AG defends new EPA emissions regulations

HONOLULU — State Attorney General Anne Lopez joined a coalition of 23 other attorneys general and four cities on Thursday in filing a motion to intervene with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to defend the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas emissions standards for heavy vehicles.

The filing was in response to a lawsuit led by Nebraska, joined by 24 other states, seeking to block new regulations on internal combustion engines and greenhouse gas emissions set by the EPA. Nebraska and 17 other states have also filed a lawsuit against the state of California over its zero-emission vehicle requirements initiative.

EPA’s final rule applies to heavy-duty vehicles such as cargo trucks, delivery trucks, buses, shuttles, and specialized vehicles such as street sweepers and garbage collection vehicles. According to the coalition, the regulations will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1 billion tons and deliver $10 billion in annual climate benefits, $3.5 billion in annual operational savings for the trucking industry over the vehicle lifecycle and $300 million in annual non-gas public health benefits greenhouses.

“Living on an island chain makes Hawaii’s residents particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects of climate change,” said Deputy Attorney General Lyle Leonard, Hawaii’s lead attorney on the case. “These effects include high temperatures, extreme weather events and sea level rise. These new heavy-duty vehicle standards are part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Clean Truck Plan,” which will expand the use of clean vehicle technologies such as advanced combustion engine technologies, hybrid technologies, battery electric vehicles and fuel cell electric vehicles. Today, we join other concerned states in supporting these new federal standards, reaffirming our state’s commitment to fighting climate change by transitioning away from fossil fuels.”

As the coalition noted, transportation is the nation’s leading source of greenhouse gas emissions, and trucks account for 25% of emissions in this sector, making them the second-largest source of transportation emissions. Heavy vehicles are also a significant source of non-greenhouse gas pollution, which adversely affects air quality and contributes to serious health effects, including premature death and asthma. The coalition said the effects of both climate change and poor air quality disproportionately harm environmental justice communities located near major trucking routes.

The coalition said it was seeking to intervene because the parties involved have a vested interest in the EPA’s regulations as “urgently needed measures to mitigate the significant and growing negative impacts of climate change and pollution criteria on their states.”

The attorneys general and states behind the filing said they should be able to intervene to defend the regulations because their interests differ from those of the EPA.

The filing states that if EPA regulations are repealed, “harmful emissions that threaten public health and the environment will increase. These increases will be long-lasting, not only because of the persistence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but also because of the durability of higher-emitting vehicles sold to lower standards. These increased emissions would exacerbate the climate change and public health harms experienced by Movant-Intervenor states.”

Lopez joined the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Wisconsin and the District of Columbia, along with the city and county of Denver and the cities of Chicago, Los Angeles and New York included in the report.

Michael Tsai covers local and state politics for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at [email protected].