The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set strict CO2 targets for cars for the period from now to model year 2026. In short: CO2 emissions must be reduced faster than previously proposed.
Just like in Europe, there are annual targets in the US when it comes to CO2 emissions and therefore the consumption of (passenger) cars. On the other side of the ocean, those standards are a bit less strict. That was all the more true when President Trump was in power. He partly reversed plans previously made by Obama in this area. There was still talk of a ‘mandatory’ decline, but it was a lot less rigorous than Obama’s proposals.
Under Biden, however, those plans are being reinstated. In fact, what the EPA is now enacting is stricter than ever. Where under Trump (SAFE standards) there was still a target CO2 reduction of 7.4 percent between now and 2026, this is now no less than 28.3 percent. That is even stricter than in an earlier Democratic proposal, which aimed for 22.8 percent less over the entire period.
EPA expresses itself in CO2 emissions per mile. Now, still under SAFE, it is 224 grams per mile. For model year 2026 – which usually starts in 2025 – this will be gradually reduced to 161 grams of CO2 per mile. This is almost exactly 100 grams per kilometer. Of course, just like in Europe, the average can be reduced by introducing more EVs, with which the passenger cars in the fleet build up some more ‘CO2 credit’. The EPA aims for a market share of 17 percent in 2026 for the ‘plug-in electric vehicles’ category, which also includes plug-in hybrids, compared to 7 percent at the moment.
Also ‘trucks’
Please note: in all cases it concerns a combination of passenger cars and ‘light trucks’, or the pick-ups that are so immensely popular in the US. For passenger cars, the standard is currently 181 grams per mile, or 112.5 grams per km. The target here is 132 grams per mile. For trucks, however, this value is 261 grams per mile, or 162 grams per kilometer. This should drop to 187 grams. The ratio between passenger cars and pickup trucks is currently 44 to 56 percent, but the US government aims to reduce the truck share to ‘just’ 53 percent by model year 2026.
In Europe we currently have a standard of 95 grams per kilometer for passenger cars and 147 grams per kilometer for light commercial vehicles, which here are mostly vans. In 2025, another 15 percent must be reduced.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl