EPA taking comments on California waiver for Advanced Clean Fleets rule

The ACF rule was to have taken effect Dec. 31, 2023. It is a mandate promulgated by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) on the purchasers of trucks. Its sister regulation, the Advanced Clean Trucks rule, directs original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on what types of trucks they can deliver into the California market. Advanced Clean Trucks received a waiver from the EPA in March 2023.

Most of the mandates of the ACF were to be rolled out over almost 20 years. But one key rule would have gone into effect at the start of 2024: the requirement that no drayage trucks with an internal combustion engine could be registered with the state starting in January.

California has always been granted a special status under the Clean Air Act given its unique geography and size. Under that status, it can implement requirements more stringent than those of the Clean Air Act, as long as it gets a waiver.

During the process leading up to the approval of the ACF, the state repeatedly said its interpretation of the Clean Air Act, and the provisions of the ACF, meant it didn’t need a waiver.

But last October, the California Trucking Association filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, arguing that CARB did need a waiver. In December, CARB filed a request with the EPA for a waiver and put enforcement of ACF on hold. 

In the interim, there have been two significant legal developments. First, the closely watched Ohio vs. EPA case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the right of the EPA to grant environmental waivers. Two trucking-related groups — the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association and the Western States Trucking Association — filed friend-of-the-court briefs, siding with Ohio in its argument that the ability of EPA to grant waivers should be reined in. 

And 17 states filed suit in federal court in California, with CARB Executive Officer Steven Clift as the defendant, against the ACF rule. 

Those states fear the possible export of California’s rules to the rest of the country, just because of its sheer size. The scenario they envision is that trucking companies and manufacturers will only want to drive or produce trucks that meet California’s standards even outside the state. As the lawsuit said, “By leveraging California’s large population and access to international ports on the West Coast, Advanced Clean Fleets exports its ‘in-state’ ban nationwide, creating harms which are certain to reach Plaintiffs’ States.”

With the ACF rule on hold while California’s waiver request makes its way through the federal bureaucracy, drayage trucks with internal combustion engines can be registered with the state.

However, state officials have suggested there might be a retroactive need to remove ICE drayage vehicles if the ACF waiver were granted.

The Port of Long Beach publishes a report on its website each month with data on operations. One data point in the report: the number of zero-emission drayage vehicles registered to operate in the port. 

The data can be interpreted multiple ways.

The pro-ZEV crowd might say that even in the absence of the ACF mandate, ZEV vehicles rose from 198 in December to 307, an increase of 55%. 

Those who are against the ZEV mandate specifically at the ports or for the broader fleet, which CARB calls the “high priority” fleet, could say that the mandate is only in hibernation, not gone, and that ZEV vehicles, even with all sorts of incentives for purchases, only made 1.48% of the truck moves at the Port of Long Beach in May.

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