Coalition Calls for Biden Administration to Adopt Clean Air Standards that Eliminate Pollution from Freight Trucks

(Washington, D.C. – March 24, 2021) Seventeen business, equity, science, clean energy, faith and environmental groups are publicly calling on the Biden administration to set multi-pollutant climate and clean air standards that will eliminate dangerous particle, nitrogen oxides and climate pollution from new freight trucks and buses – and to adopt these standards in the next 18 months.

The groups sent a letter to the White House yesterday about the vital importance of addressing the health and climate-damaging pollution from the nation’s freight trucks and buses.

“We urge your administration to adopt pollution standards, by Fall of 2022, that eliminate the smog-forming nitrogen oxides, deadly particles, and climate pollution from freight trucks and buses,” the letter states. “Addressing the extensive health and climate burden from diesel trucks and buses is crucial to saving lives, advancing environmental justice and achieving your commitment to climate action … We ask you to make this life-saving action an administration priority.”

Truck pollution standards should ensure we are eliminating pollution from all new freight trucks and buses no later than 2040, and from freight trucks and buses used in urban and community areas no later than 2035. EDF analysis shows that pollution standards that achieve these goals would prevent 57,000 premature deaths and eliminate more than 4.7 billion metric tons of climate pollution by 2050.

Pollution from freight trucks and buses is concentrated in low-income communities and communities of color. The letter points out that protective standards are essential in order to address that disproportionate impact.

The letter also points out that solutions are at hand, with zero-emission public fleet, last-mile-delivery, and garbage trucks, as well as local transit and school buses, primed for deployment now.

The following groups signed onto the letter:

• American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy
• California Business Alliance for a Clean Economy
• Center for Biological Diversity
• Ceres
• Defend Our Future
• Ecology Center (Michigan)
• Environmental Defense Fund
• Green For All, a program of Dream Corps
• GreenLatinos
• Interfaith Power & Light
• League of Conservation Voters
• Moms Clean Air Force
• Natural Resources Defense Council
• Our Climate
• Sierra Club
• Southern Environmental Law Center
• Union of Concerned Scientists

You can read the full letter here.