What’s Wrong With the EPA Analysis Used to Justify New Fuel Standards for Trucks

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Heritage Foundation:

In a continued effort to address alleged man-made global warming, the Obama administration has finalized energy efficiency standards for medium and heavy-duty trucks. While the administration is pledging to reduce fuel use and cut greenhouse gas emissions, its stringent energy mandate will do nothing to affect climate change.

 

What it will do, however, is take decisions away from the American individuals and businesses and consolidate more power in Washington. The regulation requires a wide variety of vehicles—from school buses and passenger vans, to garbage and delivery trucks and long-haul tractor-trailers—to improve fuel efficiency.

 

This is the second round of fuel efficiency standards coming from the Obama administration, with this one covering model years 2021-2027.

 

According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s press release, owners of the vehicles need not worry about the higher upfront prices paid to implement new technologies because drivers will save money on fuel costs—an estimated total of nearly $170 billion, according to the EPA. The press release states that “The buyer of a new long-haul truck in 2027 would recoup the investment in fuel-efficient technology in less than two years through fuel savings.”

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Obama gives electric trucks a big bump in new climate rules

 

No market for electric-powered trucks exists now, nor in the next decade, but that isn't stopping the Obama administration from creating big subsidies for the vehicles under its latest climate rules.

 

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation on Tuesday finalized joint greenhouse gas emissions and fuel efficiency standards for big-rig trucks, vans and buses.

 

The rules are the final step in President Obama's broad effort to confront global warming. The regulations target the trucking sector, which makes up about 20 percent of the nation's transportation-based greenhouse gas emissions and energy use but only 5 percent of the vehicles on the road.

 

The truck rules provide some of the biggest incentives for companies to build more advanced vehicles that use partial or full battery-electric power to drive the truck, or adopt hydrogen fuel cells that produce electricity with water vapor as the only byproduct.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obama-gives-electric-trucks-a-big-bump-in-new-climate-rules/article/2599655