Big Trucks Face Strict Emissions Rules by 2032

The EPA on Friday set strict emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks, buses, and other large vehicles, an action designed to boost sales of electric vehicles and clean up some of the nation's largest sources of planet-warming greenhouse gases, per the AP.

• The new rules, which take effect for model years 2027 through 2032, vary depending on the type of vehicle and use. For instance, 30% of "heavy-heavy-duty vocational" trucks would need to be zero-emission by 2032, the EPA said, while 40% of short-haul "day cabs" would need be zero emission vehicles. Fewer than 2% of heavy trucks sold today meet that standard, notes the New York Times.
• The new standards will especially benefit an estimated 72 million people in the United States who live near freight routes used by trucks and other heavy vehicles and bear a disproportionate burden of dangerous air pollution, the agency said.

• The new rules for heavy trucks and buses come a week after the EPA announced new automobile emissions standards for passenger vehicles. However, both sets of new rules come as sales of EVs, which are needed to meet the new standards, have begun to slow. The auto industry cited lower sales growth in objecting to the EPA's preferred standards unveiled last April for passenger vehicles.
• The American Trucking Associations and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, which represent large swaths of the industry, predicted supply chain failures and said that smaller independent firms would likely hang onto older diesel trucks that spew more pollution, running counter to the EPA's goals. "The post-2030 targets remain entirely unachievable," said Chris Spear, the trucking group's CEO. "Any regulation that fails to account for the operational realities of trucking will set the industry and America's supply chain up for failure."

(More EPA stories.)