EPA on track to act on California emissions waiver

By Tom Doggett

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Environmental Protection Agency is on track to decide by year's end whether to let California set its own stricter vehicle emissions standards to fight global warming, but will not meet the state's demand for a decision this month, EPA's chief said on Wednesday.

"We're on track to meet the commitment to make a decision by the end of the year on the California petition," EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said in a telephone interview to this week's Reuters Global Environment Summit.

But Johnson said the EPA will not be able to give a decision by the October 22 deadline set by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said he would sue the agency if it did not make a decision by then.

Schwarzenegger has argued that under the federal Clean Air Act, the EPA must act on the state's waiver request within "a reasonable time period," and the request has been pending for almost two years.

If the waiver is granted, about a dozen other states also would be able to impose their own tougher vehicle emission limits.

The Bush administration has resisted calls for stricter national fuel economy standards for vehicles which would reduce heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.

Johnson said the EPA is sifting through 100,000 comment letters sent in on the California petition, the most ever in the agency's four-decade history of reviewing petitions.

"We are expeditiously, but very carefully, reviewing all the comments, and doing our analysis," he said.

California asked the EPA in December 2005 for permission, or a waiver, to set air quality requirements on vehicle tailpipe emissions that are stricter than the national standard.

The most populous U.S. state has passed a law requiring that cars and light trucks beginning with the 2009 models gradually cut climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide, by 18 percent by 2020.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, ordering the agency to reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide and other emissions from new cars and trucks that contribute to climate change.