EPA and DOT Finalize Greenhouse Gas and Fuel Efficiency Standards for Heavy-Duty Trucks
Standards address second largest segment of U.S. transportation in terms of emissions and energy use
emissions
Secretary Foxx and China’s Minister of Transport Yang Chuangtang Kickoff the Race to Zero Emissions Challenge
LOS ANGELES – U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and China’s Minister of Transport Yang Chuantang unveiled the U.S.-China Race to Zero Emissions (R2ZE) Challenge during the eighth U.S.-China Transportation Forum in Los Angeles. The R2ZE Challenge is a collaborative and friendly competition that encourages cities and metropolitan transit districts in the United States and China to deploy innovative and advanced non-polluting Zero Emission Buses (ZEBs) in their transit systems.
Transit industry works together to reduce bus idling
It probably makes sense to you that idling your car —running your engine when you’re not moving— truly gets you nowhere. It reduces your vehicle’s fuel economy, costs you money, and creates pollution. A little-known fact from the U.S. Department of Energy: Idling for more than 10 seconds uses more fuel and produces more emissions that contribute to smog and climate change than stopping and restarting your engine does.
Researchers estimate that idling of heavy-duty and light-duty vehicles combined wastes about 6 billion gallons of fuel and produces about 60 million tons of CO2 emissions annually. About half of that is from commercial vehicles, including transit buses.
So when the Federal Transit Administration and America's public transit agencies turn their attention to start/stop or anti-idle buses, it makes a big difference...
LoNo transit vehicles gain traction with FTA grant
What do Louisville, Kentucky; Duluth, Minnesota; and Stockton, California, have in common? They're all on their way to new zero-emission transit buses with some help from Federal Transit Administration "Low or No Emission Vehicle Deployment Program" grants. (Here at DOT, we call it "LoNo.")
FTA's LoNo program aims to help put a new generation of advanced, non-polluting transit buses on the road in communities nationwide. We're talking about the cleanest and most energy-efficient US-made transit buses available. Grants from the LoNo program will help transit agencies integrate more of these cutting-edge, pollutant-reducing buses into their fleets...
U.S. Fuel Economy Reaches All-Time High
Cross-posted courtesy of the White House.
In President Obama’s first term, he called on the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation to take action to double fuel economy standards by 2025 and cut vehicle greenhouse gas emissions in half. These actions combat climate change and help American families save money – more than $8,000 in fuel costs for each car by 2025.
In fact, over the duration of the program, Americans will save a total of $1.7 trillion in fuel costs and reduce oil consumption by more than 2 million barrels per day. And we are on track to roughly double fuel economy by 2025. This proves once again that addressing climate change can go hand in hand with strong economic growth.
Last year marked an important milestone in the Administration’s effort to fight climate change. According to EPA’s new Fuel Economy Trends Report, new vehicles in 2013 achieved their highest fuel economy of all time. Model year 2013 vehicles reached an average of 24.1 miles per gallon – a 0.5-mile-per-gallon increase over the previous year and an increase of nearly 5 miles – or 25 percent – per gallon since 2004. Fuel economy has now increased in eight of the last nine years, and our average carbon emissions last year hit a record low of 369 grams per mile in model year 2013.
