Nevada Plans To Adopt California’s Fuel Economy Standards

Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak has decided to side with California and Tesla, not Donald Trump and certain lagging automakers, on the need for cleaner cars. Governor Sisolak announced today, June 22, that Nevada would adopt California’s fuel economy regulations.

This follows Donald rolling back the US government’s fuel economy regulations — agreed to by Obama and automakers after the US government had to bail out Big Auto — on March 31. Donald’s quite swampy fuel economy rollback is expected to cost Americans nearly a trillion dollars. But, hey, like those tax cuts for his billionaire friends, it’s not about what’s good for America — it’s about what’s good for a few billionaires (Donald’s “friends”) and multimillionaires (possibly Donald).

This also follows a bit of a war between California and Donald’s super-swampy EPA, in which Donald severely betrayed conservative principles by trying to take away California’s right to require stricter fuel economy standards than the US government, something it was granted under the Clean Air Act. It was decided many years ago that states could enact their own fuel economy regulations as long as they were at least as strict as the federal regulations. (Remember that supposed conservative/Republican ideal of states’ rights?) California, 24 attorneys general, Los Angeles, and New York City have sued Donald’s NHTSA swamp in response to this attack on California’s and other states’ rights to ensure their citizens have clean air to breathe. Nevada joined California and 22 other states in suing the Donald J. Swamp Administration for ignoring science and putting public health at risk.

Leading up to that lawsuit, last summer, California and Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, and BMW agreed to make their own deal to keep up strong fuel economy standards, which Donald’s “Justice” Department laughably considered an anti-trust violation. When the US government is attacking both its most populous state (one of the world’s top economies) and several large automakers for working together to make our air cleaner, you know things are just not right.

With that history, Nevada has essentially ignored all of the nonsense coming from taxpayer-robbing Mar-a-Lago and Detroit, instead deciding to get to work adopting California’s Advanced Clean Car Standards as well. That said, this is just the beginning and it is expected to take years to get the job done on the regulatory front. (Don’t ask me why.) The LA Times reports:

“Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak said Nevada will begin working on new regulations to increase the number of electric and zero-emission vehicles sold in the state, as well as rules to reduce air pollution and planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from cars. The changes could be years away, according to the governor’s statement, which gave 2024 as the goal for adoption.”

“To date, 14 states and the District of Columbia have adopted California’s tailpipe emission standards, a group that accounts for more than 40% of U.S. vehicle sales. Two more — Minnesota and New Mexico — have announced plans to join and are in the process of writing regulations that will make them the 15th and 16th states.”

Nevada joined the US Climate Alliance in March 2019. “The U.S. Climate Alliance is a bipartisan coalition of now 23 governors committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement. The Alliance is led by state governments and is focused on state-to-state cooperation to accelerate the deployment of climate solutions needed to help each achieve their climate goals.”

Of course, Nevada is the home of Tesla’s first gigafactory.

Related: Big Auto Begging To Pollute More — Electric Cars Too Clean 😪

Photos: (1) Tesla Model 3 electric car (batteries produced in Nevada) and (2) solar power plant in Nevada, both by Zach Shahan/CleanTechnica (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license).