In a concession to automakers and labor unions, the Biden administration plans to loosen elements of one of its most ambitious strategies to fight climate change, limits on emissions designed to get Americans to switch from gas-powered cars in electric vehicles. to three people familiar with the plan.
Instead of effectively requiring automakers to rapidly increase sales of electric vehicles in the coming years, the administration will give automakers more time, with a sharp sales increase not required until after 2030, these people said. They asked to remain anonymous because the regulation has not been finalized. The administration plans to publish the final rule by early spring.
The change comes as President Biden faces strong headwinds as he seeks re-election while trying to tackle climate change. Its goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from gasoline-powered vehicles, which are the single largest source of greenhouse gases emitted by the United States.
At the same time, Mr. Biden needs cooperation from the auto industry and political support from unionized autoworkers who backed him in 2020 but now worry that a sharp shift to electric vehicles would cost jobs. Meanwhile, consumer demand hasn’t been what automakers hoped for, with potential buyers put off by sticker prices and the relative scarcity of charging stations.
Sensing an opening, former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner, has seized on electric cars, falsely warning the public that they “don’t work” and telling auto workers that Mr Biden’s policies are “absurd” that he would turn them off on the “first day” of his return in the White House.
Last spring, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed the strictest emissions limits ever. The rules would be so strict that the only way car manufacturers could comply would be to sell a huge number of zero-emission vehicles in a relatively short period of time.
The EPA designed the proposed regulations so that 67 percent of new car and light truck sales would be all-electric by 2032, up from 7.6 percent in 2023, a radical reshaping of the U.S. auto market.
That remains the goal. But as they finalize the regulations, administrators are tweaking the plan to slow the pace at which automakers will have to comply so that sales of electric vehicles grow more gradually through 2030, but then rise sharply.
The change in pace is in response to automakers who say more time is needed to build a national network of charging stations and drive down the cost of electric vehicles, as well as labor unions who want more time to try to build new electric car factories that are opening all over the country, especially in the South.
But delaying the rule’s stricter requirements could come at a cost to the climate, after the hottest year on record.
An ambitious initial plan
Postponing the sharp increase in electric vehicle sales until after 2030 would eliminate about the same amount of car emissions as the original proposal by 2055, according to EPA models. But that would mean the nation would continue to pump car emissions into the atmosphere in the short term. Scientists say every year counts in government efforts to prevent the planet from tipping into more deadly and costly climate disasters.
“You’re going to get faster warming if U.S. transportation emissions don’t come down before 2030,” said James Glynn, senior research fellow at the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
Scientists have warned that if average global temperatures rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, people will struggle to adapt to increasingly violent storms, floods, fires, heat waves and other disruptions
The planet has already warmed by about 1.2 degrees Celsius.
Ali Zaidi, Mr. Biden’s senior climate adviser, declined to discuss the details of the final regulation. But he said in an interview that Mr. Biden’s climate policies, combined with record federal investments in renewable energy, would still help meet the president’s goal of cutting the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions in half to 2030.
“I feel very good about how our policies, including regulatory actions, fit together to strengthen our ability to meet our 2030 goals and set us up for a long-term trajectory,” Mr Zaidi said.
But experts say it is uncertain whether Mr. Biden can meet his twin goals of halving the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and eliminating them by 2050, a goal that scientists say all nations must succeed to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change. .
Reserve Unions
Labor support has been a key part of Mr. Biden’s political coalition and his image as a fighter for the middle class.
That support was threatened last spring when the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new limits on emissions. Soon after, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, wrote that the union was withdrawing its support for Mr. Biden’s re-election because of “concerns about the transition to electric vehicles.”
The union has been wary of electric vehicles, as they require fewer workers to assemble and many EV plants are built in states with few unions.
In public comments filed on the proposed rule, the United Auto Workers pressed the Biden administration to relax the compliance schedule so that it “increases stringency more gradually and occurs over a longer period of time.” Union leaders have repeated that demand in discussions with senior White House officials, including Mr. Zaidi, over the past six months. Biden administration officials said the union’s comments “resonated.”
Last fall, when the union went on strike against Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, in part over fears of the industry’s shift to electric vehicles, Mr. Biden sought to assuage their concerns and became the first president who stood with the workers in line. .
In early January, the EPA sent the White House a revised version of its longest-running auto emissions rule. Weeks later, the United Auto Workers endorsed Mr. Biden.
A union representative declined multiple requests for an interview with Mr. Fain.
After the endorsement, Mr. Trump called Mr. Fein “a dope” on Truth Social, his social media site. “He laid out Biden’s ‘vision’ of all electric vehicles, which require far fewer workers to build each car, but, more importantly, are not desired in large numbers by the consumer and will ALL be made in China,” he wrote Mr. Trump. .
Barry Rabe, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, noted how Mr. Trump has focused on anxiety about electric vehicles sweeping through this auto-making state, one of the few states likely to hold the election. . determined.
“Trump has been very effective in the past at using wedge issues,” Mr. Rabe said. “Whenever he comes to state, that shows up. And this isn’t abstract to Michigan, it’s a real question. “Which factory will I work in?”
Concerned car manufacturers
Although a record 1.2 million electric vehicles were sold in the United States last year, growth is slowing, even though new regulations would require a nearly tenfold increase in such sales in just eight years.
While buyers of new electric vehicles are eligible for up to $7,500 in federal tax credits, only 18 models are currently eligible for that full credit, up from about 20 last year. One of those eligible models, the Ford F-150 Lightning, an all-electric pickup truck that once had a waiting list of 200,000, last year saw sales of 24,000, well short of the 150,000 Ford had projected.
And while manufacturing of EV chargers is expanding, nearly doubling from about 87,000 in 2019 to more than 172,000 last year, analysts predict the country will need more than two million chargers by 2030 to support the electric vehicle growth projected by the proponents. rules.
All of this worries car companies, which have invested about $146 billion over the past three years in research and development of electric vehicles. according to the Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit organization in Ann Arbor, Mich. Auto companies will face billions of dollars in fines annually if emissions associated with their car sales exceed the limits set by the new regulations.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents 42 auto companies that make about 97 percent of new vehicles sold in the United States, has asked the administration for the same slowdown sought by the United Auto Workers.
“Pace matters,” John Bozella, the alliance’s president, said in an interview. “Give the market and supply chains a chance to catch up, keep the customer’s ability to choose, let more public charging come online.”
Analysts say the current lag in EV sales is to be expected, as the market for early adopters — typically wealthier, coastal residents who have bought an EV as a second car — is saturated.
“It may be some time before the larger middle-class, middle-class market is ready to embrace the plug-in car market,” said K. Venkatesh Prasad, senior vice president of research at the Center for Automotive Research.
It could be easier to sell many more electric vehicles after 2030, Mr. Prasad said.
“There’s new technology coming in, prices are changing, consumer behavior is changing,” he said. “If you’re running one of these businesses and you have a little extra time, you’d use every second. You can do things that allow you to source better components, test new technologies, battery technology will become cheaper and allow people to drive longer distances, there’s more investment in charging infrastructure and in the minds of consumers you could start to see more acceptance of this.”
Some analysts said the compromise, loosening rules to give automakers and workers what they want, could be worth it if it helps Mr. Biden win the election, as Mr. Trump has made clear that if he wins, he plans to scrap the rules entirely.
David Victor, co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at the University of California, San Diego, said: “You have more emissions for a few years, but you increase the chances that the rule will be met.”
