U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Regional Administrator Pete Lopez visited New Jersey’s Port Elizabeth last week to outline the steps the EPA is taking to advance the Cleaner Trucks Initiative (CTI). The new rules for truck engines will focus on reducing pollutants from heavy-duty engines that cause asthma and even lung cancer. Lopez said the EPA is now seeking pre-proposal comments (pdf) from the public and interested stakeholders on the matter.
The EPA’s Clean Trucks Initiative, however, takes a markedly different approach to the “Multi-State Medium- and Heavy-Duty Zero Emission Vehicle Initiative” (pdf) proposed in December by a group of 8 states and the District of Colombia. The multi-state initiative focuses much more heavily on decarbonization and combating climate change through the introduction of heavy-duty zero-emission vehicles or ZEVs, such as battery- or hydrogen-powered trucks. The recurring theme of the EPA’s CTI, in contrast, is to secure improvements in human health through incremental improvements in existing technologies and research into new ones—without forcing a revolution in trucking technology.
