President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration has just officially given California the green light to ban new gas car sales in the state by 2035.
California set a strict emissions standard that would ban new gas cars in the state by 2035.
However, state officials needed to obtain a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in order to proceed with the mandate.
On Wednesday, the EPA announced that it would be approving two waivers.
The waivers were approved under the Clean Air Act.
The move from Biden’s EPA grants California permission to phase out gas cars in the state.
Greenlighting the plan is one of President Biden’s final acts pushing the auto industry into the green energy sector.
One waiver grants California’s near future request to mandate that 35% of new cars and light-duty truck sales have zero emissions by 2026.
The state will also seek to achieve 90% below current emissions by 2027.
The other EPA waiver allows California officials to mandate that all new car sales be zero-emission within the decade.
It marks the most strict electric vehicle (EV) mandate in the country.
However, the waivers could soon be revoked by President Donald Trump.
Trump is reportedly planning to rescind both federal EV requirements and any waiver issued for California by the Biden admin.
During the presidential campaign, incoming White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said:
“Fresh off imposing his insane, job-killing electric vehicle mandate at the federal level, Crooked Joe Biden is preparing to slaughter the remnants of the U.S. auto industry by approving California’s waiver request outlawing the sale of all gasoline-powered automobiles.”
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said that the waivers will “protect its [California] residents from dangerous air pollution coming from mobile sources like cars and trucks.”
However, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers CEO and President Chet Thompson blasted the mandate as “unlawful.”
In a statement, Thompson said:
“Contrary to claims on the campaign trail that they would never tell Americans what kinds of cars we have to drive, the Biden-Harris EPA just did exactly that by greenlighting California’s ban on sales of all new gas and traditional hybrid vehicles.
“These policies will harm consumers — millions of whom don’t even live in California — by taking away their ability to buy new gas cars in their home states and raising vehicle and transportation costs.”
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