Project 2025 Calls for CAFE Rollback, Scrapping Anti-Emissions Measures

Project 2025, a set of policy recommendations compiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation in anticipation of second Trump presidency, is suggesting rolling back fuel- economy standards to levels established in 2020 – a fleetwide average of 35 mpg (6.7 L/100 km).

It also proposes challenging California’s ability to control fuel economy and engine choices through emission standards and would eliminate efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, which are thought to contribute to climate change.

The policy recommendations in Project 2025, whose authors include a collection of conservative political activists, and which are emerging as an issue in the unfolding presidential campaign, also call for extensive privatization of the nation’s transportation infrastructure, including roads, highways, tunnels and bridges.

The heart of changes impacting the automotive industry in the Project 2025 document are in the sections covering the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the EPA. One of its targets is NHTSA, which controls federal fuel-economy standards under a mandate dating back to 1975.

According to Project 2025, “The next Administration must return the federal fuel economy program to the limits established by Congress.

“The standards issued by NHTSA must be reset at reasonable levels that are technologically feasible for (internal-combustion-engine) automobiles and consistent with an increase in domestic auto production and healthy growth in the sale of safer and more affordable new vehicles. To achieve these goals, the next Administration should: Reduce proposed fuel economy levels.

“The Administration should consider returning to the minimum average fuel economy levels specified by Congress for model year 2020 vehicles: levels aimed at achieving a fleetwide average of thirty-five miles per gallon. Consideration should be given to maintaining the standards at those levels for the near term in order to promote the objectives laid out by Congress,” the document says.

Project 2025 says the change will ensure that DOT again exercises priority in the setting of fuel economy standards. “Any EPA limits on carbon dioxide emissions, even if authorized under the Clean Air Act, must support and work in harmony with DOT standards and must not override them or usurp DOT’s regulatory role,” the Project 2025 document notes.

Project 2025 also calls for sharply curtailing California’s involvement in, and authority over, fuel economy and emissions in the future.

Since the Clean Air Act was adopted 1970, regulators in California have had a significant role in shaping the technology used by automakers, going all the way back to the introduction of catalytic converters. More recently, legislators and regulators in staunchly Democratic California have pushed for tighter emission controls, which have moved the industry toward higher fuel economy standards.

The document from the Heritage Foundation calls for restoring “the position that California’s waiver applies only to California-specific issues like ground-level ozone, not global climate issues. It also calls for ensuring “that other states can adopt California’s standards only for traditional/criteria pollutants, not greenhouse gases.” 

It adds: “The Biden Admin. has also granted California a special waiver under the Clean Air Act that permits the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to issue its own fuel-economy directives, notwithstanding EPCA’s (Energy Policy and Conservation Act’s) prohibition on state standards. Under this waiver, CARB has ordered automakers to phase out the sale of ICE-powered automobiles in California and transition to the production of zero-emission vehicles by 2035.

Instead, the Heritage Foundation suggests reconsidering the Cleaner Trucks Initiative “to balance the goal of driving down emissions without creating significant costs or complex burdens on the industry.” Additionally, it calls for reform of EPA’s Science Advisory Board and other advisory bodies to ensure independence, balance, transparency and geographic diversity.

Project 2025 has a clear tilt towards ICE vehicles, including diesels, which have been mostly sidelined for the past decade.

“Congress recognized that the ICE-powered automobile has been instrumental to advancing the mobility and prosperity of the American people and that the domestic mass production of new ICE vehicles generates millions of jobs and remains critical to the overall health of the U.S. economy and the strength of the nation’s industrial base,” says a portion of the approximately 900-page document (https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf).

Automobile- and climate-related proposals comprise a small fraction of the Project 2025 agenda, whose supporters are aligned with former President Donald Trump, who was nominated this week as the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential candidate. Trump publicly distanced himself from Project 2025 early this month, saying he “knew nothing about it” and calling some of its proposals “ridiculous and abysmal.” Some critics have pointed out, however, that the project involves many persons close to Trump and his first administration.