NESCAUM Statement on EPA’s Final Rule for 2027 and Later Model Year Heavy-Duty Engine and Vehicle NOx Standards

(December 20, 2022, Boston, MA) Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its final rule to strengthen federal nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions standards for model year 2027 and later heavy-duty trucks. NOx pollution reacts in the atmosphere to produce ground-level ozone (“smog”) afflicting the health and well-being of tens of millions of people in the United States. EPA’s new rule updates NOx emission standards for heavy-duty trucks that have not been revised for more than 20 years. Appropriate, feasible, and stringent emission standards for heavy-duty vehicles are necessary to protect public health and improve our air quality.

NESCAUM supports stronger national NOx emission standards for diesel trucks traveling across our nation’s interstates and in our local communities. The final EPA NOx rule greatly improves upon the twenty-year old national standards by strengthening emission standards and increasing useful engine life durations, which will extend the period over which in-use truck pollution reductions must be maintained. In addition, EPA’s more robust requirements for local driving conditions (“low load”) will ensure greater NOx reductions from trucks operating in densely populated urban areas that are overburdened by truck pollution.

EPA’s final rule a big step forward. However, while the new pollution limits and other changes in the rule are important and needed national measures, they do not provide the more immediate NOx reductions that California’s truck rules deliver and thus do not provide as much needed early pollution reductions in the Northeast, especially in overburdened environmental justice communities.

At a national level, NESCAUM supports this action and urges EPA to quickly propose greenhouse gas standards for post-2027 model year heavy-duty engines and vehicles that require the sale of zero emitting trucks. Such an action will achieve much needed further reductions in truck NOx emissions in addition to protecting our climate.

NESCAUM previously submitted written comments and testimony on EPA’s proposed rule.

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NESCAUM is the regional non-profit association of state air pollution control agencies in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont. NESCAUM serves as a technical and policy advisor to its member agencies on a wide range of air pollution and climate issues and facilitates multi-state initiatives to improve air quality and mitigate climate change. For more than three decades, NESCAUM and its members have closely collaborated with California and other states, the Environmental Protection Agency, and industry to promote low- and zero- emission vehicles.

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