Trump’s EPA Wants to Hear from You About Revising 2025 Fuel Economy Guidelines
Public comment period opens for plans to potentially revise stricter gas mileage requirements.
You've got a voice in this fight. On Thursday, the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency opened an official public comment period regarding the Trump Administration's decision to reconsider fuel economy standards for U.S. cars and trucks for the 2022–2025 time frame.
The move will give the public a chance to deliver their input as to whether the standards, which aim to raise overall corporate average fuel economy levels to 54.5 miles per gallon by the 2025 model year. The EPA will also be looking onto whether existing standards for 2021 model year light-duty vehicles are, as the agency put it, "appropriate."
The public comment period will be open for 45 days; the EPA will also host a public hearing, though it has not announced when and where that will take place.
The review must be completed by April 1, 2018. If the Trump Administration's review of existing fuel economy proposals finds them unrealistic, the EPA will release a new set of proposed mileage standards for public review.
“We want to increase public participation, listen to those impacted directly by our regulations and use the best available information and data to inform our regulatory actions,” EPA administrator Scott Pruitt
Pruitt also used the statement to take something of a potshot at the Obama-era EPA.
"We are moving forward with an open and robust review of emissions standards, consistent with the timeframe provided in our regulations,” he said. "We encourage the public to submit the best-available and most up-to-date information, so that we can get back on track with what the regulation actually requires of the Agency."
While the 2022–2025 fuel economy guidelines were not originally supposed to be locked in until April 2018, the previous administration acted swiftly to secure the plans in place as well as possible before Trump's inauguration in January 2017. That didn't stop the White House from reversing course come March, after a gaggle of automotive industry executives beseeched the Oval Office to be lenient. And indeed, that seems to be the new administration's intended course; a report from Reuters last month suggested the EPA and DOT were considering an alternative that would freeze CAFE standards at 2021 levels through 2025.
Pictured: EPA administrator Scott Pruitt speaks while Donald Trump looks on.
