WASHINGTON — The American Trucking Associations (ATA) is urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to re-evaluate heavy-duty NOx standards to avoid causing major operational challenges for the trucking industry.
“ATA appreciates the commonsense approach to environmental regulation that the EPA is taking under [Administrator Zeldin’s] leadership,” said Chris Spear, ATA president & CEO. “EPA’s commitment to engage industry stakeholders and reevaluate existing regulations will help to ensure environmental protections are appropriately balanced with the need to sustain economic growth and industry competitiveness.”
Reducing Costs and Complexity
“We remain concerned that the heavy-duty NOₓ rule imposes significant burdens at a time when the trucking industry continues to contend with a prolonged freight recession and inflationary pressures,” Spear said. “ATA requests that EPA consider improvements that would reduce cost and complexity and ensure that any new technology that trucking is forced to adopt is reliable.”
Beginning with model year 2027, EPA’s final rule, “Control of Air Pollution from New Motor Vehicles: Heavy-Duty Engine and Vehicle Standards,” requires a premature rollout of commercial motor vehicles with unproven engine technologies onto our highways, potentially disrupting freight transportation. The lack of compliant prototype engines and pre-production models has impeded fleets’ ability to prepare maintenance and training plans and assess possible reliability issues. In addition, the rushed implementation timeline is likely to spur a pre-buy that would further drive up costs for equipment that has become increasingly unaffordable.
A Burdensome Regulation
To alleviate the impact of this burdensome and expensive regulation, ATA is recommending that EPA grant non-conformance penalties to heavy-duty manufacturers to give them additional time to run real-world testing on these new emission control systems. The temporary nature of NCPs under the Clean Air Act would help to facilitate a smoother transition.
ATA is also recommending that EPA consider expanding credit life, credit trading and credit use across different vehicle classes. These credit market flexibilities would enable manufacturers to remain in compliance while supplying proven technologies to the new truck market.
Click here to read ATA’s letter to EPA.
Dana Guthrie is an award-winning journalist who has been featured in multiple newspapers, books and magazines across the globe. She is currently based in the Atlanta, Georgia, area.
