California’s top air quality agency today called on the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency to “immediately” approve the state’s order to phase out diesel trucks.

Air Resources Board Chair Liane Randolph was one of more than 250 people who registered for a virtual hearing today on whether the EPA should grant California a waiver allowing the state to implement its regulation. The hearing lasted 12 hours.

California’s law, passed in 2023, is the first in the world to ban new diesel trucks and require a shift to zero-emissions semi-trailers, garbage trucks, delivery trucks and other medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. Starting in 2036, no new medium- and heavy-duty fossil-fuel trucks will be allowed to be sold in the state. Large trucking companies must convert their fleets to electric or hydrogen models by 2042.

The diesel ban is one of the most far-reaching and controversial measures that California has adopted in recent years to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gases.

Trucking companies, agricultural groups and others told the EPA today that the rules would hurt the economy and the deadlines would be difficult to meet. Environmental and civic groups, clean energy companies and at least one major retailer, Ikea, spoke in favor of the measure.

For more than 50 years, California has had the authority under the Clean Air Act to set its own emissions standards for trucks, cars and other vehicles, but the EPA must grant a waiver for each individual rule California enacts before it can be implemented.

One of the state’s deadlines – regulating trucks operating in ports – was supposed to take effect this year, but the aviation agency has delayed implementation of the measure until it receives an exemption from the EPA.

An EPA spokesman declined to say when a decision on the exemption would be made.

The waiver request is one of several that California regulators hope the EPA will decide on before the November election. Supporters of California’s climate rules fear that a return of former President Donald Trump to the White House could block future approvals.

Randolph told the EPA that diesel trucks contribute “significantly” to the state’s air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, so transitioning California’s fleets from diesel to electric or other zero-emission options is critical to improving public health and meeting the state’s climate goals.

Andrea Vidaurre, co-founder of the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, a San Bernardino-based citizens’ group, says zero-emission trucks are needed to eliminate air pollution in the Inland Empire, where warehouses and trucking companies are located.

“This is the only way we can actually provide some relief to the communities that live in some of the … deadliest air pollution areas in the country,” she said. “We don’t see any other way.”

But trucking companies point out that zero-emissions semi-trucks can be twice as expensive as the diesel version, take hours to charge, don’t have the range many companies need and don’t have an adequate network of charging stations across the state.

Matt Schrap, executive director of the Harbor Trucking Association, which represents truck operators at California’s major ports, called the rule “unprecedented” and “ill-conceived.” The rule would hit truck drivers hard and would be impossible to implement, Schrap said, because the state does not have the charging network needed to meet demand for electric trucks.

“It’s not that anyone in our industry is against advanced technologies,” Schrap said. “But we are very concerned about how this regulation is implemented because it has real implications, not only for companies but also for the end consumer.”

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA must follow certain rules when denying a California exemption: California’s decision would have to be “arbitrary and capricious” in its determination that its standards protect public health, or the state does not need the rules to “satisfy compelling and extraordinary conditions,” or they violate the Clean Air Act’s technical feasibility provisions.

For decades, the EPA has granted California waivers to set its own ambitious, technology-leading standards for cars, trucks and other fuels. Only one waiver was initially rejected – a 2008 rule setting greenhouse gas emissions limits for cars – and that decision was quickly reversed and the waiver approved.

An electric delivery truck will be on display during the Zero Emissions Convoy in Bakersfield on February 23, 2023.

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Larry Valenzuela

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CalMatters

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The previous Trump administration used the state’s special status to impose stricter air pollution standards – one of the more significant environmental battles of the Trump era. The Biden administration reversed those measures in 2022.

“The previous Trump administration tried to repeal California’s exemption, and that is Donald Trump’s stated goal today,” Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at UC Davis, told CalMatters before the hearing. “That’s why it’s important to get the exemptions before November.”

Truck engine manufacturers and California reached an agreement on the regulations earlier this year, but trucking companies are still opposed. When California passed the ban last year, a top trucking industry executive predicted economic chaos and dysfunction and said the rule would likely “fail quite spectacularly.”

Mike Tunnell, executive director of the American Trucking Associations, called on the EPA at today’s hearing to “investigate the facts surrounding the deployment of zero-emission trucks” because the industry believes the rule violates the Clean Air Act’s provisions on the feasibility of the technology. He said the state “has failed to understand and consider the economic and infrastructure requirements that make implementing the rule on California’s timeline unfeasible.”

Converting the state’s fleets to diesel — which has been a highly efficient powerplant for heavy-duty vehicles for decades — is one of California’s biggest actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and eliminate smog and soot. It’s especially important for low-income communities burdened by freight traffic.

“California still has the worst air quality in the country,” Randolph, chairman of the EPA’s Office of Air Quality, told the hearing. “In California, too, the climate crisis continues to worsen, with coastal erosion, extreme weather, high temperatures and wildfires exacerbating the air quality problems we already face.”

The rule would impact commercial truck traffic on California’s roads and would affect approximately 1.8 million vehicles, including those of the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, UPS and Amazon.

Some major companies, including Pepsi, already have electric fleets in operation. Amazon announced earlier this year that it had 50 heavy-duty electric trucks in operation in Southern California and hundreds of electric vans nationwide.

Comments from companies other than trucking companies were mixed today, with IKEA voicing support for the exemption, while the Western Growers Association, which represents California farmers, argued the requirements could prove to be a burden for California farmers.

Sales of new electric trucks, buses and vans in California doubled last year compared to the previous year; one in six vehicles sold in the state had zero carbon emissions, according to state data.

Governor Gavin Newsom said California is “saying goodbye to dirty trucks and delivery fleets – it cleans our air and protects public health.”

Sperling, of UC Davis, said the rule is an important measure. But he said the purchase requirements are “problematic because they are complicated and affect thousands of companies,” and that makes the rules “politically and administratively problematic.”

California passed its first rule to increase sales of zero-emission trucks and buses in 2020, and three years later, under the Biden administration, the EPA granted California a waiver to enforce the measure.

The new regulations also prohibit the sale of diesel trucks:

• From 2036, truck manufacturers will only be allowed to sell zero-emission models of heavy and medium-duty trucks.
• Major trucking companies in California must convert their fleets to electric vehicles. Timelines vary by truck type, but companies must buy more trucks over time until all trucks are zero-emissions by 2042.
• Trucks transporting cargo to and from the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland face one of the strictest timelines: all must be electric by 2035, and new arrivals must be emission-free by 2024.
• The phase-in to zero-emission models only applies to fleets owned or operated by companies with 50 or more trucks or annual revenue of $50 million or more, and federal agencies, including the U.S. Postal Service. This includes trucks weighing 8,500 pounds or more and delivery trucks.