6. NAM: EPA Is Right to Delay Tier 4 Vehicle Standards

The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to push back by two years the Tier 4 criteria pollutant standards for new vehicles is a “timely and necessary [effort] to rebalance the federal regulatory landscape,” the NAM recently told the agency.

What’s going on: The draft changes, published in May, constitute the first phase of a two-part proposal to amend pollutant emissions standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles put in place by the previous administration in 2024.

• Those standards imposed overly stringent emissions mandates on vehicles starting with model year 2027, and the NAM urged both the previous and current administrations not to implement them.
• “The NAM strongly supports the administration’s actions to maximize government efficiency and productivity, reconsider regulatory actions that present ‘substantial restraint[s] on our economic growth and ability to build and innovate,’ and ‘promote market competition and innovation’ within the manufacturing industry,” the NAM told the EPA this week.

Why the delay is needed: The previous administration put together its Tier 4 emissions standards based on projections that did not bear out, the NAM said.

• The stringent 2024 rulemaking assumed “that the uptake of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) would be significant enough that they would represent a larger portion of the fleet … 26% of the MY2027 fleet and 31% of the MY2028 fleet; more recent projections have come in lower, at 8% and 12%, respectively,” the NAM told the EPA.
• Delaying compliance by two years, per the EPA’s proposal, “reflects market realities,” the NAM said.
• Furthermore, the previous administration lacked a statutory basis to make the 2024 regulatory changes.

What should happen now: The EPA’s proposal would give the agency additional time to “conduct its comprehensive review” of the standards so it can fully consider “the follow-on effects that will occur should the standards remain unchanged.”

• The NAM is urging the EPA to place greater weight, in future standards setting, on “achievability within the market.”

The NAM’s take: With its proposed delay of the standards, the EPA is aiming “to rebalance existing federal regulations and reduce regulatory burdens and costs on industry,” said NAM Vice President of Domestic Policy Christopher Phalen and NAM Senior Director of Energy and Resources Policy Mike Davin.