Agencies Defend Legal Basis For Scrapping California Auto GHG Waiver

EPA and the Transportation Department (DOT) are defending the legal basis for their just-issued rule revoking California’s power to set its own vehicle greenhouse gas limits, asserting the state is preempted by fuel economy law and lacks “compelling and extraordinary” conditions needed to receive such authority under the Clean Air Act. The justifications are laid out in a Sept. 19 joint rulemaking by EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that represents an unprecedented withdrawal of the state’s...