Sponsors (18)
Introduced March 14, 2025 by Mike Lee · Last progress March 14, 2025
The bill creates a single national emissions regime that simplifies compliance and lowers costs for manufacturers and interstate markets but removes state ability to adopt stricter standards, risking worse local air quality, fewer low‑emission vehicle choices, and stranded state investments.
Multi-state manufacturers, equipment buyers, and vehicle dealers face a single federal emissions standard, reducing compliance complexity and likely lowering equipment and production costs.
State and multi-state vehicle manufacturers benefit from predictable, uniform rules for interstate commerce, removing patchwork state regulations that previously created market uncertainty.
EPA and federal agencies face reduced statutory and regulatory complexity because overlapping text (tied to California §177 opt-in authority) is removed, which can streamline rulemaking and administration.
Local communities (including children and other vulnerable groups) and state/local governments lose the ability to require stricter emissions controls for vehicles, construction and farm equipment, and locomotives, which could worsen local air quality and public-health outcomes and limit responses to pollution hotspots.
Consumers and vehicle buyers may face fewer low-emission and higher-fuel-efficiency vehicle choices if federal standards are weaker than California’s, slowing emissions reductions and making it harder to meet climate and air-quality goals.
Voiding existing state waivers and denying pending applications can halt state programs and investments, producing stranded compliance costs for state governments and manufacturers who planned for stricter standards.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Prohibits states from adopting California-style emission standards for nonroad engines and vehicles, voids existing waivers, and removes waiver authority from the Clean Air Act.
Prohibits states from adopting or enforcing California-style emission standards for nonroad engines and nonroad vehicles (such as construction equipment, farm equipment, and locomotives), voids all prior federal waivers that allowed such state standards, and treats any pending waiver applications as denied as of enactment. It also removes related waiver authorities and conforming references throughout the federal Clean Air Act. The change centralizes emission standards at the federal level by eliminating state waiver authority for nonroad equipment, directly affecting state regulatory power, equipment users and operators, and manufacturers of nonroad engines and vehicles. Existing state-adopted standards covered by earlier waivers would be invalidated by this law upon enactment.