A state appeals panel has ruled California environmental regulators acted within their authority when ramming through a rule to eliminate all internal combustion powered trucks from California by the year 2045 in the name of fighting "climate change," and also did not violate state law by all but ignoring pleas from the trucking industry and other members of the public to consider less economically harmful ways to reduce emissions.
In the ruling, a three-justice panel of the California Fifth District Court of Appeal in Fresno rejected an appeal from the California Renewable Transportation Alliance (CRTA), formerly known as the California Natural Gas Vehicle Coalition, in their court fight with the California Air Resources Board over CARB's so-called Advanced Clean Trucks regulation.
In the ruling, the appeals panel upheld the decision of Fresno County Superior Court Judge William Terrence. The ruling agreed CARB did not violate California state laws when setting the ACT.
The appellate decision was authored by Justice Brad R. Hill. Justices Kathleen Meehan and Mark W. Snauffer concurred in the ruling.
The CRTA filed suit in 2020, shortly after CARB voted to adopt the ACT rule.
Under ACT, truck manufacturers in the state would be required to sell an ever-increasing number of so-called "zero emissions trucks" in California, until ultimately forbidding the sale of diesel-powered trucks in the state by 2045.
The ACT mandate began this year, requiring at least 2.5% of all trucks sold in the state to be "zero emission." CARB said it intends to have at least 300,000 electric trucks operating in California by 2035.
In pushing through the ACT, regulators leaned heavily on guidance from environmental activists and public health representatives, in particular. They asserted the move to electric trucks is needed to reduce smog levels in California and cut carbon emissions by at least one fifth. Such emissions, which come from trucks, cars and many other sources which rely on oil and gas fuels, are considered by the state to be "greenhouse gases" (GHGs), so called because the government asserts they are to blame for warming and other climate change events.
Trucking groups, however, say CARB hammered through the ACT without any real consideration for the impacts the rule may have on the state economy and particularly the trucking industry. The CRTA noted its members have taken major strides in recent years to reduce emissions, by shifting to heavy trucks powered by alternative fuels, which substantially reduce the levels of nitrogen oxides (NOx) compounds, which cause smog.
Further, they asserted the alternative fuel trucks generate 50% less carbon emissions, or GHGs.
While CARB was considering the ACT rule, the trucking groups petitioned the state regulators to revise the proposed rule to allow truck and engine makers to comply with the regulation using a credit for their so-called low-NOx vehicles.
CARB, however, rejected those petitions out of hand, asserting they had no intentions of allowing any variance from their zero emissions, all electric truck goals.
"... This alternative concept will not advance the adoption of heavy-duty zero-emission technologies and develop a self-sustaining [zero-emission] truck market," CARB said, concerning the alternative proposals.
Further, court documents indicated the board also all but ignored hundreds of written comments from the public, urging them to allow for the alternative approaches sought by the trucking industry, deeming them not worthy of a response, because they sought goals other than what CARB wanted to do.
In their lawsuit, the CRTA said this approach to the rulemaking process violated California state environmental regulatory review laws.
The courts, however, said the law allows CARB to set its target goals first, and then fashion the rule to fit their goals, regardless of public comment or input from the industries that would be harmed by their rules.
"... Substantial evidence supports the Board's conclusion that the low-NOx vehicle credit option failed to meet most of the basic project objectives properly defined in the Board's scoping process," the appellate justices wrote.
"The question in the mitigation space, then, is whether that determination is sufficient to also support the implicit conclusion from the lack of discussion that the Board found the low-NOx vehicle credit option infeasible as a mitigation measure too.
"... The Board properly scoped its project as an attempt to solve air quality issues by encouraging a full move to (zero emissions vehicles). It then publicly identified sufficient reasons in the alternatives discussion as to why the low-NOx vehicle credit option failed to meet those goals, rendering it infeasible. Upon concluding the low-NOx vehicle credit was infeasible from a policy perspective, the Board was not obligated to further consider the option in the context of mitigation measures, even if alerted to the potential use of the low-NOx vehicle credit in that space by commenters," the justices said.
The appellate court further agreed the decision by CARB to ignore nearly 445 comments in favor of the low-NOx credit technically violated their obligations to the public in the comment process, but was ultimately "harmless."
The judges said the "error" in failing to respond to the public was "harmless" because the Board had already committed to the zero emissions requirement and would consider no alternative that did not achieve that goal, regardless of public comment.
"In this sense, the Board's failure is most in line with the example of omitting information that was so patently irrelevant that no person could suppose the failure was prejudicial," the justices wrote.
The CRTA has been represented by attorneys Dario J. Frommer, Andrew Oelz, Ashley Vinson Crawford, Aileen M. McGrath, and Zach ZhenHe Tan, of the firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
CARB has been represented by the office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta.