Trump administration to revoke California’s power to set stricter auto emissions standards

The Trump administration will revoke California’s right to set stricter air pollution standards for cars and light trucks on Wednesday, according to two senior administration officials, as part of a larger effort to weaken an Obama-era climate policy curbing greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s auto fleet.

The move sets up a legal battle between the federal government and the nation’s most populous state, which for decades has exercised authority to put in place more stringent fuel economy standards. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have vowed to adopt California’s standards if they diverge from the federal government’s, as have several major automakers.

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency and Transportation Department proposed taking away the waiver California received under the Obama administration to set tailpipe emissions for cars and light-duty trucks, as part of a rule that would freeze mileage standards for these vehicles at roughly 37 miles per gallon from 2020 to 2026.

But in July, California reached an agreement with four companies — Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW of North America — under which they pledged to produce fleets averaging nearly 50 mpg by model year 2026. That is one year later than the target set under the Obama administration.

California has clashed with other administrations over environmental regulation, but the state’s long-standing ability to write its own emissions standards has seldom been questioned in Washington. In part, that’s because of the unique history that led to California’s special authority to go its own way on air pollution.

Smog in Los Angeles had become crippling at times throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s. As scientists focused on motor vehicle exhausts as a key culprit in air pollution, state officials worked to develop the nation’s first vehicle emissions standards in 1966. The following year, the state’s new Republican governor, Ronald Reagan, established the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to undertake a statewide effort to address widespread air pollution.

As it crafted landmark clean air legislation for the country, Congress granted California special status, saying the state could request a “waiver” to require stricter tailpipe standards if it provided a compelling reason such regulations were needed. The auto industry, then as now, expressed concern over the idea of having to meet different standards in different states, but California eventually prevailed.

“It was very controversial, and it was very close,” David Vogel, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, who has written about the state’s environmental history, told The Post last year. “But every California legislator in Washington uniformly supported the waiver request. Every official in the state, from Reagan on down, wanted California to be able to address its very bad pollution.”

“There’s nothing in the Clean Air Act or EPA regulations providing for this unprecedented action,” Martha Roberts, a senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund, said in an interview. “The legislative history is explicit about broad authority for California. This is very well established legal authority that’s firmly anchored in the Clean Air Act.”

Congress has repeatedly reaffirmed that right in the years since. And in 1977, lawmakers said other states could legally adopt California’s stricter car emissions standards. Over time, emissions control strategies first adopted by California — catalytic converters, nitrous oxide regulations and “check engine” systems, to name a few — have become standard across the country.

Over the decades, the EPA has repeatedly approved waivers for California under the Clean Air Act. The state has applied for and received more than 130 waivers over the past 50 years, according to CARB.