Fuel efficiency standard nearly complete
After a concerted effort by Republican lawmakers to stall progress on a policy that would lead to cleaner and more fuel-efficient cars, it looks today as if the long-awaited new standard is close to becoming a reality. It is designed to reduce oil 
consumption by 2.2 million barrels a day and cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 6 billion metric tons by 2025, according to the White House, which hammered out the deal with automakers in July 2011. That will be accomplished by requiring the industry to double the 2011 fuel-efficiency standard of 27.3 mpg to 54.5 mpg by 2025. Automakers have until 2017 to begin turning out vehicles that meet this requirement.
The new environmentally friendly policy resulted from the administration’s ability to extract “cooperation” from an industry at its most vulnerable. After the government bailed out General Motors with taxpayer dollars, the automakers had little choice but to go along with the administration’s proposed fuel-efficiency program – a regulatory policy it has resisted for decades.
President Barack Obama may have called the deal “the single most important step we’ve ever taken as a nation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” but it is clear that the industry had to be cornered first before it would agree to the landmark effort to benefit both our economy and the environment.
While Public Citizen applauds the new standard, we won’t kid ourselves about the automakers’ plans for compliance. They managed to build in some wiggle room with a loophole that allows for a 2018 review of the standard, opening the door to possibly adjusting the standard in its favor just one year after it takes effect. We can be sure the industry will attempt to make a case that it is too expensive to meet the federal goal of 54.5 mpg. And you can be just as sure that we will be there, working to hold them to it.
Tyson Slocum is Public Citizen’s energy program director. You can follow him on Twitter @TysonSlocum