Reconsideration of 2009 Endangerment Finding and Greenhouse Gas Vehicle Standards

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Parts 85, 86, 600, 1036, 1037, and 1039</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194; FRL-12715-01-OAR]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2060-AW71</RIN> <SUBJECT>Reconsideration of 2009 Endangerment Finding and Greenhouse Gas Vehicle Standards</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this action, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to repeal all greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty vehicles and engines to effectuate the best reading of Clean Air Act (CAA) section 202(a). We propose that CAA section 202(a) does not authorize the EPA to prescribe emission standards to address global climate change concerns and, on that basis, propose to rescind the Administrator's prior findings in 2009 that GHG emissions from new motor vehicles and engines contribute to air pollution which may endanger public health or welfare. We further propose, in the alternative, to rescind the Administrator's prior findings in 2009 because the EPA unreasonably analyzed the scientific record and because developments cast significant doubt on the reliability of the findings. Lastly, we propose to repeal all GHG emission standards on the alternative bases that no requisite technology for vehicle and engine emission control can address the global climate change concerns identified in the findings without risking greater harms to public health and welfare. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Comments.</E> Comments must be received on or before September 15, 2025. Comments on the information collection provisions submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) are best assured of consideration by OMB if OMB receives a copy of your comments on or before September 2, 2025. <E T="03">Public Hearing.</E> The EPA will announce information regarding the public hearing for this proposal in a supplemental <E T="04">Federal Register</E> document. Please refer to the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section for additional information on the public hearing. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Comments.</E> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov/</E> (our preferred method). Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Email: a-and-r-Docket@epa.gov.</E> Include Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194 in the subject line of the message. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, OAR Docket, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> EPA Docket Center, WJC West Building, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004. The Docket Center's hours of operations are 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday (except Federal Holidays). <E T="03">Instructions.</E> All submissions received must include the Docket ID No. for this rulemaking. Comments received may be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/,</E> including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on sending comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the “Public Participation” heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Alan Stout, Assessment and Standards Division, Office of Transportation and Air Quality, Environmental Protection Agency, 2000 Traverwood Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48105; telephone number: (734) 214-4805; email address: <E T="03">stout.alan@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">A. Public Participation</HD> <E T="03">Written Comments.</E> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> (our preferred method), or the other methods identified in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from the docket. The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit to the EPA's docket at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI), Proprietary Business Information (PBI), or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. If you choose to submit CBI or PBI as a comment to the EPA's docket, please send those materials to the person listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. Multimedia submissions (audio, video, etc.) must be accompanied by a written comment. The written comment is considered an official comment and should include discussion of all points you wish to make. The EPA will generally not consider comments or comment contents located outside of the primary submission ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> on the web, cloud, or other file sharing system). Please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets</E> for additional submission methods; the full EPA public comment policy; information about CBI, PBI, or multimedia submissions; and general guidance on making effective comments. To facilitate comment on the portions of the rule on which the EPA is specifically soliciting comment, the EPA has indexed each comment solicitation with a unique identifier ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> “C-1”, “C-2”) in section VII of this preamble to provide a consistent framework for effective and efficient provision of comments. Accordingly, we ask that commenters include the corresponding identifier when providing comments relevant to that comment solicitation. We ask that commenters include the identifier either in a heading or within the text of each comment, to make clear which comment solicitation is being addressed. We note that we are not limiting comment to these identified areas. <E T="03">Participation in Virtual Public Hearing.</E> The EPA will announce information regarding the public hearing for this proposal in a supplemental document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . The hearing notice, registration information, and any updates to the hearing schedule will also be available at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engines/proposed-rule-reconsideration-2009-endangerment-finding.</E> Please refer to this website for any updates regarding the hearings. The EPA does not intend to publish additional documents in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> announcing updates to the hearing schedule. <E T="03">Docket.</E> All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</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 through the EPA Docket Center at the location listed in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of this document. <HD SOURCE="HD1">B. Action Applicability</HD> This action relates to companies that manufacture, sell, or import into the United States light-, medium-, or heavy-duty motor vehicles and engines. Potentially affected categories and entities include the following: <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,nj,tp0,i1" CDEF="xs60,r150"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1"> NAICS code  <SU>a</SU> </CHED> <CHED H="1">NAICS title</CHED> <ENT>Automobile and Light-duty Motor Vehicle Manufacturing.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">336120</ENT> <ENT>Heavy Duty Truck Manufacturing.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">336211</ENT> <ENT>Motor Vehicle Body Manufacturing.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">336213</ENT> <ENT>Motor Home Manufacturing.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">336310</ENT> <ENT>Motor Vehicle Gasoline Engine and Engine Parts Manufacturing.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">336390</ENT> <ENT>Other Motor Vehicle Parts Manufacturing.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">333618</ENT> <ENT>Other Engine Equipment Manufacturing.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">423110</ENT> <ENT>Automobile and Other Motor Vehicle Merchant Wholesalers.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">811198</ENT> <ENT>All Other Automotive Repair and Maintenance.</ENT> </ROW> <TNOTE> <SU>a</SU>  NAICS Association. NAICS & SIC Identification Tools. Available online: <E T="03">https://www.naics.com/search.</E> </TNOTE> </GPOTABLE> This table is not intended to be exhaustive but rather provides a guide for readers regarding entities potentially affected by this action. This table lists the types of entities that the EPA is presently aware could potentially be affected by this action. Other types of entities not listed in the table could also be affected. To determine whether your entity is regulated by this action, you should carefully examine the applicability criteria found in Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) title 40, parts 85, 86, 600, 1036, and 1037. If you have questions regarding the applicability of this action to a particular entity, consult the person listed in the <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Executive Summary</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Introduction</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Need for Regulatory Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Summary of the Major Provisions in This Proposed Action</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. The EPA's Historical Approach to CAA ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 573k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━