Calif. poised to vote on new 'clean car' regs

SAN FRANCISCO — The head of California's air quality board on Thursday called proposed rules that would require automakers to build less-polluting cars and trucks by 2025 a historic move for a cleaner environment.

California Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols said she hopes the rules to require that vehicles emit about 75 percent less smog-producing pollutants will "lead the nation and the world."

The new standards, which also include big cuts in greenhouse gas pollutants, would begin with new cars sold in 2015, and get increasingly more stringent until 2025. The rules also mandate that one of every seven new cars sold in 2025 in the state be a zero-emission or plug-in hybrid vehicle.

"We can't afford to wait. We have to act on these issues now," she said at the panel's meeting. "Our projections show continued growth in population and vehicle miles traveled, which will affect air quality for years to come."

The state's smog emissions standards are often more strict than federal ones, which means other states often adopt them as their own.

Fourteen other states, including Washington, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts, have adopted California's current emissions goals, which is why the new regulations could have a wide-ranging effect. Of those states, 10 also adopted the zero-emission vehicle standards as well.

The regulations, which could be voted on as early as Thursday, will continue the state's first-in-the-nation greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks, which went into effect in 2009. This time, the greenhouse gas reduction element was designed with federal regulators so that it will match national standards expected to be passed later this year.

"When we did the first greenhouse gas standards, it was war," said Tom Cackette, deputy director of the board, referring to legal challenges from auto dealers and business groups after the state passed the initial greenhouse gas emissions limits.

"They sued us in two federal courts. Fortunately, from our viewpoint, they lost. Over that time, with the increase in gas prices, the shake-up in the auto industry brought new management which looked at the future. Where's our future? It's not profits next quarter but how do we make a sustainable business."