The Energy Marketers of America (EMA) has filed its opening brief in a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals lawsuit challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) heavy-duty (HD) vehicle emissions standards for model years (MY) 2027-2032.
Recent polling suggests that Americans overwhelming oppose the Biden-Harris Adminstration’s electrification mandates. Despite public opposition, the administration continues advancing these policies through the rulemaking process without congressional authorization, undermining consumer choice and causing skyrocketing utility bills.
“Unfortunately, President Biden’s aggressive attempt to electrify the heavy-duty transportation sector will limit consumer choice on cleaner, greener ICEs, increase Americans’ utility bills to subsidize a massive expansion of the electric grid for EV charging, and threaten the viability and jobs of small business energy marketers around the country, whether they deliver gasoline, diesel or renewable fuels like ethanol, biodiesel and renewable diesel,” said EMA President Rob Underwood.
Today, heavy duty vehicles make up just one tenth of one percent of all heavy vehicles. Unfortunately, the Biden-Harris EPA wants to arbitrarily increase that figure exponentially over the next seven years. Under the rule challenged by EMA, electric trucks would make up 45 percent of all heavy-duty vehicles sold by 2032. According to EMA’s brief, the rule’s electrification of the Nation’s trucking fleet involves a major policy question that must be decided by Congress. Accordingly, the rule is lawful only if Congress clearly authorized EPA to suppress the production of internal-combustion vehicles in favor of electric ones. No statute gives EPA that highly consequential power, and EPA has never claimed the power to require companies to sell electric heavy-duty vehicles. This forced transition to electric trucks will increase transportation costs, hike prices for basic goods, and strain the electric grid. It will also increase the cost of procuring the trucks that State Plaintiffs challenging the rule need to carry out essential state services like plowing snow and repairing roads. EMA is urging the Court to reverse EPA’s rule.
Additional Legal Challenges Playing Out
EMA is part of business groups and States who have already asked the courts to review EPA’s prior tailpipe emissions standards for model year 2025 and 2026 vehicles and the Agency’s reinstatement of California’s Clean Air Act waiver to issue climate-based vehicle emissions standards. Whether California can blaze its own trail on combatting climate change also implicates the “major questions doctrine,” which holds that courts should not defer to agencies on questions of “vast economic or political significance” unless Congress has provided explicit authority to the agencies. The appeals court will be asked to decide whether Congress authorized California in the Clean Air Act to regulate vehicle emissions to target a major, global phenomenon with vast economic and policy repercussions like climate change. Additionally, EMA joined as amicus curiae challenge to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s fuel-economy standards. Check out www.fuelmatters.org for more information about clean, green liquid fuels and the electrification mandate.