13. Environmental Protection Agency · Major
Set greenhouse gas car standards under Department of Transportation leadership
Printed page 426 13. Environmental Protection Agency
“Establish GHG car standards under Department of Transportation (DOT) leadership that properly consider cost, choice, safety, and national security.”
What has happened
- Partially done
EPA's final rule repealed every federal motor-vehicle GHG standard (effective 2026-04-20), leaving DOT's fuel-economy program as the only federal standard on the vehicle fleet. No GHG standard has been established under DOT leadership; the Mandate's object was replaced by no standard at all.
- Attempted
NHTSA proposed the SAFE Vehicles Rule III, resetting CAFE standards for model years 2022–2031 on cost, choice and safety grounds — DOT leadership over the fuel-economy side of the same tailpipe, though CAFE is not a GHG standard.
- Attempted
EPA proposed to repeal all of its light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicle greenhouse-gas standards along with the 2009 endangerment finding; nothing yet changed and no DOT-led GHG standard was proposed.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Read as “achieved by other means”: the EPA standards are gone and DOT’s CAFE rulemaking is the only federal vehicle-efficiency standard left, but no DOT-led GHG standard exists and the SAFE III rule is still a proposal (see Chapter 19 #1718 for the CAFE trail).
- Shares the endangerment-finding rule and its D.C. Circuit litigation leads with #1077.
- SAFE III became final on 2026-09-30 (FR 2026-19964, 91 FR 61988; see #1718). Status unchanged. It is a fuel-economy rule under EPCA, not a greenhouse-gas standard, so it is still DOT leadership over the fuel-economy side and not the GHG standard the Quote asks DOT to lead. Only the rule’s abstract was read.
- Action
- transfer
- Object
- greenhouse gas standards for cars
- ID
- 1082