Air Plan Approval; Connecticut; Low Emissions Vehicles Program

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 52</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-R01-OAR-2017-0697; FRL-12048-01-R1]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Air Plan Approval; Connecticut; Low Emissions Vehicles Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is approving a State Implementation Plan (SIP) revision submitted by the State of Connecticut on December 14, 2015. This SIP revision includes Connecticut's revised regulations for new motor vehicle emission standards. Connecticut updated its motor vehicle emission regulations to adopt California's Advanced Clean Car (ACC) I program that includes California's low emission vehicle (LEV) III criteria pollutant standards and zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) sales requirements through the 2025 model year, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards that commence in the 2017 model year. Connecticut ensured that its regulations are identical to the California standards for which a waiver has been granted, as required by the Clean Air Act (CAA). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on August 14, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket Identification No. EPA-R01-OAR-2017-0697. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> CBI or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, is not placed on the internet and will be publicly available only in hard copy form. Publicly available docket materials are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> or at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Region 1 Regional Office, Air and Radiation Division, 5 Post Office Square—Suite 100, Boston, MA. EPA requests that, if at all possible, you contact the contact listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section to schedule your inspection. The Regional Office's official hours of business are Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., excluding legal holidays and facility closures due to COVID-19. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Eric Rackauskas, Air Quality Branch, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Region 1, 5 Post Office Square—Suite 100 (Mail code 5-MI), Boston, MA 02109-3912, tel. (617) 918-1628, email <E T="03">rackauskas.eric@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Throughout this document whenever “we,” “us,” or “our” is used, we mean EPA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background and Purpose</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Response to Comments</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Final Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Incorporation by Reference</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background and Purpose</HD> On January 16, 2018 (83 FR 2097), EPA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) proposing approval of Connecticut's amended Section 22(a)-174-36b (Low Emission Vehicle II Program) (LEV II) and the newly adopted Section 22a-174-36c (Low Emission Vehicle III Program) (LEV III) of the Connecticut State Regulations into the Connecticut SIP. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Connecticut's “LEV III regulation” adopts all of California's ACC I program. California's ACC I program is comprised of what it terms LEV III (which includes criteria pollutants emission standards and greenhouse gas emission standards), and a zero-emissions vehicle sales requirement. Connecticut's emission limits apply to new passenger cars, light-duty trucks, and medium-duty passenger vehicles sold, leased, imported, delivered, purchased, rented, acquired, or received in the State of Connecticut. Connecticut has adopted these rules to reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC), particulate matter (PM), and nitrogen oxides (NO <E T="52">X</E> ) in accordance with the requirements of the Clean Air Act (CAA), as well as to reduce greenhouse gases. Connecticut has adopted standards that are identical to the California standards that have been issued a waiver by EPA. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Other specific requirements of Connecticut's December 14, 2015, SIP revision and the rationale for EPA's proposed action are explained in the NPRM and will not be restated here. EPA received both supportive and adverse comments on the proposed Connecticut SIP revision. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  See EPA's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for more information on CT's SIP submittal. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  EPA issued a waiver of preemption under section 209 of the CAA for California's Advanced Clean Car program (that includes its LEV III and ZEV programs) on January 9, 2013 (78 FR 2211). EPA issued a section 209 waiver for California's LEV II program on April 22, 2003 (68 FR 19811); <E T="03">see also</E> 70 FR 22034 (April 28, 2005), 75 FR 41948 (July 30, 2010). EPA reinstated the ACC I waiver on March 14, 2022 (87 FR 14332). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Response to Comments</HD> EPA received two comments in support of EPA's proposed approval of Connecticut's SIP revision. The first comment stated that EPA, “correctly determined that the emission standards in Connecticut's SIP revision are identical to the relevant California Standards” and satisfy the requirements of the CAA. The second comment supported Connecticut's action and encouraged similar action in more states throughout the country. In addition, EPA received comments criticizing some technical aspects of the California Advanced Clean Car I (ACC I) program being adopted by Connecticut under the proposed Connecticut SIP revision. Under CAA section 209(a), states are generally preempted from either adopting or enforcing emissions standards for new motor vehicles and engines. CAA section 209(b) allows EPA to waive this preemption for the State of California subject to listed criteria. Additionally, under CAA section 177, “any state which has plan provisions approved under this part  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> may adopt and enforce for any model year standards relating to control of emissions from new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines.” <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  “This part” refers to Part D of Title I of the CAA. Part D contains requirements for nonattainment and maintenance areas and states within the Ozone Transport Region as defined in CAA section 184(a). </FTNT> Specifically, section 177 of the CAA allows a state to adopt the California emissions standards if: (1) Such standards are identical to the California standards for which a waiver has been granted for such model year, and (2) California and such State adopt such standards at least two years before commencement of such model year. EPA did not receive any comments challenging either of the above criteria. As such, EPA views the comments received as beyond the scope of this action. In this action, EPA is only approving Connecticut's adoption of standards into its SIP under CAA section 177 for which EPA has already granted a waiver of preemption to California (under CAA section 209(b)). To the extent commenters are challenging the ACC I program standards themselves, we note that there is no discretion to modify those standards because under CAA section 177, Connecticut cannot adopt standards that are not identical to the California standards. Therefore, challenges to the ACC I standards themselves are outside the scope of the present action. For example, comments pertaining to battery safety, mining of rare earth elements, and the greenhouse gas footprint of electric cars are beyond the scope of this action because they do not address Connecticut's authority to adopt these standards under Section 177 of the CAA. The standards at issue (LEV III criteria pollutant standards and GHG emission standards, and ZEV sales requirements, that all comprise the ACC I program) are the types of California standards that can be adopted into a state's SIP under the provisions of section 177 of the CAA and are not subject to preemption under section 209 of the CAA, so long as the underlying California standards have been waived under section 209(b) and the other criteria of section 177 have been met. Here, the ACC I standards have been waived by EPA and the other criteria in section 177 have been met. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  EPA also did not receive any comments that challenged the approvability of the standards under section 110 of the CAA. </FTNT> As explained in the NPRM, EPA proposed approval of Connecticut's SIP revision incorporating California motor vehicle emissions standards into Connecticut's SIP (83 FR 2097). Specifically, the SIP revision adopts California's ACC I program regulations for which EPA had previously granted a waiver of preemption to California under CAA section 209(b) (78 FR 2112; <E T="03">see also</E> 87 FR 14332). The ACC I program comprises regulations for ZEV and LEV, which include standards for criteria pollutants for new passenger cars, light-duty trucks, medium-duty passenger vehicles, and certain heavy-duty vehicles for model years 2015 through 2025. The ACC I program also includes GHG emission standards that are applicable to 2017 and subsequent model year vehicles. A complete description of the ACC I program can be found at 78 FR 2114, 2122, 2130-31 and in California Air Resources Board's (CARB) 209(b) waiver request, which is available in the docket for the January 2013 waiver decision, Docket Id. EPA-HQ-OAR-2012-0562. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See also</E> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━