Welcome back to closing bell on cheddar news everyone the
biden administration today taking a step toward cleaner air and
more efficient vehicles, Department of Transportation unveiling new stricter
fuel economy standards that are aimed to both help fight
climate change and save americans money at the pump.
Well, joining me now is Peter Zezel Zezel,
associate vice president for clean air strategies at the Environmental
Defense Fund, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group. Peter
thanks so much for joining first breakdown what these new
standards are as part of this plan. Absolutely.
And thanks for taking time to talk about this today
. So really exciting announcement out of the biden administration
today. Uh, these are standards that will mean
on average passenger cars and trucks built here in the
United States will achieve 49 mph by 2026. And
as you said, that means a lot of savings
for consumers, uh, and a lot less pollution
in our air. So how does this help reduce
tailpipe emissions? And how does that also benefit the
climate while benefiting consumers pockets. So this helps reduce
tailpipe emissions. By making the vehicles we drive around
more efficient. They burn less fuel. And when
vehicles burn less fuel, it means they put less
pollution out into the air. So the administration estimated
that these rules will reduce about 2.5 billion tons of
climate pollution by 2050. Um, and using less
fuel also means that we have to go to the
gas pump less often. And so it means we
save money thousands of dollars and avoided fuel costs each
year for consumers. Thousands of dollars. I think
a lot of people want to hear that especially now
peter with prices through the roof across the board and
certainly at the gas pump of course it could take
time to see the impact here, the positive impact
when it comes to the climate. But these standards
just apply to new vehicles and so how long might
it take to see some real change? That's right
. These standards just apply to new vehicles. But
the good news is that they're going to start and
apply to vehicles in model year 2024. So that's
just a little over 18 months away from now.
And once those standards start applying, new vehicle purchasers
will, will start seeing savings really immediately. And
we'll start seeing those air pollution reductions as well.
This is outright peter encourage more electric vehicles. Companies
across the board under the biden administration pivoting and now
spending billions of dollars to invest and get their own
Tv fleets off the ground. Does this make an
E. V more attractive? Well, I think
these standards do send a strong signal that we need
to reduce harmful pollution from our passenger cars and trucks
. And so in that sense really do support the
the enormous investments we're seeing from companies Across the board
. I think we're projecting more than$500 billion dollars
of committed investment to vehicle electrification. And so these
standards really helped to reinforce the need for those investments
. So certainly this is a step in the right
direction when it comes to fighting climate change, creating
cleaner air which impacts our health, our longevity and
in this case our wallets as well. But isn't
enough does more need to be done? And if
so what else can be done at this point to
improve air quality? Well, absolutely more needs to
be done as we talked about these standards go out
through vehicles built in 2026, there's an important opportunity
to go beyond that. So we've seen commitments from
major automakers from countries around the world, from states
, leading states like California, uh, to eliminate
tailpipe pollution from motor vehicles. And so I think
there's a really important opportunity at the federal level to
build on these standards and ensure we're transitioning to a
clean and zero emitting fleet. What is the feedback
that you've received from companies corporate America when it comes
to these new standards? Well, I think we've
seen companies be you know, strongly supportive of of
standards that helped to drive down air pollution and improve
fuel economy. Give you an example just a couple
of days ago. Uh, the alliance representing nearly
all the automakers here in the U. S.
Intervened to support similar ePA standards out through model year
2026. So we've seen a lot of corporate support
for actions that will improve fuel economy and reduce air
pollution. Alright Peters arousal, Associate vice president for
clean air strategies at the nonprofit, the Environmental Defense
Fund. We appreciate it. Thank you Peter.