How rising SUV popularity globally, EPA auto emission rollbacks could hurt efforts to fight climate change
Popularity of the SUV is increasing not only in the United States but all over the world, according to JATO Dynamics. As transportation is responsible for 14 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and SUVs are 30 percent less efficient than smaller cars, the rise in popularity of larger cars is a global concern.
“For the past three to five years, the really interesting pattern is the low gas prices in the United States and the high amount of heavier trucks and larger SUVs that are selling right now,” Matthew Weiss, president of the JATO Dynamics North American division, said.
SUVs reached a new market share in 2017, making up 34 percent of the market for the year, according to a report released by JATO Dynamics. There were 3.14 million more SUVs sold in 2017 than in 2016.
Lower gas prices and rising incomes are driving this growing interest in SUVs and crossovers in other areas of the world, too, including Europe, China and Australia. The increased popularity is also linked to a more popular desire for a larger space inside vehicles and the ability for automakers to make more money off SUVs, according to Weiss.
“This is a phenomenon that has a huge impact,” Alex Koerner, a program officer for the United Nations Environment Electric Mobility Program, said.
Koerner explained that the bigger the car, the more fuel is consumed by that car. As the global temperature continues to rise, fuel efficiency becomes increasingly important in combating climate change.
In this Friday, March 30, 2018, photograph, a line of unsold 2018 Cooper Clubmen sit in a long row at a Mini dealership in Highlands Ranch, Colo. U.S. auto sales grew 6.3 percent in March on rising sales of SUVs and pickup trucks. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
“On the one side, technology to improve the efficiency of engines is getting better and better,” Koerner said. “On the other side, cars are getting larger and larger as a global trend, so these two things are working against each other. Increased sales of SUVs or pickups are a concern.”
The global trend towards larger cars is concerning as the number of cars on the planet is expected to increase, too. It is expected that the number of vehicles from 2010 will triple by 2050, according to the Global Fuel Economy Initiative (GFEI) website. GFEI is working towards a goal of doubling the average fuel economy of new cars by 2030 and all cars by 2050.
On April 2, the United States EPA announced an official decision that it will be reconsidering, and most likely rolling back, emission and mileage standards placed on automakers, according to the New York Times.
The current standards, adopted in 2012, require automakers to almost double the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks by 2025. The EPA said that those standards would make production more expensive for automakers and eventually the cost would land on consumers.
As several countries have modeled their own emission and mileage standards after those in the United States, changes by the EPA have the potential to affect standards worldwide, according to the New York Times.
“It is not a smart move to lower efficiency standards,” Koerner said. “Maybe it renders U.S. manufacturing a little more profitable for a very short time period but will for sure have longer-term negative effects. Not catching up with global tech standard will be an issue, in my opinion.”
While Kroener doesn’t think this is a smart idea for the United States, he doesn’t believe that it will have impacts on fuel standards worldwide.
First, though the United States standards imposed a strong relative improvement rate, the fuel economy in absolute values is still not great. According to Koerner, United States cars are, and have been for a long time, among the most inefficient cars worldwide.
“Second, most international car manufacturers have figured out that fuel efficiency is an argument for consumers to buy a certain car,” Kroener said. The United States “is very special in that respect due to low fuel prices at relatively high incomes, so [there is] less of an argument for U.S. consumers.”
Lastly, Kroener said that even in the United States not all car manufacturers support the government on the rollback because they understand that it will make them even less competitive to Japan and Europe.
While an EPA rollback of standards could have little to no effect worldwide, the EPA's plans to change national standards have already complicated things between the Trump administration and the State of California.
California has a legal authority to write its own air pollution rules under the 1970 Clean Air Act. Historically, 12 other states follow California’s air pollution rules. Different regulations in one-third of the nation’s auto market would complicate things for auto makers.
Officials from the Trump administration and California are privately discussing a compromise for a national uniform set of standards, but “big obstacles remain to reaching a compromise,” according to the New York Times.
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