The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Transport Safety Administration (NHTSA) have released new rules for a corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standard that will increase fuel economy to the equivalent of 54.5 miles per gallon and reduce vehicle greenhouse gas emissions to 163 grams of carbon dioxide per mile by 2025. The EPA is establishing national GHG emissions standards under the Clean Air Act, and the NHTSA is establishing Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. Both programs will give flexibility to manufacturers to achieve compliance, including the use of a credit trading system and incentives for producing zero emission, plug-in hybrid, and compressed natural gas vehicles.
“[The fuel standards will] strengthen our nation’s energy security, it’s good for middle-class families and it will help create an economy built to last” Obama stated. Transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, said the standards would save Americans $1.7 trillion in fuel costs, resulting in an average savings of more than $8,000 a vehicle by 2025. A coalition of 13 auto manufacturers have come out in support of the rules, along with the United Auto Workers Union, who said the rules would expand the auto market, and environmental groups, who lauded the projected reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and oil imports.
Are these rules the most efficient or cheapest way to increase fuel economy? What are the unintended side-effects, positive or negative, of mandating higher fuel economy standards?
The cafe standards are a step forward. But we should understand what they do not do. I have not seen the data related to the analysis of impact or any thorough analysis of the new standards. But population growth, the fact that most older cars will not be impacted by CAFE and that extended cafe standards will probably increase mileage travelled, the effect of the new standards on oil imports ( ie dependency) and ghg is still imprecise. Why not simultaneous with increases in Cafe, move toward opening up the transportaton fuel market to alternative fuels such as natural gas and methanol etc. Doing this would result in lower costs at pump, certain ghg reductions, improved environmental quality and reduced dependency on imported oil. Natural gas as a transitional fuel until competitive electric cars or possibly hydro fuel vehicles is a winner…so two cheers for CAFE…again a good but not yet a needed comprehensive fuel transportation strategy. Marshall. Kaplan@Fuelfreedom.org
I strongly agree with both of Marshall Kaplan’s points — that the new CAFE standards
are a big step forward (as were Bush’s Renewable Fuel Standards RFS) but that we really need more. The CAFE standards would not begin to let us exploit the benefits we could be getting from alternate liquid fuels, such as methanol made from natural gas, which is the most efficient and easily expanded vehicle for using cheap natural gas to reduce our dependence on oil. The technical presentations posted at
http://www.methanol.org/Energy/Transportation-Fuel/Methanol-Policy-Forum-2012.aspx
provide a lot of strong evidence for that. The Open Fuel Standard bill is one excellent way to do that. In parallel, we should at least find a way to require that “GEM60″ flexible cars and trucks get absolute preference over cars and trucks which are not GEM60-flexible, in
all government procurements, starting immediately and without any sunset; that would give manufacturers an incentive to move as quickly as they can, but would avoid any need for the government to decide the schedule. (The better grade hoses and gaskets in GEM60 cars also improve maintenance and safety even when a car is driven only on gasoline!) Opening up the range of liquid fuels is also crucial to the prospects for biofuels,
because it is a lot easier and cheaper to make fuels like mixed alcohols or corrosive Fischer-Tropsch mixes than it is to make pure ethanol or refinery-grade biocrude, in large scale plants or in local Appalachian stills.