California seeks Biden administration approval for controversial diesel truck ban

Stay up-to-date with free briefings on topics that matter to all Californians. Subscribe to CalMatters today for nonprofit news in your inbox.

California’s top air quality regulator today urged the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency to “immediately” approve the state’s regulation phasing out diesel trucks .

Air Resources Board Chair Liane Randolph was among more than 250 people who signed up to speak today at a virtual hearing focusing on whether the EPA should grant California a waiver that allows the state to enact its regulation. The hearing lasted 12 hours.

Adopted in 2023, California’s mandate is the first in the world to ban new diesel trucks and force a switch to zero-emission big rigs, garbage trucks, delivery trucks and other medium and heavy-duty vehicles. No new fossil-fueled medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks would be sold in the state starting in 2036. Large trucking companies also must convert fleets to electric or hydrogen models by 2042.

The diesel ban is one of the most far-reaching and controversial rules that California has enacted in recent years to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gases.

Trucking companies, agricultural groups and others told the EPA today that the rules would harm the economy and the deadlines would be nearly impossible to achieve, while environmental and community groups, clean energy companies and at least one major retailer, Ikea, spoke in favor of the measure.

For more than 50 years, California has had the authority under the Clean Air Act to set its own emission standards for trucks, cars and other vehicles. But the EPA must grant a waiver for each specific rule that California adopts before it can be implemented.

One deadline in the state rule — regulating drayage trucks that operate at ports — was supposed to kick in this year. But the air board has delayed enforcing the measure until it receives an EPA waiver.

A spokesperson for the EPA declined to say when a decision on the waiver would be issued.

The waiver request is one of several that California regulators are hoping the EPA will act on before the November election. Supporters of California’s climate rules worry that a return of former President Donald Trump to the White House could block future approvals.

Randolph told the EPA that diesel trucks contribute “significantly” to the state’s air pollution and greenhouse gases so moving California’s fleets from diesel to electricity or other zero-emissions options is critical to improving public health and meeting the state’s climate goals.

Andrea Vidaurre, a co-founder of the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, a community group based in San Bernardino, said zero-emission trucks are needed to clean up air pollution in the Inland Empire, which is home to warehouses and freight industries.

“It is the only way that we’re able to actually bring some relief to the communities that are living in some of the … deadliest pockets of air pollution in the nation,” she said. “We don’t see any other way.”

But trucking companies say zero-emission big rigs can be twice the price of a diesel version, take hours to charge, can’t travel the range that many companies need and lack a sufficient statewide network of chargers.

Matt Schrap, chief executive of the Harbor Trucking Association, which represents operators of drayage trucks at California’s major ports, called the rule  “unprecedented” and “ill-conceived.” The rules would hit truck drivers hard and would be impossible to implement, Schrap said, given the state does not have the charging network needed to meet the demands of electric trucks.

“It’s not that anyone in our industry is opposed to advanced technology,” Schrap said. “But we are very concerned about how this rule will be implemented, because it has real world impacts, not only on businesses, but the end-use consumer.”

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has to follow specific rules for when it rejects a California waiver: California’s decision would have to be “arbitrary and capricious in its finding” that its standards protect public health. Or the state does not need the rules to “meet compelling and extraordinary conditions” or they violate the Clean Air Act’s provisions about technical feasibility.

For decades, the EPA has granted California waivers to set its own ambitious, technology-forcing standards for cars, trucks and other sources. Only one waiver was initially denied — a 2008 rule setting greenhouse gas emission standards for cars — and that decision was quickly reversed and the waiver granted .

The former Trump administration took aim at the state’s special status to enact stricter air pollution standards — one of the more significant environmental battles of the Trump era. The Biden administration in 2022 reversed the moves.

“The previous Trump administration tried to remove California’s waiver, and that is the avowed goal of Donald Trump today,” Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at UC Davis, told CalMatters ahead of the hearing. “So gaining the waivers before November is important.”

Earlier this year, truck engine manufacturers reached a deal with California over the rules. But trucking companies still oppose them. When California passed the ban last year , a top trucking industry executive predicted economic chaos and dysfunction and said the mandate is likely to “fail pretty spectacularly.”

Mike Tunnell, a senior director for the American Trucking Associations, urged the EPA at the hearing today “to investigate the facts surrounding the deployment of zero emission trucks” because the industry thinks the regulation violates the provisions of the Clean Air Act about feasibility of technology. He said the state “did not understand nor account for the economics and the infrastructure requirement that make it infeasible to implement the regulation on California’s timeline.”

Shifting the state’s fleets off diesel — which has been a highly efficient powerhouse for heavy-duty vehicles for decades — is one of California’s biggest moves to cut greenhouse gas emissions and clean up smog and soot. It’s particularly important for low-income communities burdened by freight traffic.

“California still has the worst air quality in the nation,” air board chair Randolph told the EPA at the hearing. “The climate crisis also continues to accelerate in California, with coastal erosion, extreme weather, high temperatures and wildfires that are aggravating the air quality challenges that we already face.

The rule would transform the commercial trucks operating on California’s roads, affecting around 1.8 million vehicles, including those used by the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, UPS and Amazon.

Some big companies, including Pepsi , have rolled out electric fleets. Amazon earlier this year announced that it deployed 50 heavy-duty electric trucks in Southern California as well as hundreds of electric vans nationally.

Businesses other than trucking companies were mixed in their commentary today. IKEA testified in support of the waiver, while the Western Growers Association, which represents California farmers, argued the requirements could prove burdensome for farmers in California.

Sales of new electric trucks, buses and vans in California doubled last year compared to the previous year, with one out of every six sold in the state emitting zero carbon, according to state data .

Gov. Gavin Newsom said California was ”moving away from dirty polluting big rigs and delivery fleets – cleaning our air and protecting public health.”

Sperling of UC Davis said the rule is an important policy. But he said the purchase requirements “are problematic because they are complicated and impact thousands of companies” and that’s made the rules “politically and administratively problematic.”

California in 2020 passed its first rule ramping up sales of zero-emission trucks and buses and three years later, the EPA, under the Biden administration, granted California its waiver to enforce the measure.

The new rules add onto that by banning diesel truck sales:

• By 2036, truck manufacturers will only be allowed to sell zero-emission models of heavy-duty and medium-duty trucks.
• Large trucking companies in California must convert their fleets to electric models. Timelines vary based on the type of truck, but companies will have to buy more over time until all trucks are zero-emissions by 2042.
• Drayage trucks, which carry cargo to and from the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland, have one of the strictest timelines: All must be converted to electric models by 2035 and new sales beginning in 2024 were supposed to be zero emissions.
• The gradual conversion to zero emission models only applies to fleets that are owned or operated by companies with 50 or more trucks or $50 million or more in annual revenue, and federal agencies, including the U.S. Postal Service. Included are trucks weighing 8,500 lbs or more and delivery van vehicles.