientific integrity of EPA’s decision-making process into question and undermines the credibility of the endangerment finding.” In fact, it does nothing of the kind.

Step Three. Inhofe’s former communications director, Marc Morano, who runs a climate denier web site, trumpets the false charges, conservative outlets pick up the drum beat, and mainstream news organizations like The Washington Post and Politico quote Inhofe’s specious charges. Headlines announce that EPA “cut corners” and “needed more data before ruling.” Other journalists begin weighing in on the “wide-reaching political implications.”

Now, an IG report is news, no doubt about that. But reporters should know better than to believe that Inhofe’s balloon animal is real. Anyone who looks at it can tell it’s just a balloon. Can’t they?

This was originally posted on Eric Pooley’s blog The Climate War.

Also posted in Policy / Comments are closed

An update on the greenhouse gas litigation…

By Megan Ceronsky / Published: September 22, 2011

The urgency of climate mitigation, the Supreme Court’s mandate, and the legal attacks:

According to the insurance company Munich Re, there have been 98 natural disasters in the United States the first six months of 2011 – approximately double the average of the 1990s.  Ten of those disasters have been catastrophes causing more than a billion dollars of damage, including two major river floods in the Upper Midwest and the Mississippi River, drought and wildfires in the Southwest, a blizzard that paralyzed the Midwest and Northeast, and Hurricane Irene which threatened the coastal cities of the East Coast and led to the devastating flooding in the Northeast.  More intense storms – including hurricanes – and more frequent and severe floods and droughts, are precisely the kind of impacts expected to threaten American communities as atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations rise.  Although we cannot connect any individual hurricane or wildfire to climate change, we can look around and see what the future holds if we do not act to curb climate-destabilizing emissions.

In 2007, the Supreme Court held in Massachusetts v. EPA that greenhouse gases are “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act and that EPA had a legal duty to decide whether greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health or welfare.  The Supreme Court also held that under the Clean Air Act, the endangerment inquiry must be based solely on science, and not on policy considerations irrelevant to this “scientific judgment.”

In response to the Supreme Court’s mandate, and based on the massive edifice of research showing the role of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in causing global temperatures to rise and related climate impacts to occur, EPA took action under the Clean Air Act.  In 2009 EPA made the science-based finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare – the “Endangerment Finding.”  Once EPA has made an endangerment finding for an air pollutant emitted by motor vehicles, the Clean Air Act obligates EPA to establish vehicle emission standards.  On April 1, 2010, EPA finalized standards for MY 2012-2016 light-duty vehicles.  The standards are projected to avoid 962 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent, cut gasoline consumption by 77 billion gallons, and save vehicle owners a net average of $3,000 over the life of the vehicle due to enhanced fuel economy.

The Endangerment Finding is under legal attack from some of the largest polluters in America.  The legal challenges to the Endangerment Finding, vehicle standards, and the other actions EPA has taken to control greenhouse gas emissions are currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C.

 

The basis for the GHG Endangerment Finding:

EPA’s Endangerment Finding is based on a rigorous review of climate change research – including assessments of climate research prepared by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the United States Global Change Research Program, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  The creation of these “assessment reports” involved thousands of scientists, reviewing thousands of articles from peer-reviewed research journals.  Based on this massive body of research, EPA determined the following:

  • Human activities – fossil fuels burning and land use change – have changed the chemistry of the atmosphere, adding tremendous quantities of heat-trapping gases.  The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 38% since the Industrial Revolution; concentrations of methane have risen 149%.

This chart shows CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere over the last 800,000 years, based upon analyzing air bubbles trapped in an Antarctic ice core. (U.S. Global Change Research Program, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States at 13 (2009))

  • Temperature records show that average global temperatures are rising – and scientists have concluded that the warming of the past 40 years has been driven by the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, “trapping” more and more radiation from the sun in Earth’s atmosphere.

This figure shows that climate models using only natural forces cannot replicate observed warming – in fact, they would predict cooling. Only models including anthropogenic greenhouse gases can duplicate the observed warming trend. (U.S. Global Change Research Program, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States at 20 (2009).)

  • The effects of this warming are already being observed, and are expected to intensify in the future as the climate continues to warm.  The U.S. Global Change Research Program describes the following climate change impacts as “likely,” having at least a two-thirds chance of afflicting Americans:  stronger hurricanes and storm surges; more intense rainfall events; declines in precipitation and runoff in the West; increased frequency and severity of both floods and droughts; increased risk of illness and death due to extreme heat and heat waves; increased air pollution in cities that causes respiratory distress; and increases in the prevalence of diseases transmitted by food, water, and insects.
  • Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will reduce the severity of these impacts. Reducing emissions will also lower the risk of pushing the dynamic climate system past a “threshold” that would lead to dramatic, abrupt climate changes with potentially catastrophic impacts for human societies and natural systems.

Based on this body of research, EPA determined that greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public health and welfare.

 

The legal attacks and the Supreme Court’s directive:

In attacking the Endangerment Finding, the legal challenges make a wide variety of claims – including arguing that the areas of uncertainty in climate science should prevent EPA from finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health or welfare, that EPA was wrong to rely on the scientific assessments, and that EPA needed to consider various policy considerations before making the Endangerment Finding.

A little bit of history those attacking the Endangerment Finding seem to have forgotten:  As noted above, in 2007 the Supreme Court held that EPA had a duty to make a “scientific judgment,” and that “considerations that have nothing to do with whether greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change” have no place in an endangerment analysis.  The Court further held that EPA could only decline to make a scientific judgment if the uncertainty “is so profound that it precludes EPA from making a reasoned judgment as to whether greenhouse gases contribute to global warming.”

 

States and environmental groups supporting EPA:

Last Friday, September 16th, sixteen States and a coalition of environmental groups – including EDF – filed a brief supporting EPA’s Endangerment Finding.  The States supporting EPA’s science-based Endangerment Finding are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.  The brief and more information about the litigation are available here.

Oral argument for the Endangerment Finding challenge and the related cases will likely be scheduled early in 2012.  We will let you know of any developments as they occur.

 

Also posted in News / Comments are closed

In Defense of Unlikely Partnerships

By Eric Pooley / Published: May 20, 2011

Jigar Shah’s blog post about The Climate War made me sad. Not because he missed the point of my book or had unkind things to say about people I admire — the man is entitled to his opinion. The piece saddened me because it gave voice to an incredibly damaging green stereotype: the notion that we enviros are ideological purists more interested in being right than being successful, and that we can’t work with anyone who doesn’t meet our high standards.

I’d thought Shah knew better. After all, he runs an NGO that works with industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions–and he and I have even discussed the need to reach out to corporations if we’re going to turn the carbon tide. (I call it the Willie Sutton rule: If you want to cut pollution, you have to talk to polluters.) That’s certainly the approach of Environmental Defense Fund, which Shah disparages in his post. EDF has always embraced the power of unlikely partnerships, including the one with Duke Energy that so annoys Shah.

Shah criticizes EDF and its president, Fred Krupp, for working with Duke CEO Jim Rogers in the fight to pass climate legislation, and “for not holding Rogers to a high enough standard before giving him a seal of approval.” Shah writes that Krupp was “charmed” by Rogers and blind to Duke’s environmental record. To make that demonstrably inaccurate argument, Shah ignores all of the times EDF has gone into battle against Duke. Here are just a few:

  • EDF sued Duke Energy to force it to install pollution scrubbers on old power plants when it refurbished them. EDF took the case all the way to the Supreme Court and won in a 9-0 ruling handed down in 2007. The case, Environmental Defense, et al. v. Duke Energy Corp, is a landmark of environmental law. Shah doesn’t mention it.
  • When Duke proposed to build two massive new coal units in North Carolina, EDF and its partners challenged the need for the plants before the North Carolina Utilities Commission pointing to cleaner and more cost-effective alternatives. We secured a landmark decision in which the Commission denied Duke’s request for one of the two units.
  • EDF and its allies sued Duke again over its plan to build the Cliffside Unit 6 power plant, the remaining coal unit, without first determining whether the plant would meet Clean Air Act standards. EDF won again, and the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld this victory.
  • When Duke sued to block federal clean air standards requiring far-reaching pollution reductions from eastern coal plants, EDF stepped in. And we successfully reversed the court decision halting the implementation of these vital clean air protections while EPA took corrective action.
  • Shah writes that Duke fought a proposed renewable portfolio standard in North Carolina and backed off “under heavy pressure.” He doesn’t mention that much of that pressure came from EDF, which was a leader in passing the renewable standard.

EDF, in other words, is more than willing to stand up to polluters–but it will also sit down with them if there’s a chance to make progress on key goals. That’s why, in the middle of these courtroom battles, Krupp and Rogers began working together to pass comprehensive climate legislation. Duke joined EDF in a coalition called the United States Climate Action Partnership, or USCAP. In The Climate War, I describe their uneasy alliance–squaring off during tough negotiations over the contours of the bill, collaborating on ad campaigns and opinion pieces, jawboning senators and congressmen in a multi-year effort to cap carbon. Along the way, Duke even resigned from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and the National Association of Manufacturers because those two groups were devoted to killing climate legislation.

Shah doesn’t acknowledge that Rogers’ support was crucial to passing climate legislation in the House, and he never mentions the real opponents of the bill or the myriad social and political forces that were allied against us. He claims that Rogers was “only involved in climate legislation efforts to make sure that new laws enrich his shareholders.”

That’s a simplistic view of a complicated figure. And if Shah is waiting for power bosses like Rogers to support legislation out of the goodness of their hearts, he’s going to be waiting a long time. Altruism is not going to get this done. The whole point of climate legislation is to give polluters a reason to clean up — to create incentives for doing the right thing instead of the wrong thing. Fred Krupp never held any illusions that Rogers or other the members of USCAP were trying for sainthood. These companies fought for climate legislation because they saw it as vital to their long-term economic well-being. That’s the point.

Of course Duke’s environmental record is mixed. My book lays out those facts in great detail. For Shah, that’s reason enough to shun Rogers. The title of his piece asks whether enviros should work with their “enemies”– and since Duke is not always on our side, he believes that makes it an enemy. That approach –“you’re either with us or you’re against us”– has failed us too often. It’s time we retired it for good. Environmentalists should not be an elite fraternity that refuses to consort with those who are less enlightened.

The people at EDF understand that. They deal with the world as it is, not as they wish it to be. That’s why, when I decided to leave journalism and join the environmental movement, EDF is where I chose to hang my hat. I’ve been here less than a month, and in that time we’ve launched tough actions against American Electric Power, which is trying to delay new air pollution standards, and United and Continental airlines, which have been greenwashing while opposing common sense rules to reduce pollution. We’re calling out corporations who delay progress while cooperating with those willing to clean up. We’re interested in working with anyone who wants to march down the path to a clean energy future. But we never have, and never will, demand that they march in lockstep.

Also posted in Climate Change Legislation, Partners for Change, Policy / Comments are closed

CFL’s: Get the Whole Story

By Sharyn Stein / Published: January 31, 2011

A recent news article has revived some of the same old questions about compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL’s). So EDF’s Elena Craft has summed up the issue on our sister blog, Texas Energy Exchange.

After compiling the most frequestly asked questions, and their answers, Elena concludes:      

Are CFLs the perfect energy solution? No, but they are a big step in the right direction. 

For a wealth of information about energy-saving light bulbs, be sure to read the whole post.

Also posted in Energy, News / Comments are closed