WASHINGTON — Earlier this month, Minnesota’s GOP lawmakers voted for a bill that would halt what is perhaps President Bident’s most aggressive climate change policy: ambitious new car pollution rules that could require electric vehicles to account for up to two-thirds of new cars sold in the United States by 2032.
Rep. Tom Emmer, R-6th District, called the regulations “heavy-handed, carrot-and-stick government intervention in the U.S. automobile industry and consumer markets to advance unproven technology” and “an egregious use of regulatory power.”
In a post on X, Emmer said the bill that would block Biden’s plan, sponsored by Michigan Republican Rep. Tim Walberg, “ensures that American new car buyers can continue to purchase the vehicle that fits their needs, instead of only vehicles that EPA allows.”
Reps. Pete Stauber, R-8th District, Brad Finstad, R-1st District and Michelle Fischbach, R-7th District, all voted for the Choice in Automobile Retail Sales (CARS) Act, which was opposed by Minnesota’s Democratic lawmakers. Although it passed the U.S. House on a largely party line vote, the U.S. Senate isn’t likely to take it up and President Biden has promised to veto it if gets to his desk.
Opposing the promotion of electric vehicles could run counter to efforts by Stauber and others to establish nickel and copper mining in Minnesota, which they say is needed to provide batteries for EVs and other clean technology.
For instance, during a recent congressional hearing, Stauber asked a U.S. Department of Transportation official if he preferred electric vehicles be made with minerals sourced in the United States, including his Iron Range-based district.
Kelsey Emmer, Stauber’s press secretary, said the congressman’s stance “is not at all contradictory.”
“Congressman Stauber supported the CARS Act because he believes in consumer choice and wants to block the Biden administration from putting forward electric vehicle mandates that dictate what type of car a family can drive,” she said in an emailed statement. “A large portion of his constituents are blue-collar, working-class people who simply do not want an overpriced and heavily subsidized vehicle that is extremely unreliable in cold climates.”
Kelsey Emmer also said “Stauber has no problem with those who freely choose to buy an EV for themselves, but consumers should have a choice.”
She also said Stauber believes it’s “hypocritical” for the Biden administration to pressure Americans “to buy this so-called clean energy technology” when much of the critical minerals used to make EVs are sourced in China and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where there are instances of child labor.
“I’m sure most Americans who freely choose to purchase an EV would prefer to see these minerals responsibly and ethically sourced, and we can do just that in northern Minnesota,” Kelsey Emmer said.
A threat to freedom?
The EPA’s tailpipe regulations would phase in through vehicle model years 2027 through 2032. The agency plans to finalize the regulations in March 2024 and says that through 2055, the proposed standards would avoid nearly 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions, which is equal to more than twice the U.S.’s annual CO2 emissions as of 2022.
But there’s plenty of pushback — and not just from Republican members of Congress.
The EPA has received thousands of public comments opposing and supporting the tailpipe emission plan.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing major automakers, has urged the Biden administration to make significant changes.
In its public comment to the EPA, the group said it supports efforts to reduce the emissions of internal combustion engines that would continue to be produced during the transition to EVs. But the group also said the timeframe for the new tailpipe emission standards are “neither reasonable nor achievable.”
“(The Alliance) does not believe they can be met without substantially increasing the cost of vehicles, reducing consumer choice, and disadvantaging major portions of the United States population,” the group said.
The Alliance also questioned whether enough people could afford EVs, whether there would be the charging infrastructure in place that could handle the sharp increase in electric vehicles, whether automakers could obtain enough critical minerals for the increased number of batteries needed to power EVs and whether customers would embrace the technology on such a large scale in such a short time.
Predictably, the nation’s petroleum industry also took issue with the new regulations. The American Petroleum Institute said they “threaten freedom,” because to meet the new standards, 67% of new cars and 40% of medium-duty pickups and vans would have to be electric by 2032. Like the Alliance, API said EVs would be priced beyond what many Americans could afford.
The Departments of Transportation in Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming proffered a different argument: The rush to electric vehicles would deplete the federal Highway Trust Fund, which is funded largely through taxes on gasoline and pays for most of the federal share of transportation projects.
“A major erosion of revenue into the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) would result from such drastic changes, as the new EVs encouraged by the proposed rule would generate wear and tear on the highways without paying fuel taxes into the HTF. This would place significant downward pressure on highway and bridge investment, which already faces an investment backlog of $786 billion,” the states said in their public comments.
Minnesota’s Department of Transportation did not weigh in on the new regulations.
But the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency did.
“We see the proposed rulemaking as an opportunity to advance climate action, reduce harm to Minnesotans from criteria pollutants and air toxics, and accelerate the transition to electric vehicles in our state,” the agency told the EPA in a comment.
The nation’s environmental groups also praised the Biden administration plan, with several groups urging members to flood the EPA with letters of support.
“For far too long, vehicle pollution has been devastating for the health of communities across the country and the climate,” said the Union of Concerned Scientists.
It’s hard to say what final regulations will look like, and whether they will ever be implemented, especially if Biden doesn’t win reelection. Another unknown is how those regulations would affect Minnesota, a state that has fewer EV drivers than many others and with winter temperatures that affect an EV’s efficiency.
According to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, there were just over 34,000 EVs registered in the state in January of this year, which is less than 1% of registered vehicles in Minnesota.
Still, Minnesota is not at the bottom of the list when it comes to EVs on the road. According to J.D. Power, the 10 states with the lowest levels of EV adoption — and there’s indication their popularity is falling — are Michigan, Iowa, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Wyoming, Louisiana, South Dakota, West Virginia and North Dakota.
