California has withdrawn its request for a federal waiver to implement the state’s Advanced Clean Fleets rule.
In a brief letter Monday to Jane Nishida, acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Steven Cliff, executive officer of the California Air Resources Board, said CARB was withdrawing the waiver request that it made in late 2023.
News of the letter began trickling out late Tuesday.
Nishida, in a response Tuesday, said it was withdrawing the waiver request and that the EPA “considers this matter closed.”
It is a stunning turnaround for CARB, which when it first adopted ACF told industry representatives that it did not believe it needed a waiver to implement the rule. But with the filing of a lawsuit by the California Trucking Association arguing that CARB did need a waiver, the agency backed down and made its waiver request in November 2023.
California has a long history of being granted waivers when requested from the EPA as it sought to create its own air quality regime over the years, not just from vehicles but from other sources. Conventional wisdom at the time of the request was that the ACF waiver would be granted, as its counterpart waiver for the Advanced Clean Trucks rule had been earlier in 2023.
An article published late Tuesday by The New York Times quoted Liane Randolph, the CARB chair, as saying the process ran out of time with the Trump administration set to take office next week.
“Frankly, given that the Trump administration has not been publicly supportive of some of the strategies that we have deployed in these regulations, we thought it would be prudent to pull back and consider our options,” Randolph said, according to the Times.
Soon after news broke of the waiver request withdrawal, the Western States Trucking Association sent an email blast out, praising the development. The WSTA had one of the more significant ongoing court challenges to ACF.
“We are pleased at this development at a time California is facing a crisis that clearly illustrates the importance of heavy-duty vehicles – especially ultra clean diesel-powered trucks in helping protect our communities and ultimately to begin the massive recovery efforts,” the WSTA said in its statement, referring to recent wildfires in the state. “This was not the time to try and push through a rule designed to transform the industry to meet the desires of a small segment of the population especially considering many of the burn areas have been without electricity for a least a week, and do not have charging facilities to handle all the trucks.”
The most pressing requirement under the ACF was to be the rule that only zero-emission vehicles could be added to the state’s drayage registry starting Jan. 1, 2024. CARB said it would not enforce that requirement while the fate of the ACF waiver was undetermined but that it reserved the right to enforce it retroactively once a waiver was granted. With a waiver no longer coming, it is unclear what happens to that requirement.
The ACF rule was constructed to mandate and incentivize fleet purchases of zero-emission vehicles. Its counterpart, the Advanced Clean Trucks rule, was granted a waiver by the EPA in March 2023. The ACT is directed at the types of trucks OEMs sell into the California market.
FreightWaves will provide further coverage of this story on Wednesday.
