Western States Petroleum Association Vice President Kevin Slagle warns Americans about Democrats’ push for electric vehicles on Cavuto: Coast to Coast.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Thursday appeared to laud states’ efforts to combat climate change — particularly California’s gas-car ban — that go far beyond guidelines set at the federal level.
In an interview with FOX 11’s “The Issue Is” that aired Friday, Buttigieg was asked to comment on California’s plan to ban new gas cars in favor of electric vehicles by 2035 and whether that could be a national model. The ban came just days before the state began keeping lights on during a late summer heatwave.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg tours San Francisco’s long-delayed Central Subway project Thursday, September 8, 2022 in San Francisco, Calif. (Yalonda M. James/San Francisco Chronicle via AP/AP Newsroom)
Buttigieg avoided directly answering whether the Biden administration would implement similar policies, but said it was “interesting” that some states were “trying to go beyond what we’re doing at the federal level.”
“I’m really interested in following these developments as we continue to set a national policy that will form the basis for all of this. We need to move towards electric vehicles,” Buttigieg said, before admitting that some big industries are already moving in that direction on their own.
CALIFORNIA’S GRID RELIES HEAVYLY ON NATURAL GAS TO SURVIVE ENERGY CRISIS DESPITE GREEN PUSH
“But we need to make sure this happens fast enough to help us fight climate change. We need to make sure it’s done so affordably that it’s not just wealthy people, it’s (also) low-income people who need those gas savings the most, if they can even afford the electric vehicles,” Buttigieg said.
More than a dozen states are debating whether to enact plans similar to California’s bans on gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Several of the 17 states are likely to move forward with the plan, including Washington, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon and Vermont.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has been more vocal in her support of California’s ban on gas-powered cars, recently saying she supports it and praising the state for “interfering” with climate change policies.
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“I think California is really leaning in,” Granholm said when asked if she supports California law. “And of course the federal government has a goal — that’s what the President announced — by 2030 that half of the vehicles sold new in the United States would be electric.”
During the current heatwave, California has asked residents not to use large appliances and not plug in their electric vehicles for charging at certain times of the day to avoid overloading the state’s power grid.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda have both warned that power generation capacity will need to increase dramatically if millions more cars are to run on the grid rather than on gas.
Andres Hagstrom of FOX Business contributed to this report.