President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin is making good on his promise to prioritize efforts to "roll back regulations," and on Friday submitted waivers granted to California for its Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) and Omnibus NOx rules under the Biden Administration for congressional review.
Zeldin's EPA, along with the White House and the newly created National Energy Dominance Council, will send Congress the Biden administration’s rules granting waivers that allowed California to preempt federal car and truck standards promulgated by EPA and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Zeldin's office noted the Biden administration failed to send rules on California’s waivers to Congress, preventing members of Congress from deciding on "extremely consequential actions that have massive impacts and costs across the entire United States."
The EPA rules granting California waivers transmitted to Congress include California’s Advanced Clean Cars II, Advanced Clean Trucks, and Omnibus NOx rules. The two waivers regarding trucks, Zeldin said, not only increased the cost of those vehicles but also increased the costs of goods and the cost of living for American families across the country.
"This is not the United States of California. California should never be given the keys to set national policy and regulate America’s supply chain," said American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear. "Thanks to the leadership of the Trump Administration, Congress now has one more avenue available to reclaim the keys from Sacramento and restore common sense to our nation’s environmental policies.“
EPA in December approved California to implement its Omnibus Low-NOx Regulation for heavy-duty trucks, which CARB adopted back in 2020. The Omnibus Low-NOx reg slashes NOx and particulate matter (PM) emissions standards and included new requirements for test procedures, regulatory useful life, and emissions warranties. The rule built upon the EPA's own heavy-duty NOx regulation finalized in 2022 for model year 2027 and beyond.
The Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) regulation is a manufacturer's ZEV sales requirement and a one-time reporting requirement for large entities and fleets. It requires manufacturers to sell increasing percentages of zero-emission trucks through model year 2035. California first rolled out ACT for model year 2024 trucks, and several dealerships have noted to CCJ many challenges in compliance, among them that dealers cannot get enough electric trucks to sell in order to unlock additional diesel units to sell, or they simply cannot sell enough zero emissions units which allows them sell more diesel units.
California last month, seeing an unlikely path forward, withdrew its waiver request to implement the Advance Clean Fleets rule.
California in November 2023 submitted its Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) request to the EPA, which would have required trucking fleets in the state to transition to zero-emission vehicles beginning last year, and that the entire fleet be fully zero-emissions between 2035 and 2042, depending on a variety of factors. ACF also required all new heavy trucks sold in California be zero-emissions by 2036.
