In a concession to automakers and unions, the Biden administration plans to relax elements of one of its most ambitious policies to combat climate change: tailpipe emissions limits designed to encourage Americans to switch from gasoline-powered cars to electric vehicles, according to three people familiar with the plan are.
Instead of essentially requiring automakers to quickly ramp up sales of electric vehicles over the next few years, the government would give automakers more time, with a sharp increase in sales only required after 2030, these people said. They asked to remain anonymous because the regulation has not yet been finalized. The administration plans to release the final rule by spring.
The shift comes as President Biden faces strong headwinds in his re-election bid and fight against climate change. Its goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from gasoline-powered vehicles, which are the single largest source of greenhouse gases emitted by the United States.
At the same time, Mr. Biden needs the cooperation of the auto industry and the political support of unionized auto workers, who supported him in 2020 but now fear that an abrupt transition to electric vehicles would cost jobs. Meanwhile, consumer demand fell short of automakers' expectations as potential buyers were put off by sticker prices and the relative scarcity of charging stations.
Sensing an opening, former President Donald J. Trump, the Republican front-runner, has embraced electric cars, falsely warning the public that they “don't work” and telling auto workers that Mr. Biden's policies are “insane,” which he would expire on the “first day” of his return to the White House.
Last spring, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed the strictest exhaust emissions limits ever. The rules would be so strict that the only way for automakers to comply would be to sell huge numbers of zero-emission vehicles in a relatively short period of time.
The EPA designed the proposed rules so that 67 percent of new car and light-duty vehicle sales will be all-electric by 2032, up from 7.6 percent in 2023, a radical reshaping of the American auto market.
That remains the goal. But as they finalize the rules, administration officials are tweaking the plan to slow the pace at which automakers would have to comply, so electric vehicle sales would grow more slowly until 2030, but then would have to rise sharply.
The change in pace is a response to automakers saying more time is needed to build a nationwide network of charging stations and driving down the cost of electric vehicles, and to unions that want more time to try to unionize new electric car factories to organize which will be opened throughout the country, especially in the south.
But delaying the rule's most stringent requirements could come at a cost to the climate after the hottest year in history.
An ambitious first plan
According to the EPA models, postponing the sharp increase in electric vehicle sales until after 2030 to 2055 would still save about the same amount of auto emissions as the original proposal. But it would mean the country would continue pumping car exhaust into the atmosphere in the short term. Scientists say every year counts in the government's efforts to save the planet from even deadlier and more costly climate disasters.
“Warming will accelerate if U.S. transportation emissions don’t fall before 2030,” said James Glynn, senior researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
Scientists have warned that if average global temperatures rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, people would struggle to adapt to increasingly severe storms, floods, fires, heat waves and other disruptions
The planet has already warmed by around 1.2 degrees Celsius.
Ali Zaidi, Mr. Biden's senior climate adviser, declined to discuss the details of the final rule. But he said in an interview that Mr. Biden's climate policies, combined with record federal investments in renewable energy, would still help meet the president's goal of cutting the country's greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.
“I am very pleased with how our policies, including regulatory measures, are coming together to improve our ability to achieve our 2030 targets and prepare for the longer-term path,” Mr Zaidi said.
Still, experts say it is uncertain whether Mr. Biden can meet his twin goals of cutting the country's greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and eliminating them by 2050, a goal that scientists say all nations must meet to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change .
Cautious unions
Support for labor has been a central part of Mr. Biden's political coalition and his portrayal of himself as a fighter for the middle class.
That support came into jeopardy last spring when the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new limits on tailpipe emissions. Soon after, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers, wrote that the union was withholding its support for Mr. Biden's reelection bid because of “concerns about the transition to electric vehicles.”
The union is wary of electric vehicles because they require fewer workers to assemble and many electric vehicle factories are built in states with few unions.
In public comments on the proposed rule, United Auto Workers unions urged the Biden administration to relax the compliance timeline so that “the severity increases gradually and occurs over a longer period of time.” Union leaders repeated that demand in conversations with senior White House officials, including Mr. Zaidi, over the past six months. Biden administration officials said the union's comments “resonated.”
When the union went on strike against Ford, General Motors and Stellantis last fall, in part over fears of the industry's shift to electric vehicles, Mr. Biden sought to allay their concerns and became the first president to side with workers at the strike line.
In early January, the EPA sent a revised version of its auto emissions rule with the longer time frame to the White House. Weeks later, the United Auto Workers endorsed Mr. Biden.
A union spokesman declined multiple requests for an interview with Mr. Fain.
After the endorsement, Mr. Trump called Mr. Fain an “idiot” on his social media page Truth Social. “He accepted Biden's 'vision' of all electric vehicles, which require far fewer workers to produce each car but, more importantly, are not desired by consumers in large numbers and are ALL made in China,” Trump wrote.
Barry Rabe, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, noted how Mr. Trump has focused on the concerns about electric vehicles that permeate this automotive state, one of the few swing states where the election is likely to be decided.
“Trump has been very effective at using wedge issues so far,” Rabe said. “Whenever he comes to the state, it comes up. And this isn't abstract in Michigan, it's a real question. “Which plant will I work at?”
Concerned automakers
Although a record 1.2 million electric vehicles were sold in the U.S. last year, growth is slowing, even though the new regulations would require those sales to increase nearly 10-fold in just eight years.
While buyers of new electric vehicles are eligible for tax credits of up to $7,500, only 18 models are currently eligible for the full tax credit, down from about two dozen last year. One of those eligible models, the Ford F-150 Lightning, an all-electric pickup truck that once had a waiting list of 200,000, posted sales of 24,000 last year, far less than Ford's forecast of 150,000.
And while construction of electric vehicle chargers is increasing, nearly doubling from about 87,000 in 2019 to more than 172,000 last year, analysts expect the country will need more than two million chargers by 2030 to meet the demand to support the growth in electric vehicles envisaged by the proposed rules.
All of this worries automotive companies, which have invested around $146 billion in the research and development of electric vehicles in the last three years. According to the Center for Automotive Research, a nonprofit organization in Ann Arbor, Michigan, auto companies face billions of dollars in fines annually if emissions associated with their car sales exceed limits set by the new rules.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents 42 auto companies that produce about 97 percent of new vehicles sold in the United States, called on the government to do the same mitigation that the United Auto Workers had sought.
“Speed matters,” John Bozzella, president of the alliance, said in an interview. “Give the market and supply chains a chance to catch up, preserve customer choice and ensure more public charging stations come online.”
Analysts say the current slowdown in electric vehicle sales is expected because the market for first-time adopters – typically wealthier coastal residents who bought an EV as a second car – is saturated.
“It may take some time before the larger middle class market in the Central Interior is ready to accept the purchase of plug-in cars,” said K. Venkatesh Prasad, senior vice president for research at the Center for Automotive Research.
It may be easier to sell many more electric vehicles after 2030, Mr. Prasad said.
“New technologies are coming onto the market, prices are changing, consumer behavior is changing,” he said. “If you run one of these companies and have a little extra time, you would make the most of every second. You can do things that allow you to source components better, test new technologies, battery technology becomes cheaper and allows people to drive longer distances, there is more investment in charging infrastructure and in the minds of consumers you could “Starting to see more acceptance of it.”
Some analysts said the compromise, relaxing rules to give auto companies and workers what they want, could be worth it if it helps Mr. Biden win the election, as Mr. Trump has made clear he intends to do this if he wins Reset the rules completely.
David Victor, co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at the University of California San Diego, said: “For a few years there will be more emissions, but the likelihood of the rule sticking increases.”