By Camille von Kaenel
Economists and regulatory experts are proposing a cap-and-trade system for vehicle greenhouse gas emissions to replace existing fuel economy standards.
President Trump has vowed to review the emissions and mileage requirements to boost automotive jobs. U.S. EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have until April 2018 to decide whether to lower the targets. Automakers have asked the administration to ease costs associated with the fuel efficiency rules given surging truck sales.
Michael Greenstone and Sam Ori from the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute and Cass Sunstein, former President Obama’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and now a legal scholar at Harvard University, saw an opening. They put together a proposal to cap the entire sector’s pollution level and make automakers trade credits based on the lifetime emissions of their vehicles.
They hope to sell it to the Trump administration as a sleek system that cuts costs while directly achieving a set environmental outcome…
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