News

President wants cleaner, more fuel-efficient trucks

President Obama announcing higher fuel efficiency standards for medium and heavy duty vehicles. The President has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation to have the new greenhouse gas and fuel efficiency standards by March of 2016 to apply to vehicles starting with the 2018 model year. The agencies are to have a proposed rule by March of 2015.

The new rules will build on standards already in place for model years 2014-18 for those larger vehicles, including semi tractor-trailers, vocational vehicles including delivery trucks, buses and garbage trucks, and heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans.

The plan calls for a 10 to 20 percent increase in fuel efficiency, the President says that while heavy-duty trucks make up just 4 percent of the vehicles on the nation’s roadways, they account for 25 percent of the on-road fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector. The President hopes the new standards will spur engine and powertrain improvements, better aerodynamics and other innovations.

The President also renewed his call for Congress to end the $4 billion in annual subsidies to oil and gas companies and create an Energy Security Trust Fund to fund research and development for advanced technologies like hydrogen, homegrown biofuels and electricity. The President is also proposing to extend the cellulosic biofuel producer credit that expired at the end of last year.