Texas Celebrates 5 Years of Cleaner Cars While Trump Administration Attacks Program
AUSTIN – With the help of a fiddler, balloons, cake, and electric cars, Texas elected officials and community leaders will say “Happy 5th birthday, Clean Car Standards!” on Thursday, commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Obama Administration’s Clean Car Standards. These standards aren’t just good for the environment, they’re good for the economy as well: Texas has saved $3 billion since automakers, federal and state governments and other stakeholders agreed upon the rules on October 15, 2012.
“It’s not every five year-old who can cut pollution and save oil. These Clean Car Standards are working, and here in Texas we have already seen billions in consumer savings all while reducing dangerous emissions,” said Luke Metzger, Director of Environment Texas.
But with the Trump administration working to undermine these standards, it’s unclear if they’ll make it to year 6. This summer, President Trump reopened the EPA’s midterm evaluation on the Clean Car Standards, a process that opens the door for the administration to weaken the standards to benefit automakers while harming our health and costing hardworking families money.
In response, thousands of Americans submitted comments last week opposing any efforts to gut our best climate program. Cars, buses, trucks and other transportation modes are America’s top sources of climate pollution, and the forward-thinking Clean Car Standards, when fully phased in, will cut carbon pollution nationwide by 6 billion metric tons. Here in Texas, transportation makes up 31% of global warming emissions. Locally, these standards will eliminate global warming emissions nearly equivalent to those from providing electricity to the city of Houston.
A recent report released by Environment Texas Research and Policy Center Renewables on the Rise: A Decade of Progress Toward a Clean Energy Future, highlighted the extensive growth in clean vehicle technologies over the past decade. In the first five months of 2017 alone, electric vehicle sales were up an additional 44 percent compared to 2016. Texas ranked 6th in the nation for electric vehicles sold with 18,139 and second in the nation for public charging stations with 888.
Environment Texas also released Happy Birthday Clean Cars, a 2-minute video celebrating the standards and highlighting the importance of defending them. The CleanCar Standards are working, but now the Trump administration is trying to dismantle these important standards that have cut pollution and saved consumers money
“In Austin, we’ve learned that we prosper in Austin in large part not in spite of but because we stay true to our environmental values. These clean car standards have saved people in Austin a lot of money on gas, and our leadership on electric cars is going to be a huge boon for your wallet and your lungs for generations to come,” said Mayor Steve Adler.
Nationally, the existing standards are set to save 6 billion metric tons of dangerous global warming pollution when fully phased in.
The standards are also projected save a lot of fuel and money — nationally, they’re set to cut our oil use by 12 billion barrels and save Americans $67 billion to $122 billion by 2025. And that’s worth celebrating.
“On their 5th birthday, the Clean Car Standards are under attack. We’re calling on EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to make sure we’ll be celebrating less pollution and cleaner cars for years to come,” said Metzger.
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Environment Texas Research & Policy Center is a 501(c)(3) organization. We are dedicated to protecting our air, water and open spaces. We investigate problems, craft solutions, educate the public and decision-makers, and help the public make their voices heard in local, state and national debates over the quality of our environment and our lives. For more information, visit www.environmenttexascenter.org.
