Ask Your Congressman To Stop Forced Electric Vehicle Adoption

As MSCI’s partners at the Energy Equipment and Infrastructure Alliance (EEIA) have explained, proposed federal regulations that would effectively ban internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles would have negative impacts on energy infrastructure development in the United States.

First, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants to increase tailpipe emissions standards to a degree that cannot be met without manufacturers reallocating a majority of their output from ICE vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs). (The EPA’s goals are for 70 percent of all new light-duty vehicles sold by 2032 to be fully electric.)

Second, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), through its newly-proposed Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, is mandating fleet-average fuel consumption of 58 miles per gallon by 2032, a number that was arrived at by averaging together the liquid fuel consumption of EVs, which burn none, and ICE vehicles sold by each individual manufacturer.

These requirements “would strand countless billions worth of investments in existing infrastructure and the equipment and capacity to add new infrastructure such as pipelines,” the EEIA said.

While Congress has the authority to overrule these regulations, there is no realistic prospect that any such stand-alone measure would either pass the U.S. Senate or be signed into law by President Joe Biden. In fact, last week the U.S. House passed, on a party-line vote, a bill that would prevent EPA from implementing its proposed regulations. That legislation was pronounced dead on arrival in the Senate and drew a veto threat from the White House.

Therefore, a viable path forward for blocking the rule legislatively is to attach language preventing implementation to “must-pass” legislation like a government funding bill. An effort to execute this strategy is underway and needs business leaders’ help. Several lawmakers have circulated a congressional letter to House and Senate Republican leadership that outlines these rules’ negative consequences and asks leaders to take action. Read the letter here.

As of this writing, 18 lawmakers have co-signed the letter. More signatures are needed. EEIA and MSCI urge Connecting the Dots readers to contact their lawmakers immediately, but no later than next Thursday, December 14, to ask that they sign onto this letter. Tell them: Federal agencies should not be forcing rules that will make U.S. companies more dependent on our global adversaries for energy.

A directory of lawmakers’ offices is here.