EDF, Allies Ask D.C. Circuit to Reject the Latest Attack on Clean Truck Standards

(Washington, D.C. – October 13, 2017) Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and a coalition of public health and environmental groups are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to protect a key provision of America’s Clean Truck Standards – safeguards that will reduce dangerous climate pollution and save money for both truckers and American families.

The Truck Trailer Manufacturers Association (TTMA) has asked the court for a stay of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) standards for freight trailers – one part of the Clean Truck Standards. EDF and its allies filed an opposition to TTMA’s request last night. 

“The trailer provisions of the Clean Truck Standards are based on cost-effective and widely available measures that have long been used by industry leaders, and have been effectively incorporated into state standards for the past decade,” said EDF Attorney Alice Henderson. “It is critical that these common sense protections remain in place to reduce the dangerous pollution that causes climate change and save money for American families by reducing the costs for shipping goods.”

EPA and the Department of Transportation adopted Clean Truck Standards in August 2016, after extensive public comment and engagement with industry. The standards will reduce carbon pollution by more than one billion metric tons while also saving the trucking industry an estimated $170 billion in fuel costs through 2027, providing $400 in annual household savings for the average American family by 2035, and reducing petroleum consumption by two billion barrels over the lifetime of our heavy-duty trucks.  

The standards, which were set to require compliance in January of 2018, earned unprecedented support from the trucking industry, as well as consumer, public health, labor, and environmental groups. A network of businesses representing more than $437 billion in annual revenue recently reiterated its support for the trailer standards that are now under attack.

However, TTMA filed a lawsuit in December of 2016 asking the D.C. Circuit to overturn the portions of the Clean Truck Standards that covered freight trailers, which contribute significantly to the emissions from heavy-duty vehicles. EDF and a coalition of public health and environmental groups are intervenors in the case, along with the California Air Resources Board and a coalition of seven states. A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit will hear that case. 

TTMA is now also asking for an eleventh-hour stay of those trailer provisions. A stay, if granted, would delay these critical health and environmental protections for the duration of the litigation, which could last for years.

TTMA’s stay request does not include other provisions of the Clean Truck Standards, which cover buses, heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans, garbage trucks, and tractors.  

The Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and Union of Concerned Scientists joined EDF in opposing the stay request.

The California Air Resources Board and the coalition of seven states – Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington – also filed an opposition to the stay request last night. 

You can find more information, including all the legal documents in the case, on EDF’s website.