Contents:
1. Summary
2. Supreme Court ruling on global warming emissions
3. UCS Vanguard clean vehicle blueprint
4. UCS Automaker Rankings
5. California Clean Car Discount
6. Diesel pollution
7. Fuel economy & oil savings
8. Cool fuels

Summary

In April, the Union of Concerned Scientists celebrated a monumental Supreme Court victory. The case, brought by 12 states, a number of cities, and organizations including UCS, determined that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate global warming pollutants from vehicles. We also released two major reports that reinforce efforts to support clean car standards. Momentum continues to build in Congress for meaningful increases in fuel economy standards, while biofuels bills could have a positive or negative role in providing climate-friendly alternatives to oil, depending on their implementation.

Supreme Court Ruling on Global Warming Emissions

On April 2, the Supreme Court issued a highly-anticipated ruling confirming that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the authority to regulate global warming emissions from cars and trucks as pollution under the Clean Air Act. The case was brought by more than a dozen states, several cities, and various public interest organizations including the Union of Concerned Scientists. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that the EPA not only has the authority, but also the duty to reduce global warming pollution. The Court said that the EPA’s arguments for not taking action in the past were “unpersuasive,” and in no way license the EPA to “shirk its duty to protect the public health and welfare.”

This ruling is a major step forward for California and 11 other states that have been fighting to implement laws to reduce global warming pollution from cars and trucks. For years, the EPA has refused to issue California a waiver for its global warming standard for cars, effectively blocking every state that has adopted the standards and cooling interest of others that might consider adopting. The EPA has now relented and started a public comment process on the waiver. It will hold a public hearing on the state's waiver request May 22 in Washington. And the public comment period will run through June 15.

Despite this clear decision from the Supreme Court, automakers and dealerships are continuing their efforts to block the states from implementing clean car laws. An automakers lawsuit against the state of Vermont is proceeding now, and a similar lawsuit against California will begin in the coming months. UCS engineers, media staff, outreach specialists, and activists have been deeply engaged in supporting California and Vermont as they battle the automakers in courthouses and the court of public opinion. Thanks to activists’ letters and visits to the dealerships involved in the California lawsuit, one of the 11 original dealers has dropped out, and the activists continue to put pressure on the remaining ten.

Several other states, including Arizona, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, Tennessee, and Texas, are considering adopting the standards. Combined with those that have already adopted, these 19 states represent more than half the U.S. population and auto market.

UCS Vanguard Clean Vehicle Blueprint

Automakers continue in their attempts to block states from implementing the clean car standard, despite the fact that cars that would meet the standards could be built today using existing technology. To help dismantle automaker arguments on the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of the clean car standards UCS engineers created a vehicle design, dubbed the UCS Vanguard. Although the technologies in the Vanguard are currently available in vehicles on the road today, automakers have yet to combine them into a single package. These off-the shelf technologies can reduce global warming emissions by as much as 42 percent while saving consumers thousands of dollars over the lifetime of a vehicle.

In conjunction with the Vanguard release, UCS activists sent more than 12,000 letters to the president of the Auto Alliance, Dave McCurdy, urging him to stop the lawsuits and give consumers global warming solutions like the Vanguard. UCS activists also sent more than 23,000 letters to their governors and state legislators urging them to adopt the California global warming standard for cars.

UCS Automaker Rankings

To continue to build pressure on the automakers, UCS released its Automaker Rankings report on the eve of the Supreme Court decision. Honda again led the pack on its environmental performance, but Toyota made marked gains, showing that any manufacturer can make substantial environmental progress with today’s technologies. UCS activists in states containing production plants for the two dirtiest manufacturers, GM and DaimlerChrysler, sent those automakers over 1,000 letters decrying their poor performance and pointing to cleaner cars as a revenue and job-creating proposition.

Both the UCS Vanguard and Automaker Rankings will continue to be key resources for attorneys, policymakers, the media, and activists around the country fighting for clean car standards.

California Clean Car Discount

Because vehicles account for nearly a third of California’s global warming pollution, UCS has written and introduced state legislation to compliment and enhance the state’s embattled global warming standard for vehicles. This bill, AB 493—the California Clean Car Discount bill—reduces global warming pollution by creating rebates on cleaner new cars, funded by surcharges on the purchase of new vehicles with higher global warming emissions. The bill makes cleaner cars more affordable for everyone, while providing incentives for automakers to clean up their dirtiest vehicles. After intensive lobbying by the automakers and car dealers associations on one side and environmental, health, consumer, and religious groups on the other, we fell a few votes short of the required 41 Assembly members needed to pass AB 493 in 2007.  The bill is now on hold until the beginning of 2008, when the Assembly will reconsider it. To see the official vote count click here.

Diesel Pollution

Thanks in part to letters from UCS activists, and a UCS report on the health impacts of pollution from construction equipment in California, the City of San Francisco has joined New York as the two cities in the United States who have laws on the books to clean up dirty diesel pollution from construction equipment.

The San Francisco Clean Construction ordinance will require city contractors performing major projects near sensitive sites (hospitals, residential care facilities, schools or child-care centers) to use cleaner engines. This ordinance will reduce global warming pollution, toxic emissions, as well as fine and ultra fine particulates from construction sites across the city. These fine particles have been associated with severe health impacts including cardiovascular and lung disease, asthma, bronchitis, heart attacks, and strokes.

While in the last Congress, legislation that called for oil savings targets across all sectors of the economy were gaining political support, the 110th Congress may be poised to focus specifically on the transportation sector and act on a long-overdue strengthening of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.

Senators Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Richard Durbin (D-IL) and others reintroduced their “Ten in Ten” bill (S. 357) that would increase the fleetwide fuel economy of cars, pickups, minivans, and SUVs from today’s 24.6 mpg to 35 mpg by 2019 while protecting highway safety and U.S. auto industry jobs. Several senators have since introduced or cosponsored other fuel economy bills, including several former CAFE opponents such as Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) and Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND).

In his State of the Union address earlier this year, the president proposed changes to CAFE standards for cars that—if properly implemented—could sharply reduce oil dependency and global warming pollution. The challenge remains to turn these goals into reality. Fortunately, we’ve seen real progress in Congress. In March, Representatives Ed Markey (D-MA) and Todd Platts (R-PA) were joined by a remarkably bipartisan list of 37 original cosponsors including Representatives Hilda Solis (D-CA), Mike Castle (R-DE), and Bill Young (R-FL) to introduce H.R. 1506, the Fuel Economy Reform Act.

This bill would guarantee that new vehicles will average 35 mpg by 2018 and requires a continuous four percent per year improvement in fuel economy beyond 2018, unless such improvements prove technically unfeasible. UCS Washington Representative Eli Hopson spoke at the bill introduction press conference, and was joined by former Director of the CIA James Woolsey, former Director of the National Security Agency William Odom, as well as representatives from the Consumer Federation of America and the National Council of Churches.

With H.R. 1506’s cosponsor list already surpassing 100—thanks in part to nearly 10,000 letters from UCS activists—and action expected before Memorial Day in the Senate Commerce Committee on the Ten in Ten bill, UCS activists and analysts will be at the center of the best opportunity in over a decade to help make meaningful changes in the fuel economy of our autos.

Cool Fuels

Biofuels continue to receive broad support, with early Congressional action likely to focus on increasing the renewable fuel standard (RFS) originally passed in the 2005 Energy bill. UCS is working with both the environmental community and agricultural representatives to ensure that vital sustainability criteria are considered as part of any effort to increase biofuels use to ensure that biofuels development moves in a climate-friendly direction without pollution increases in other areas.  By building support within the agriculture community for low-carbon renewable fuels and for smart management practices, we can ensure that the promise of biofuels is met.

Several legislative proposals to increase the standard have been introduced, with the Senate likely to act first on Senator Bingaman's (D-NM) proposal to raise the annual requirement for renewable fuels from 7.5 billion gallons to 35 billion gallons.  Unfortunately, the Senator's bill contains few protections for the environment, and no requirement that biofuels reduce global warming emissions.   Although the most contentious issue is likely to be attempts to add liquid coal fuel to the standard, we are working with our champions to add in global warming and sustainability standards. 

Senator Feinstein  (D-CA), along with Senators Collins and Snowe (both R-ME), introduced a bill that would require a reduction in global warming emissions from fuels, by implementing a federal low carbon fuel standard like the one recently adopted in California.  This would require fuel suppliers beginning in 2015 to increase the percentage of low-carbon fuels – biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen, electricity, and others – in the motor vehicle fuel supply with a goal of reducing emissions from motor vehicle fuels by 10 percent below projected levels by 2030. The bill also includes a mandate to reduce tailpipe emissions 30 percent below 2002 levels by 2016.  We will continue to work with Senator Feinstein and others to ensure that our fuel policies maximize reductions in global warming pollution.