Bush raises fuel economy standard for SUVs
msnbc.msn.com
By Jenny Johnson in Washington and Bernard Simon in Toronto
Financial Times
Updated: 2:42 p.m. ET March 29, 2006
The Bush administration has modestly raised the fuel economy standard for sport utility vehicles, minivans and pickup trucks to 24 from 21.6 miles per gallon, for the first time requiring the biggest SUVs to meet the standard.
"We worked hard to make sure that no single SUV gets a free pass under these new standards," Norman Mineta, transportation secretary, said yesterday.
However, environmental groups criticised the new rules for not taking account of available fuel-saving technology, nor including increasingly popular big pick-up trucks.
"This new standard is like telling a two pack-a-day smoker to cut out one cigarette," said Daniel Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming programme. "The technology exists today to make all vehicles average 40 miles per gallon within10 years."
The new "corporate average fuel economy" standards, known as CAFE, will take effect for model years 2008-11.
The government said that the tighter CAFE standards reflected the need to conserve energy to reduce dependence on petroleum and foreign sources of oil and to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Transportation De-partment estimates that the new rule will save 10.7bn gallons of fuel. The reduction in greenhouse gases under the rule from model year 2011 vehicles is estimated to be 39.4m tonnes of carbon over the life of the vehicles.
Light-truck fuel efficiency has been highly criticised in recent years. Because the CAFE standard previously set a separate category for the light truck fleet, the fuel efficiency has decreased since 1988, while the popularity of those vehicles boomed. The new changes represent a shift in attitude in the Bush administration, which previously had proposed to weaken the standard.
"It's a small step but it's simply not enough," said Jim Kliesch, research associate with the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. "The president has called for a 75 per cent reduction in Middle East imports by 2025, and even assuming half of those reductions are not going to come from CAFE reductions, this is doesn't get anywhere near the level that it needs to be."
Mr Becker said that the new rules failed to meet the directive set by Congress in 1975, when the standards were introduced, that they should be set at the "maximum technically feasible level" for each model year.
Separately, the Environmental Protection Agency is tightening rules for the tests that determine new vehicles' fuel efficiency. |
