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Electric Vehicles

California Is Quietly Trump-Proofing Its EV Rules

Meanwhile, automakers and policymakers alike are looking to it for inspiration.

A California handshake.
california stellantis epa
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Even as the Environmental Protection Agency was preparing to release federal tailpipe emissions rules that will steer more U.S. drivers into electric vehicles, California was working in the background to harden its own, more stringent emissions standards.

On Tuesday, the state announced an agreement with Stellantis, the automaking conglomerate that contains the Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, and Ram brands to comply with more restrictive tailpipe emissions rules through 2026. California also said Stellantis would go along with its electrification mandates through 2030 — regardless of whether either is struck down by federal regulators or the courts.

The agreement is part of California’s effort to preserve its ability to set emissions standards and mandate electrification even with a hostile White House and judicial branch. By trying to get enough of the industry to agree to its rules voluntarily and not join any effort that may arise to throw them out, it hopes either to preserve its rule-making ability or, in the worst case scenario, leverage the industry’s desire for predictability to keep the rules themselves intact.

David Clegern, public information officer at the California Air Resources Board, told me there was no connection between Tuesday’s agreement and today’s EPA announcement. The deal “gives Stellantis flexibility in how they meet California's existing greenhouse gas emissions vehicle requirements," he said. In exchange, the state gets an even deeper emissions cut than it would otherwise — some 10 million extra tons of foregone greenhouse gas emissions.

Stellantis also agreed “not to oppose California’s authority under the Clean Air Act for its greenhouse gas emissions and zero-emissions vehicle standards,” the California Air Resources Board said in its announcement of the agreement.

California has long had the ability to set its own emissions standards thanks to the structure of the Clean Air Act and a waiver from the EPA. California got some automakers to agree to a version of Obama-era tailpipe emissions rules in the summer of 2019 that the Trump administration had planned on scrapping, after which Trump officials revoked California’s ability to set emissions rules. California finalized its agreement with the automakers the following year, then regained its authority to set emissions rules in 2022.

The principle behind the Stellantis deal is similar to those earlier agreements, Clegern said. Stellantis had been on the outside looking in on California’s deals with automakers, and late last year initiated an administrative process to try to get them thrown out. (It was unsuccessful.) Now, the company has agreed not only to implement emissions and electrification rules, but also to invest in electrification in the state by spending $4 million on charging infrastructure in California and $6 million in states that also adopt California’s emissions rules.

Meanwhile, the EPA is working on a new waiver process for California’s electrification standards, which would need to be completed before the end of this year to both avoid interference from a potential incoming Republican administration and to make sure it applies on the schedule the state has set out, Kathy Harris, clean vehicles director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told me. The rules, known as the Advanced Clean Car Standard II regulations, start with the 2026 model year and apply through 2035 and mandate that all new car sales in the state be electric by the middle of the 2030s.

About a dozen other states so far have adopted the ACC II standards, including Massachusetts, New York, and Oregon. 

Many commenters on the EPA car emission proposal set out the California rules as a model for what the agency should do. “Vehicle manufacturers also commented that they had extensive collaboration with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) during the development of CARB’s recently finalized Advanced Clean Car II (ACC II) standards,” according to the final rule, “and industry broadly recommended that EPA adopt the ACC II program in lieu of our proposed standards.”

In the end, the EPA rules follow a different model than the California standards, Harris said. Crucially, the EPA isn’t mandating electrification. In remarks at a White House even on Wednesday, EPA administrator Michael Regan emphasized that they were instead technology neutral and performance based, meaning that they leave it up to the automakers to figure out how to comply.

David Reichmuth, the senior engineer in the Union of Concerned Scientists’ clean transportation program, told me that, compared to California's, the EPA rules “are distinct in what they regulate and how they regulate vehicles,” he told me. Nevertheless, “they are pulling in the same direction in trying to reduce emissions from transportation and air pollution from vehicles.”

California’s ability to set its own emissions rules is not just likely to be questioned by a Republican administration should Donald Trump win in 2025, it also could be at risk in the courts. Ohio and other states with Republican attorneys general sued the EPA in 2022 over the existence of the California waiver in a case that was heard by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last fall. The ruling is still pending.

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Q&A

How the Wind Industry Can Fight Back

A conversation with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications

The Q&A subject.
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Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”

Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.

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Hotspots

A New York Town Bans Both Renewable Energy And Data Centers

And more on this week’s most important conflicts around renewable energy.

The United States.
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1. Chautauqua, New York – More rural New York towns are banning renewable energy.

  • Chautauqua, a vacation town in southern New York, has now reportedly issued a one-year moratorium on wind projects – though it’s not entirely obvious whether a wind project is in active development within its boundaries, and town officials have confessed none are being planned as of now.
  • Apparently, per local press, this temporary ban is tied to a broader effort to update the town’s overall land use plan to “manage renewable energy and other emerging high-impact uses” – and will lead to an ordinance that restricts data centers as well as solar and wind projects.
  • I anticipate this strategy where towns update land use plans to target data centers and renewables at the same time will be a lasting trend.

2. Virginia Beach, Virginia – Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia offshore wind project will learn its fate under the Trump administration by this fall, after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department must come to a decision on how it’ll handle a court challenge against its permits by September.

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Spotlight

The Wind Projects Breaking the Wyoming GOP

It’s governor versus secretary of state, with the fate of the local clean energy industry hanging in the balance.

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

I’m seeing signs that the fight over a hydrogen project in Wyoming is fracturing the state’s Republican political leadership over wind energy, threatening to trigger a war over the future of the sector in a historically friendly state for development.

At issue is the Pronghorn Clean Energy hydrogen project, proposed in the small town of Glenrock in rural Converse County, which would receive power from one wind farm nearby and another in neighboring Niobrara County. If completed, Pronghorn is expected to produce “green” hydrogen that would be transported to airports for commercial use in jet fuel. It is backed by a consortium of U.S. and international companies including Acconia and Nordex.

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