A various group of Maine leaders, together with the state’s largest automobile dealership, is asking on federal authorities to implement a brand new spherical of federal clear automobile requirements to guard Maine’s surroundings and public well being.
In a information convention held through Zoom on Wednesday, the group urged the U.S. Environmental Safety Company to introduce strict greenhouse fuel emissions requirements for passenger automobiles made after 2027. The company plans to announce these new requirements by March.
“Implementing these requirements this March will make good on the Biden administration’s guarantees to place in place the strongest attainable requirements and drive investments in clear vehicles in addition to saving Mainers cash on the pump,” stated Rep. Lori Grammlich, D-Previous Orchard Seaside.
These requirements work in tandem with gas economic system requirements regulated by the Nationwide Freeway Visitors Security Administration, which mandates how the minimal variety of miles a automobile should journey on a gallon of fuel. These requirements are due out in April.
Tailpipe emissions produce about half of the carbon air pollution that causes local weather change, stated Grammlich, the co-chair of the Legislature’s surroundings committee. Adopting strict new clear automobile requirements is the one approach we are able to notice our aim of chopping carbon emissions in half by 2030, she stated.
It is going to additionally assist the 136,000 Mainers – together with 20,000 kids – who’ve bronchial asthma, a respiratory sickness that may be attributable to and exacerbated by air air pollution, stated Rebecca Boulos, the chief director of the Maine Public Well being Affiliation.
“In Maine, we’re within the unlucky place of importing most of our air air pollution from different states on account of wind path and geography,” Boulos stated. “This air pollution hurts our air high quality, which might improve the incidence and prevalence of respiratory sicknesses, together with bronchial asthma.”
These well being dangers can’t be emphasised sufficient, Boulos stated.
Visitors strikes up the northbound lanes of the Maine Turnpike in Wells on Friday afternoon, the beginning of the lengthy Labor Day weekend. Gregory Rec/Workers Photographer
The well being dangers linked to unhealthy air high quality are even larger amongst Maine’s underserved and marginalized populations, who are inclined to have much less entry to preventive well being care and remedy, and stay nearer to high-pollution areas, together with highways, Boulos stated.
“We have to make the transition to cleaner and zero-pollution automobiles,” Boulos stated. “By investing in cleaner vehicles, and lowering dangerous air pollution, we’re investing in Maine individuals, making certain our most weak populations, together with our youngsters, have cleaner air.”
Maine is seeing the outcomes of a quickly altering local weather in our warming winters, extreme storms, and rising common temperatures within the Gulf of Maine, stated Kathleen Meil, senior coverage director at Maine Conservation Voters. Making vehicles cleaner will lower the air pollution that causes these adjustments.
Adam Lee of Lee Auto Mall, the most important automobile dealership in Maine by quantity, warned that automakers will declare they’ll’t make cleaner vehicles with out going bankrupt. However that’s what they stated about earlier federal mandates, like seat belts, airbags, and anti-lock brakes, Lee famous.
Demand for low-emission, high-efficiency automobiles is so excessive that certainly one of Lee’s dealerships needed to cease taking orders final summer season for a plug-in hybrid Toyota RAV4 – which had a base value of $42,000 and achieved 94 miles per gallon – after the wait listing reached eight months.
That’s a automobile seller’s dream, stated Lee, who grew up within the enterprise and has 35 years of expertise.
“Essential enhancements are in your automobile right now due to the foundations requiring it,” Lee stated. “So the following time you hear a producer inform you the requirements can’t be achieved, what they’re actually saying is that they don’t need to. As a result of it’s being finished right now.”
Whereas zero-emission electrical automobiles stands out as the long-term dream for environmentalists and policymakers alike, the federal government wants to simply accept that not everybody, particularly in Maine, can afford such automobiles, even when there have been sufficient obtainable for buy, Lee stated.
However Lee famous that his dealerships supply a dozen “old style” gas-powered vehicles that get between 50 and 60 miles per gallon, exceeding the 46 miles per gallon federal gas economic system commonplace that new fashions should hit by 2026.
That form of innovation empowers Lee to purpose excessive within the subsequent spherical of fresh automobile and gas economic system requirements from the EPA and the NHTSA later this yr. He stated: “We ought to be taking pictures for the best requirements attainable.”
Larger fuel mileage vehicles aren’t low cost, Lee admitted, however he stated it’s not clear automobile requirements that make new vehicles so costly – it’s the heated seats, blue tooth, and in-car computer systems that come commonplace in each mannequin. At the least a “clear automobile” will price you much less on the pump, he stated.
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