Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to E.P.A. Rules on Gas Emissions

The case is a sequel to Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, a 2007 decision that required the agency to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles if it found they endangered public health or welfare. Two years later, the agency made such a finding, saying that “elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere” pose a danger to “current and future generations.” It set limits on emissions both from new vehicles and from stationary sources like power plants.

States and industry groups challenged the regulations on several grounds. They said the agency’s conclusions about the dangers posed by greenhouse gases were not supported by adequate evidence, that the so-called tailpipe regulations were flawed and that the agency was not authorized to regulate emissions from stationary sources.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last year unanimously rejected the challenges, some on the merits and some on the ground that the parties before the court lacked standing to pursue them.

The Supreme Court accepted six petitions seeking review of that rejection, but it limited the issue it would consider to the question of whether the agency “permissibly determined that its regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles triggered permitting requirements under the Clean Air Act for stationary sources that emit greenhouses gases.” Among the cases accepted for review was Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 12-1146.

“The regulations the court has agreed to review represent the Obama administration’s first major rule making to address the emissions of greenhouse gases from major stationary sources across the country,” said Richard J. Lazarus, who teaches environmental law at Harvard. “At the same time, the court declined to review E.P.A.’s determination that greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles endanger public health and welfare and therefore has left intact the government’s current regulation of motor vehicles emissions to address climate change.”

In urging the court to hear a challenge on the issue the justices agreed to hear, trade groups said the regulation of “greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources represents the most sweeping expansion of E.P.A.’s authority in the agency’s history, extending its reach to potentially millions of industrial, commercial, and residential facilities across the country, at costs estimated to run into the tens of billions of dollars per year.”

Environmental groups reacted to Tuesday’s developments by emphasizing the regulations the justices had let stand.

“Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to deny numerous further legal challenges to E.P.A.’s science-based determination that six greenhouse gases threaten our nation’s health and well-being is a historic victory for all Americans that are afflicted by the ravages of extreme weather,” Vickie Patton, general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement. “The justices have also declined to hear legal challenges to the broadly supported clean car standards that will strengthen our nation’s energy security, cut carbon pollution and save families money at the gas pump. ”

Greg Abbott, attorney general of Texas, one of the states challenging the regulations, said in a statement that he welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate that “the E.P.A. violated the U.S. Constitution and the federal Clean Air Act when it concocted greenhouse gas regulations out of whole cloth.”

The court on Tuesday also issued its first decision in a case argued this term, dismissing as improvidently granted an appeal in an employment discrimination case, Madigan v. Levin, No. 12-872. The court’s one-sentence order offered no explanation for the move.

The case concerned whether and when an age discrimination case may be brought under an old, broad civil rights law known as Section 1983 notwithstanding the more recent and focused Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

At the argument last Monday, the justices asked pointed and frustrated questions about whether the lower court had had the authority to decide the issue and whether the plaintiff, a former assistant Illinois attorney general, was covered by the newer law. The justices apparently concluded that the case was a poor vehicle for deciding the question they had agreed to review.

United States to bring the gas mileage rules in the age of hybrids

The Environmental Protection Agency said it would update its labelling rules - date to the 1970s - to resolve the disparities among the growing number of hybrid and electric vehicles on the market.

"E.P.A. welcomes this new trend and will work with consumer advocates, environmental organizations and automotive manufacturers to offer the revised version of the test to ensure fuel economy regulations that consumers regularly receive fuel economy information specific on which they have come to rely," the Agency said in a statement.

The movement comes in addition to consumers and analysts dispute the accuracy of the stickers of fuel consumption of Government on the new models. At the same time, automakers are pushing to improve fuel economy as the new Government mileage standards will be implemented.

In the case of Ford, the automaker said it would reduce reported consumption of its C - Max SUV hybrid 43 miles per gallon of 47 miles per gallon in combined city and highway.

An Executive at Ford, said Thursday that the company had voluntarily reduced the side and would offer cash payments to owners of C - Max for the reimbursement to the fuel consumption further.

Raj Nair, head of Ford's global product development, said that reducing the side would allay the concerns of consumers who do not reach the number of fuel consumption has already been mentioned.

"We are taking actions with our popular hybrid c - Max to ensure that visitors are still more satisfied with the effectiveness of their road vehicle performance," he said.

Ford said that he would make a payment of goodwill of $550 to any customer who bought the current model of the C - Max and $325 for consumers who have rented a.

Industry analysts, said that Ford had to respond to the growing concerns about the reliability of its claims of fuel economy.

"Ford would not take such a drastic measure if it did not feel that it was absolutely necessary, even if it's just to protect his image," said John O'Dell, green-car on the auto research site Edmunds.com analyst.

We know not how consumer campaign will cost Ford, manufacturer second in the country behind General Motors.

The company had sold about 32,000 hybrid C - Max, since its launch last year, said Mr Naïr.

As more conventional hybrids, hybrid C - Max is in turn powered by a gasoline engine and a battery. The system allows the vehicle to consume much less fuel than a car only equipped with a gasoline engine.

The current fuel economy rules specify that manufacturers can use the same numbers of fuel economy for vehicles of similar size with the same engines and transmissions.

The Government requires that automakers to test the fuel economy of the best selling model in a specific category. In its hybrid class size average, for example, Ford tested the Fusion sedan version because it was the best seller.

When the Fusion hybrid reaches 47 miles per gallon in combined city and highway, Ford was able to apply this qualification to the C - Max hybrid as well.

But consumers and automotive publications have questioned if the C - Max hybrid could reach the coast. Ford also faces several lawsuits contesting the allegations of fuel consumption of the vehicle.

Mr. Nair said that many variables can affect fuel economy real of a hybrid vehicle, including weather conditions and driving behaviour. "With hybrids, there is much variability," he said.

He added that it was difficult to make an exact comparison between the C - Max, a utility vehicle with a chunky design and the Fusion more sleek car.

Ford is expected to improve the energy efficiency of the hybrid C - Max when a revamped version of the vehicle is introduced at the end of this year.

Meanwhile, the company hopes that the cash payments to consumers and its revised mileage sticker will defuse the controversy surrounding the C - Max.

Our actions improve commitment of Ford in the direction of fuel economy, said Mr. Nair.

The competition between companies to auto on allegations of fuel consumption is intense, particularly hybrid models and electrified vehicles are introduced.

Last year, South Korean Hyundai and Kia automakers were back on fuel consumption claims swollen after the Government found that the companies had imperfect results.

Manufacturers also rapidly changing their fleets to meet the most stringent requirements of fuel consumption of the Government in the future. In addition to bringing out more hybrid and electric models, companies are reduce the size of engines to regular gasoline and weight of cutting where they can.

But the emphasis on fuel economy also comes at a time when consumers are becoming more sophisticated and aware of the performance of the vehicle - including gasoline consumption targets more. On the latest electric and hybrid, for example, drivers can see on the display of the dashboard exactly how many miles per gallon, reached the vehicle.

The EPA did not specify a time frame for proposing changes to fuel economy labelling requirements. But the Agency said revisions were necessary due to the speed of innovation in industry, especially for hybrid models.

"These vehicles are more sensitive to differences in small design than conventional vehicles because Advanced vehicles, highly effective use for so little fuel," the Agency said.

News Analysis: Emissions Rules Put Alternative-Fuel Vehicles in a Bind

WASHINGTON

THE Environmental Protection Agency’s latest proposed tightening of limits on sulfur in gasoline, and its previous rules, will most likely have the perverse consequence of retarding the development of cars running on batteries, advanced biofuels or hydrogen — all promising but expensive technologies that have not become mass-market products.

At the least, domestically produced gasoline and rapid advances in technology to make the internal combustion engine more efficient are likely to help the conventional automobile survive against competition from vehicles powered by electricity, natural gas and other cleaner alternatives.

The E.P.A. last week announced its proposed new Tier 3 rules sharply reducing allowable amounts of sulfur in gasoline, which would help automobiles’ catalytic converters to capture more pollutants. Tier 1, the E.P.A.'s first set of rules, was established two decades ago, under the Clean Air Act of 1990. Tier 2 was a refinement in 2000.

The specifics of the regulatory rules are hideously complex, with restrictions phased in gradually and covering only a fraction of the new cars and trucks each model year. They are applied to several categories, including “heavy light duty truck” and “light duty truck.” But the overall picture is clear: pollutants that in the bad old days were measured in grams per mile are now measured in tenths or hundredths of a gram per mile. In Tier 3 they are measured in thousandths of a gram.

Francis X. Lyons, a former E.P.A. administrator for the Great Lakes region, said that the agency’s latest proposed limits on sulfur in gasoline “simply extends indefinitely the viability of traditional automobile engines.”

Obscured by all the numbers is that the various technologies promoted as alternatives to gasoline — batteries, fuel cells or natural gas — are now facing a refined internal combustion engine. The federal government in large part drove automakers toward engine improvements by requiring them to essentially double fuel efficiency by 2025.

At the same time, the federal government has established mandates for increasing amounts of renewable fuels in the gasoline mixture. While that mandate has not yet worked out on the schedule Congress intended, it is clear that gasoline — the product that federal and state governments have been hoping for a quarter-century to replace with a variety of alternatives — is actually a moving target.

Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade association, compared the car to the person in Zeno’s Paradox who walks half the distance to an objective, and then half of the remainder, then half again of what remains. The person gets closer and closer but does not quite reach the end point, which in this case would be a car producing zero emissions.

“The alternatives are having a harder time keeping pace,” Ms. Bergquist said. “Once they were further ahead. Now it really is a horse race.”

The race is reflected in the E.P.A.'s mind-boggling terminology for clean cars. First there were Low Emission Vehicles, then Ultra Low Emission Vehicles. As the standards got even tighter, “ultra” was not enough, and there were Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicles. Then there were Zero Emission Vehicles, or ZEV, meant to be electrics, and then internal-combustion cars named, with no apparent sense of irony, Partial Zero Emission Vehicles.

The pursuit of an all-of-the-above strategy (a phrase popularized by President Obama but in practical use in the field of transportation energy and pollution since the early 1990s) assures that options will compete with each other, and not all will cross the finish line.

In the view of Mr. Lyons, the former E.P.A. official, the government can promote fledgling alternatives but not make them popular if the underlying technology is too expensive or inadequate to consumers’ needs. And among the technologies making strides are gasoline engines that are getting smaller, lighter and much more fuel efficient, he said.

Many environmental advocates, however, reject the idea that gasoline has an edge in a long-term competition with nonfossil fuels. Although environmentalists embrace the improvements in gasoline and the internal combustion engine, they say they are not meant to meet international goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

“We still need to get to an electric-drive fleet to meet our long-term carbon goals,” said Luke Tonachel, the director of clean vehicles at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

He and other experts are still counting on a much greater penetration of electric vehicles, even if the vehicles have so far failed to become a mass-market product.

At the Union of Concerned Scientists, David Friedman, deputy director of the clean vehicles program, said that the Tier 3 proposal was a sign of success driven by the alternatives. “There is a long history of exactly this happening,” he said, recalling that when methanol was being promoted as a cleaner fuel the oil companies said, “'Hey, we can clean up our fuel, too.''’

Something cleaner will have to be developed, he said, because one-third of Americans live in places that are out of compliance with federal air quality rules at least part of the time, partly because of tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks.

In the meantime, he said, the competition was driving some air improvements. “You can connect the zero-emission vehicle mandate to the Tier 3 standards we see today,” he said. “ZEV set the long-term bar, and the auto industry innovated until they could meet some of those standards, and that’s where we got Tier 3.”