HONOLULU — State attorney general Anne Lopez joined a coalition of 23 other attorneys general and four cities Thursday in a motion to intervene in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to defend the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas emission standards for heavy-duty vehicles.
The filing was in response to a lawsuit, led by Nebraska and joined by 24 other states, seeking to block new rules for internal combustion engines and greenhouse gas emissions set forth by the EPA. Nebraska and 17 other states also filed suit against the State of California over its initiative for zero-emission vehicle requirements.
The EPA’s final rule applies to heavy-duty vehicles such as freight trucks, delivery trucks, buses, shuttles and vocational vehicles like street sweepers and refuse haulers. According to the coalition, the regulations will lead to a reduction of 1 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions and result in $10 billion in annual climate benefits, $3.5 billion in annual operational savings for the trucking industry over the lifetime as the vehicles and $300 million in annual non-greenhouse gas public health benefits.
“Living on an island chain makes the people of Hawaii especially vulnerable to the harmful effects of climate change,” said deputy attorney general Lyle Leonard, lead attorney for Hawaii on the issue. “These effects include high temperatures, extreme weather events, and sea level rise. These new heavy-duty vehicle standards are part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘Clean Trucks Plan,’ which will expand the use of clean vehicle technologies such as advanced internal combustion engine technologies, hybrid technologies, battery-electric vehicles and fuel-cell electric vehicles. Today we join other concerned states in support of these new federal standards affirming our state’s commitment to fighting climate change by transitioning away from fossil fuels.”
As the coalition noted, transportation is the leading source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country, and heavy-duty vehicles contribute 25% of emissions within the sector, making them the second-largest contributor of transportation emissions. Heavy-duty vehicles are also a significant source of non-greenhouse gas pollution that detrimentally affects air quality and contributes to serious health effects, including premature death and asthma. The impacts of both climate change and poor air quality disproportionately harm environmental justice communities located near major truck freight routes, the coalition stated.
The coalition said it is seeking to intervene because the parties involved have a compelling interest in the EPA rules as “urgently needed measures to mitigate the substantial and growing adverse effects of climate change and criteria pollution in their States.”
The attorneys general and states behind the filing said they should be allowed to intervene in defense of the rules because their interests are distinct from those of the EPA.
The filing states that should the EPA regulations be vacated, “harmful emissions that threaten public health and the environment will increase. Those increases will be long-lasting, not only because of the longevity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but also because of the longevity of higher-emitting vehicles sold under any weakened standards. Those increased emissions would exacerbate the climate change harms and public health harms Movant-Intervenor States are experiencing."
Lopez joined the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, along with the City and County of Denver, and the cities of Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York in the filing.
Michael Tsai covers local and state politics for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at michael.tsai@charter.com.