Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Sierra Club Calfiornia Speaks Up for Greener Vehicles at CARB Meeting Thursday

On Thursday Sierra Club California will give public testimony at the California Air Resources Board (CARB) meeting and urge the Board to foster the growth of new technology that will provide Californians the opportunity to purchase and drive greener vehicles like battery electric cars.

CARB is now working on proposing changes to the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program, to implement the state’s global warming law, AB 32. Sierra Club California and our allies are working hard to ensure that these standards are as strong as possible. That’s what we need to significantly clean up California’s air and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While CARB staff have been working hard to strengthen the regulations, we have strong concerns with a policy option just released in the ZEV White Paper that would let the auto industry off the hook by giving them even more time to delay technology advancements and commercialization of zero emission vehicles.

Click here for the ZEV White Paper.

Click here for Sierra Club California’s and the Clean Car Coalition’s response to the policy option we take issue with.

Sierra Club California believes the auto industry has had plenty of time to conform with ZEV regulations. Now is not the time to let up—too much is at stake! NOW is the time to drive innovation and ramp up commercialization of green vehicles to ensure our kids breathe cleaner air, and to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. A strong ZEV program will also save us money at the gas pump and create green jobs. And strengthening the ZEV regulations will help California reach our goals of being a national leader in setting rigorous greenhouse gas emission standards, while promoting the advancement of new, cleaner technology.

Let us know what you think about cleaning our air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions coming from our vehicles…

1 comment:

Edward Mainland said...

CARB's targets for Battery Electric Vehicles are far too low. Among various options CARB has considered, it is now more evident that battery electric vehicles (BEVs) have steadily come to the fore as an optimum ZEV technology in terms of commercial viability and market readiness as well as scalability, cost, energy efficiency and other performance standards.

It has also become increasingly clear that, as private investment and corporate planning are accelerating market-sector momentum of battery electric vehicles, CARB should keep pace in its regulatory responsibilities. That means setting much higher BEV goals and targets for the near and medium term than it has done so far.