The USA Environmental Protection Agency—EPA—is proposing some of the world’s toughest car emissions in a bid to boost electric cars. Should Australia follow suit?
The new US policy will strengthen existing fuel efficiency standards to the point where 67% of vehicles sold in America will be electric by 2032.
In other words it will mean two-thirds of new passenger cars and a quarter of new heavy trucks sold in the United States will be all-electric by 2032.
That’s a big jump from just 5.8% of new cars and less than 2% of trucks sold last year. It’s even lower in Australia of course, with EVs now just 3.39% of all vehicle sales.
According to the Electric Vehicle Council, Australia needs to get just as tough as the USA on car emissions, calling the country a “dumping ground for dated, high-emission vehicles” given we’re “one of the only developed nations on earth without any fuel efficiency standards whatsoever”.
We have been expecting a national policy for some time, but so far we still only have a discussion paper.
The Australian Institute calls Australia an “outlier” internationally on tougher car emissions, saying regulatory approaches to increase fuel efficiency and lower carbon emissions have been adopted by
“around 80% of the global light vehicle market”.
The Climate Council claims that if fuel-efficiency standards were introduced in 2016, Australia could have saved $5.9 billion in fuel costs, avoided 4000 megalitres of imported fuel, and nine million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
It’s now such a glaring omission that 120 of the country’s mayors and councillors representing something like 70% of the population have just called for fuel-efficiency standards to be introduced.
The Biden administration move should be the electric shock our country now needs.