Climate and clean transportation advocates are calling into question a claim by Maine officials that a new toll road proposed outside Portland will reduce carbon emissions by alleviating gridlock. 

It’s a common argument made in favor of highway expansions nationwide, said Benito Pérez, the policy director of the nonprofit Transportation for America. But it relies on a narrow view of data that, in context, tends to show these projects are more likely to increase planet-warming emissions, he said. 

“They’re looking at it from one dimension,” said Pérez, a former transportation planner and engineer. “This is a multi-dimensional issue when it comes to emissions reduction, and it’s not going to work.”  

Maine’s proposed Gorham Connector project has met stiff public opposition in its rollout over recent months. The toll road aims to offer a more direct route from Portland’s growing suburbs into the city, bypassing local roads that officials say weren’t designed to accommodate increasing commuter traffic.

The project has been contemplated since the late 1980s. Its latest iteration builds on a 2012 study that recommended three main ways to improve connectivity between Portland and points west: new approaches to land use and development, expanded bus and passenger rail access, and various road upgrades and expansions, including the new four-lane, roughly five-mile bypass the state is now proposing.  

The Maine Turnpike Authority took more than three hours of comments at its first public input session on the project in March. On July 18, the MTA said it would delay further public meetings on the project and extend its permitting timeline due to a “high level of public interest and concern.” 

In response to questions for this story, MTA spokesperson Erin Courtney emphasized the importance of a multi-pronged approach in achieving the Gorham Connector’s projected climate benefits. 

“Coupled with targeted land use and transit initiatives, we aim to create a more efficient and sustainable transportation system that addresses both congestion and environmental impacts,” she said.

Benefits are ‘negligible at best’

The emissions impact of smoother traffic on the proposed toll road has been one of the MTA’s core arguments in favor of the project. The agency says on the the website for the Connector that it “will ease traffic flow, decreasing the number of idling vehicles, conserving fuel, and reducing exhaust pollutants in alignment with Maine’s Climate Action Plan.” 

But even in isolation, this emissions benefit is typically “negligible at best,” said Pérez. Despite ongoing improvements in vehicles’ fuel efficiencies and even electrification, he said, studies show that more use of expanded roads tends to outweigh this benefit. 

Pérez pointed to examples in the Washington, D.C. area, Salt Lake City and elsewhere where highway expansions that aimed to reduce gridlock instead led to more traffic and further need for expansions years later — a paradox known as “induced demand.” 

A 2015 paper from the University of California-Davis explains this phenomenon: “Adding capacity decreases travel time, in effect lowering the ‘price’ of driving; and when prices go down, the quantity of driving goes up,” author Susan Handy wrote. New roads, for instance, can encourage more low-density development, which in turn fills those roads with additional drivers. This counteracts the value of highway expansions in alleviating congestion, Handy said, and at least partly offsets the emissions reductions that come along with it. 

Courtney, with the MTA, said “the Gorham Connector’s design and goals suggest a different outcome,” arguing that the project is unique as a limited-access highway without many intersections or entrances. 

“By enhancing traffic efficiency and reducing congestion on local roads, it can offer a balanced approach that considers both transportation needs and environmental impacts,” she said. 

Portland resident Myles Smith, a steering committee member with Mainers for Smart Transportation, a volunteer group opposing the Gorham Connector, isn’t convinced. 

“It’s part of a pattern of showing only the rosiest possible scenarios of how, theoretically, on paper, with a lot of other assumptions going perfectly, it might reduce climate emissions,” he said. “It assumes a lot of other things that they have no control over at the Turnpike Authority, like land-use planning and public transportation.”

New measures of climate impacts 

The 2012 study backing the bypass proposal found that implementing a bevy of suggested road improvements and expansions, including the Connector, would decrease local vehicle hours traveled, or VHT — an analog for congestion, measuring how much time people spend in their cars, Pérez said — by about 10% versus 2035 projections. 

It also said the area’s vehicle miles traveled, or VMT — which measures how much people are driving overall — would increase relative to 2035 projections if the bypass was built, but would decrease in scenarios where only existing roads were improved, or where public transit was the focus. 

“This is why we propose a ‘three-legged stool’ approach,” Courtney said — one that also emphasizes dense development and increased public transit access, so that VMT increases might be offset by other benefits. 

VMT is an increasingly common way to measure the climate benefits of transportation projects, Pérez said. Minnesota and Colorado have adopted new requirements toward goals for reducing their overall VMT, mandating that proposed road expansions either contribute to this decrease, or fund climate mitigation projects otherwise. 

But advocates said VMT and VHT alone are not enough to measure the overall climate impacts of a project like the Gorham Connector. A more comprehensive analysis, they said, would include the environmental impacts of construction and would account in more detail for the role of the non-road improvements that the MTA is also calling for. 

A need for coordinated solutions

The 2012 study, in its final recommendations, said all three strategies — changes to roads, transit and development patterns — would need to “work together to provide the desired results” for improving connectivity and reducing traffic impacts in the Portland area. For example, more dense development and less congestion will make new transit approaches more viable, Courtney said. 

The Turnpike Authority has little direct control over those kinds of reforms, but says on its website that it expects “other regional studies” in those areas to be part of the Gorham Connector planning process. 

“The Gorham Connector project, combined with additional initiatives being considered by the MTA and Maine (Department of Transportation) — such as additional park-and-ride facilities, electric vehicle charging stations, and enhanced transit opportunities — will collectively contribute to reduced greenhouse gas emissions compared to a ‘do nothing’ scenario,” Courtney said. 

Smith said these other efforts are moving more slowly and with less state support than the Connector has received, putting these parallel solutions out of step with each other. 

Maine is facing a lawsuit from youth climate activists over regulators’ decision earlier this year not to adopt California’s Advanced Clean Cars II rule, which would have ramped up requirements for electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle sales through model year 2032. 

The state is still a long way off from the EV goals set in its 2020 climate action plan, which also aims to reduce light-duty vehicle miles traveled 10% by next year and 20% by 2030. 

Advocates applauded a new emphasis on transit, biking, walking and other alternative strategies to achieve those VMT goals in the recommendations from a state climate council working group for a forthcoming update of the climate plan, due out in December. 

It’s an example of slow progress toward more holistic approaches to transportation and climate planning, which, Pérez said, must extend to technical details like the traffic models that underlie projects like the Gorham Connector in order to succeed. 

“Those models need to think about what they’re measuring — what matters most,” he said. “The mindset is, ‘we’re designing for vehicles,’ and that’s what they’re measuring for, not measuring for the movement of people.”

Critics, studies cast doubt on Maine’s claims of climate benefits from highway expansion is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The recent expansion of a groundbreaking transportation law in Minnesota means all major highway projects in the state will soon be scrutinized for their impact on climate emissions.

A year ago, the state legislature made headlines with a new law requiring the state transportation department and the Twin Cities’ regional planning agency to begin assessing whether highway expansion projects are consistent with state climate goals, including Minnesota’s aim for 20% reduction in driving by 2050.

A follow-up bill passed this spring expands the 2023 law to include all major highway projects statewide that exceed a $15 million budget in the Twin Cities or $5 million outside the metro, regardless of whether or not they would add new driving lanes. The updated legislation also established a technical advisory committee and a state fund to recommend and help pay for mitigation projects.

“It allows for some evolution of the law,” said Sam Rockwell, executive director of Move Minnesota, a nonprofit advocacy group that supported the legislation. “There’s more flexibility.”

The law requires transportation project planners to offset projected increases in greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled to qualify for state or federal highway dollars. Those mitigation efforts might include incorporating funding for transit, bicycle or pedestrian programs or environmental restoration projects.

‘A waterfall effect’

Altogether, the law will now cover more than 12,000 miles of state trunk highways that account for more than 60% of all miles driven in the state. One high-profile project that may not have been covered under the initial law is the upcoming reconstruction of Interstate 94 between Minneapolis and St. Paul, which will now need to account for climate impacts.

The changes come as advocates and officials seek solutions to reverse the continued growth of transportation emissions, which surpassed electricity generation almost a decade ago as the state’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and are a major reason why Minnesota is not on track to meet its climate goals. 

A disconnect has long existed between even progressive states’ climate goals and the status quo of highway construction, which has long focused on maximizing efficiency for drivers. The new Minnesota law is an attempt to integrate climate action into state and local transportation planning, and to recognize that electric vehicles alone won’t be enough to achieve climate targets. 

Under the law, the Twin Cities’ regional planning agency, the Metropolitan Council, must include strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles driven in its next 25-year regional plan in 2026. All metro area communities will then use that plan as the basis for their local comprehensive plans, which are due to the regional council in 2028. 

“It’s a waterfall effect here,” Rockwell said.

The Met Council’s last planning document, Thrive 2040, already outlined a focus on multimodal travel options, encouraging walking and biking options while setting a goal of decreasing vehicle miles traveled per capita by 20% by 2050, in line with the state’s official goal.

Conversations already underway

Many metro area communities are already having conversations about how to reduce dependency on driving. Abby Finis, a consultant who has helped several communities draft climate action plans, said reducing driving can bring broader benefits than simply focusing on electric vehicles.

“It offers more active lifestyles, more opportunities to incorporate nature, and has less impact on natural resources needed for electric vehicles,” she said.

Most communities focus on increasing the ability of residents to walk and bicycle for short trips by adding bike lanes, pedestrian islands and safer crosswalks, she said. Some cities see telecommuting and co-working spaces as options for reducing commutes.

But transforming the suburbs will be challenging, Finis said. Sustaining transit service often requires denser development, which continues to be politically controversial in many communities. 

“I have yet to see any community push hard on those strategies in a way that meets what is necessary to reduce [vehicle miles traveled] and adapt to climate change,” Finis said.

For example, Minnetonka, a western suburb of Minneapolis with more than 52,000 residents, boasts a considerable bicycling community. But transit ridership is low except for a modest ridership at the regional mall, one commercial development area, and park-and-ride lots, said Minnetonka’s Community Development Director Julie Wischnack.

Developed in the 1950s and 1960s, Minnetonka’s current land use is a barrier to fixed route transit. But the city is among a collection of suburbs along Interstate 494 that has been pushing for transit and other commuting options, including telework.

Another member of that commission, Bloomington, faces many of the same challenges. The city has a few dense neighborhoods near transit stops and the Mall of America, but much of the community remains single-family homes and small apartments. A recent report Bloomington commissioned on transportation found that 75% of trips by residents were more than 10 miles. 

Transit, biking, and other modes could replace trips that are less than 10 miles, said Bloomington Sustainability Coordinator Emma Struss. A recent city transportation study suggested several strategies to decrease driving, including transit-oriented development, free bus and rail passes, bike parking, subsidized e-bikes and more transit. Removing barriers to walking and biking were highlighted.

“We’re hearing more and more from residents that they want safe ways to get around the community without needing to take a car,” Struss said.

Similar challenges in larger cities

St. Paul has made changes to create denser neighborhoods, including removing parking minimums for new development and letting up-to-four-unit complexes be built in single-family neighborhoods. The biggest challenge continues to be the spread-out nature of the region, which forces people to drive to suburban jobs and big-box merchants. 

“The fundamental nature of those trips is hard to serve with anything but driving in the car,” said Russ Stark, St. Paul’s chief resilience officer.

Minneapolis has focused less on vehicle miles and more on “mode shift,” or decreasing trips, said the city’s Public Works Director Tim Sexton. The goal is to replace three of five trips by car with walking, biking, or other modes. A city transportation action plan features more than 100 strategies, including creating around 60 mobility hubs where residents can rent e-bikes, scooters or electric vehicles, or take transit.

Patrick Hanlon, the city’s deputy commissioner of sustainability, healthy homes and the environment, pointed out that Minneapolis has one of the country’s best-developed bike networks, which continues to grow. The city’s comprehensive plan drew national attention for removing barriers preventing denser development, which typically leads to fewer transportation emissions. Several transportation corridors now feature bus rapid transit lines.

What Finis described as a “patchwork” of conversations around developments like these are expected to become more comprehensive as the state law’s planning requirements take effect in the coming years.

The legislation has also made Minnesota a national inspiration for other states looking to make progressive changes to highway planning, Rockwell said.

“We know of a number of other states that are looking at trying to replicate parts of this (law), which is great,” he said. “We’ve been on the phone with folks from New York, Michigan, Illinois and Maryland who are trying to bring some pieces of this into their legislative sessions and their legal framework. That’s exciting.”

Minnesota highway projects will need to consider climate impacts in planning is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

To understand the stakes of cleaning up the most-polluting vehicles on our roads, look no further than Charlotte.

The largest city in North Carolina, it’s at the crossroads of two major trucking routes, with 17,000 trips per day spewing smog- and soot-forming pollutants that consistently rank the metro area among the nation’s 100 worst for air quality.

It’s also a burgeoning epicenter for electric vehicle manufacturing and research, home to many of the state’s 40-plus businesses that are already playing a role in the medium- and heavy-duty electric vehicle supply chain.

Clean transportation advocates say the air quality and economy in Charlotte and throughout the state stand to benefit from new Biden administration tailpipe emission rules for heavy-duty trucks, which account for an outsized share of the region’s climate emissions and air pollution.

“The Heavy Duty Rules are a critical step forward in establishing a ‘federal floor’ for clean trucks all across the country,” said Aaron Viles, campaigns director with the Electrification Coalition.

But they also say there’s still a need for other policies to usher in a new generation of electric trucks and buses, including a state-based rule scuttled by the GOP-controlled legislature last year. 

Among the leaders? 

The transportation sector is the largest source of global warming pollution and the country. Cleaning it up, experts say, means phasing in new electric vehicles of all shapes and sizes, reducing our use of passenger vehicles overall, and powering the grid with renewable energy. 

The transition is not without hurdles. Would-be electric vehicle owners and fleet managers worry about a lack of charging infrastructure. And while the costs of electric-powered vehicles are falling steadily and the price of operating them is minimal, potential consumers still balk at their relatively high sticker price.

What’s more, many of the vested interests that revolve around gas and diesel vehicles prefer the status quo, and they extend well beyond the oil industry — including dealers who make money from oil changes and other routine repairs, fueling stations, and manufacturers of engine components.

But climate advocates say overcoming these obstacles has rewards beyond just reducing greenhouse gasses and avoiding catastrophic global warming. In North Carolina, that’s especially true when it comes to cleaning up heavy duty vehicles.

Though trucks, buses and the like make up a tiny fraction of all vehicles on the road, they account for over a quarter of the North Carolina transportation sector’s smog-forming pollutants and nearly a third of its soot-forming emissions, per state officials. Zero-emission vehicles would help curb this pollution.

The transition to heavy-duty electric vehicles could also benefit North Carolina’s economy, with dozens of industries across the state already invested in component production, assembly, or other aspects of the supply chain, according to a 2021 database compiled by the Environmental Defense Fund.

“When you look at where the electric vehicle supply chain investments are going, it’s really clustered in a number of leading states,” said Will Scott, Southeast climate and clean energy director with Environmental Defense Fund. “And North Carolina is among those.”

State v. federal action 

Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who is term-limited after this year, had sought first to garner these benefits with the Advanced Clean Truck rule. Initiated with an October 2022 executive order, the measure requires manufacturers to sell increasing numbers of electric trucks, buses, and other large vehicles. California pioneered the standard, and it has been adopted by 10 other states.

But after prodding from the North Carolina Chamber, Republicans who control the General Assembly balked, passing a provision in the state budget to prevent the rule.  

“Government mandates and intervention into the market would stifle… innovation and investment,” the Chamber wrote on its website after the budget language prevailed, “as well as increase costs in new trucks, on which nearly all of our members rely.” 

The new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency measure, issued this spring, is less ambitious than the California one. But with the Advanced Clean Truck rule essentially dead in the state, advocates say the federal regulation is welcome. 

“States that don’t have ACT will now have a federal policy that can support cleaning up our medium- and heavy-duty transportation sectors,” said Stan Cross, transportation director for Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

In an effort to mollify the industry, Biden officials made their rule “technology neutral,” meaning it would require manufacturers meet a certain tailpipe pollution limit rather than sell a certain percentage of electric vehicles. 

The Electrification Coalition says that means the federal rule will result in lower overall electric sales for most classes of vehicles. For instance, the Biden rule is expected to result in as little as 5% of new tractor cab sales bring electric by 2032, depending on class on weight. The California standard, by contrast, requires 40% of all heavy-duty tractor sales to be zero-emitting – and most likely electric, though other technologies qualify.

Still, when it comes to less air and global warming pollution, cleaning up trucks and buses nationwide has an obvious advantage over a patchwork of states doing so. Overall, the Biden administration expects its rule to avoid 1 billion tons of greenhouse gasses.

There’s also value in Biden attacking transportation sector pollution nationally, piece by piece, Cross said. The administration has already promulgated similar rules for passenger cars and trucks, and standards for port equipment, off-road vehicles, and more are still forthcoming.

“They’re doing the math, and they’re thinking about these standards in a comprehensive and holistic way,” said Cross. “They can look at all of our ports, all of our marine traffic, all of our airports, all of our plane traffic, all of our off-road construction — and set standards that will get us where we need to be.”

In a state like North Carolina, home to several major interstates and their truck traffic, cleaning up trucks beyond state borders will also help reduce health-threatening air pollution. An American Lung Association analysis of states with major trucking routes, for example, found that if all heavy-duty vehicle sales were electric by 2040, the state could avoid over 1,700 premature deaths and hundreds of thousands of lost work days.

Those benefits would be crucial for Charlotte, which consistently ranks among the 100 most polluted cities in America for smog-and soot-forming pollution in the Lung Association’s annual State of the Air report.

“Charlotte advocates for clean air, which includes using electric transportation,” Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles said in a written statement praising the new rules.

And for North Carolina businesses in the medium- and heavy-duty electric vehicle supply chain, the prospect of a national market is clearly better than customers in a smattering of states.

Anything that accelerates the trend toward electric vehicles, Scott said, will come back to the state in the form of jobs and economic activity.

“North Carolina has put itself in a good position to capture a lot of those benefits,” he said.

‘Pole position’ 

Still, the nationwide rule has a major downside for fleet managers from North Carolina cities and corporations that have commitments to go all-electric. The supply of heavy-duty electric vehicles is still relatively low, and the states who have adopted the Advanced Clean Trucks Rule will get first dibs on it.  

The problem could be especially acute in the near term, during which manufacturers can satisfy national requirements just by catering to the 11 states with the more advanced rule.  

“ACT puts your state in pole position for the limited amount of zero-emission, trucks and buses that are going to be coming off of assembly lines,” Cross said. 

Indeed, that’s part of why advocates supporting the federal standard say they’ll keep looking for opportunities to pass the Advanced Clean Truck Rule in the state.  

And though it has little chance of passage, Cooper’s budget this year removes last year’s prohibition on the stronger clean truck standard and includes funding for electric vehicle infrastructure. 

“We applaud the governor for taking these steps to end oil’s monopoly on our transportation systems,” said Anne Blair, the Electrification Coalition’s vice president of policy. “But there is still much more that needs to be done to ensure North Carolina and the country are not left behind as the world shifts to electric transportation.”

What would the Biden administration’s new truck rule mean for North Carolina? is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

After setbacks to adopting electric vehicle sales targets in Maine and Connecticut, New England clean transportation advocates are regrouping with a focus on charging infrastructure and consumer education. 

Maine’s Board of Environmental Protection voted 4-2 on March 20 against adopting California’s Advanced Clean Cars II rules, which would have required electric or plug-in hybrids to make up 82% of new vehicle sales in the state by model year 2032.

Board members initially signaled support for the proposal, which came from a citizen petition last spring, before their first planned vote was delayed by a severe storm in December. 

Last November, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat, pulled a comparable proposal from legislative consideration after it was not expected to have the votes to pass.

Neither state had opted to consider California’s Advanced Clean Trucks standard, which sets similar targets for heavy-duty vehicle sales. 

Maine and Connecticut are among more than a dozen states that have had earlier versions of California’s clean car standards on the books for years. Both states have also prioritized transportation emissions, the region’s biggest contributor to global warming, in their climate plans. 

Some advocates fear progress in this sector will stall in these states until they adopt the updated California rules. They say debate over the standards was clouded by false and misleading claims, often pushed by fossil fuel industry groups, that have ramped up as part of the 2024 presidential campaign. 

“It was really an attempt to confuse and agitate consumers, and unfortunately it was successful,” said Charles Rothenberger, the climate and energy attorney at the Connecticut nonprofit Save the Sound. 

Fear of ‘losing ground’

Even if Connecticut or Maine successfully revisits adopting the California rules next year, it would likely push implementation out to model year 2029 at the earliest, advocates said. 

States that don’t use the new California standards will default to federal rules for reducing vehicle emissions. These rules were just overhauled but have a slower timeline than California’s, designed to accommodate states with lower EV sales rates than in much of New England, Rothenberger said.

“Standards that really cater to the laggards when it comes to EV adoption are really not beneficial to states that are well ahead of that curve,” he said. “I fear that it will lead to us losing ground to states that continue with the California standards,” such as Massachusetts and New York, Rothenberger added. 

This could mean less choice and supply for both new and used electric vehicles as carmakers focus on those other states, he said. 

In the meantime, Connecticut EV advocates are backing a bill in the General Assembly to allow state bonds for charging infrastructure and EV incentives and create an Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Coordinating Council to work with utility regulators on system planning, among other provisions. 

Peter LaFond, the Maine program director for the Acadia Center, a regional nonprofit, said the delay in adopting California’s rules provides time for combating misconceptions and for utilizing increasing state and federal funds for charging infrastructure. 

“Every month that goes by, I think there’ll be more and more chargers, and once there are, I think people will see the clear advantages,” LaFond said. “(EVs and plug-in hybrids) lower the carbon footprint and they’re less expensive to operate, and the cold doesn’t present as much of a challenge as the misinformation would have you believe. I think education is going to be a big part of this.” 

A snowball effect in rural areas

Scott Vlaun, the executive director of the Center for an Ecology-Based Economy, a nonprofit in the small western Maine town of Norway, said he sees a snowball effect of EV acceptance in his region.

“It’s happening, it’s just not happening fast enough,” Vlaun said. “This is the future, and if Maine doesn’t get its share, then … we’re going to be kind of stuck — in, especially rural Maine — with people driving beat-up, old, inefficient cars, and it’s not good for anybody.” 

CEBE has led a push for a large public EV charger network in and around Norway, which Vlaun said has helped make EVs and hybrids a more common sight everywhere from Main Street to nearby ski resorts. 

“We do this annual EV expo, and if you get people driving an F-150 Lightning, or a Chevy Bolt, depending on what their needs are, they get it,” he said. “So much of the misinformation — it’s almost comical, because it’s obvious that these people have never gotten behind the wheel of an electric car.” 

Vlaun was speaking from his own EV parked at a public charger outside CEBE’s office, having just driven back from a meeting in Portland, Maine, about an hour away. He said he would have liked to take a train or bus instead of driving, but doesn’t have an easy option for doing so. 

“We don’t see electric cars as a one-to-one replacement for gas cars,” he said. “We see electric vehicles as an interim step and a better solution to individual transportation than gas-powered vehicles — not the answer to the world’s transportation problems by any stretch.” 

Advocates in Connecticut agreed that encouraging cleaner public transit, more walkable cities and less driving overall is as much or more important to reducing transportation emissions as EV adoption. 

Community health impacts

Those emissions are linked to disproportionate asthma rates, low school test scores and other adverse public health ripple effects in Connecticut, said Dr. Mark Mitchell, the co-chair of the Connecticut Equity and Environmental Justice Advisory Council. 

“The people who have the least ability to afford cars and to drive suffer the most from the pollution caused by cars, and so we need to change that — we need to invest in public transportation and making cities walkable and bikeable,” he said. “We’re not going to get rid of cars… but we should make sure that the cars that drive through our communities are as clean as possible, as quickly as possible.” 

Mitchell said he lives in an especially low-income part of Hartford, the state capital — one of the lowest-income cities on the East Coast, with a mostly Black and Latino population. Mitchell said many of his neighbors don’t drive at all and can’t afford new cars, so they don’t yet “see themselves in EVs.” 

“But that’s not the point,” he said. “The point is that they’re very concerned about asthma, they’re very concerned about ADHD, they’re very concerned about school test scores.”

EV adoption across the state is one solution to those problems, he said.  

Jayson Velazquez, the Acadia Center’s Hartford-based climate and energy justice policy associate, used the term “through-emissions” to describe pollution from diesel trucks and other vehicles that traverse low-income neighborhoods and communities of color in Connecticut’s cities en route to nearby highways. 

Unlike those vehicles and their non-local drivers, Velazquez said, “the lasting health effects that come from that pollution don’t just get up and go.” 

Despite concerns about misinformation, advocates acknowledged that they share certain concerns with opponents of the California rules — such as affordability, charging access, the sustainability of minerals mining to build batteries, and strain on the power grid from increasing EV use. 

“There are real issues,” said Mitchell. “We do need to build up the infrastructure, both the charging infrastructure and the electric grid. … But until we set goals, we don’t know how quickly we need to do that. And it’s much easier to put things off if you don’t have a goal.”

Amid progress on electric vehicles, political setbacks frustrate advocates in Maine, Connecticut is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

States like Washington and Massachusetts plan to join California in largely banning the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, seeing it as an effective way to rapidly cut greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

In Minnesota, however, prominent Democrats who celebrated an earlier move toward cleaner vehicles are not supporting the idea — at least not so far. Gov. Tim Walz’s administration hasn’t ruled out a ban on selling new gas cars, though Walz’s regulators strongly suggest it won’t happen any time soon.

Now, a key DFL lawmaker in the Minnesota House from progressive Minneapolis is also throwing cold water on the idea. State Rep. Jamie Long, who leads the House’s Climate and Energy Finance and Policy Committee said the governor is “taking the right approach” by implementing an earlier and less strict version of California’s auto emissions standards for just one year.

“I think Minnesota is going to go its own path,” Long told MinnPost, saying electric vehicles are less common in Minnesota than other states moving quickly toward EVs. “I think the likelihood that we follow California is probably low.”

Minnesota must decide which auto regulations to follow

Last year, Minnesota adopted what it calls Clean Cars standards. They are identical to California’s auto emission standards, and primarily require auto manufacturers to deliver more electric vehicles for sale in the state starting in 2024.

California is the only state that can set its own auto emission regulations, but other states can either choose to follow California or hew to federal standards.

Most Democrats have supported Clean Cars in Minnesota because they argue it will offer more EV choices, stimulate a lagging industry and slash carbon emissions. But Republicans and auto dealers oppose the regulations, saying they meddle with a free market and force expensive EVs on people.

Then, in August, California made the rules tougher. Starting in vehicle model year 2026, the state will allow auto manufacturers to deliver fewer and fewer cars with internal combustion engines for sale until they are largely phased out in 2035. (People will still be able to buy new gas cars in other states or used ones in California. Some new plug-in hybrids that use gasoline will also still remain available.)

That means Minnesota’s older program will run for one year, until 2025. At that point Minnesota will either have to join California in banning new gas cars or reverting to less stringent federal regulations.

The decision for now is in the hands of Walz and his Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. The MPCA can act without new legislative approval because of state laws governing pollution regulation, though lawmakers could always change that authority, and their views likely factor into state decisions on the issue.

MPCA commissioner Katrina Kessler on Friday reiterated the agency is not starting a rulemaking process to ban the sale of new gas cars by 2035 and is focused on implementing less aggressive 2025 regulations.

The MPCA has previously estimated EVs would need to make up between 6.2% to 7.4% of new light-duty vehicles sales of manufacturers in Minnesota to meet the original Clean Cars standards.

“We haven’t gotten to the starting point” of the older rules, Kessler said. “It’s premature to try to ask us what are you going to do in three days when we haven’t decided what we’re going to do tomorrow.”

Key House Democrat not calling for car ban

Long, the Minneapolis DFLer, is a prominent voice on climate and energy policy for his party at the state Capitol and is in the progressive wing of his party on the issue.

On Friday, he spoke, wearing a windmill lapel pin, as the governor unveiled a “Climate Action Framework” that details policy hopes held by Democrats, climate nonprofits and some businesses to reduce carbon emissions across the state.

It calls for 20% of vehicles on Minnesota roads to be EVs by 2030 and for an 80% reduction in carbon emissions from the transportation sector by 2040. It does not include a ban on selling gas cars, even though such a plan would sharply reduce emissions from a transportation sector that accounts for roughly a quarter of Minnesota’s emissions. Currently, the state is not on track to meet a state goal for reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions 30% below 2005 levels by 2025, and the transportation sector carries part of the blame.

Long said Minnesota’s Clean Cars rules will spark the EV market in Minnesota and provide consumers with options already offered in other states trying to increase EV use. After those rules end, Minnesota can reassess where it’s at, he said.

But Long also said Minnesota is different from California and other states. For instance, Long said EVs aren’t as popular here and that the state needs a more robust charging system. Minnesota is the only state in the Midwest to adopt the earlier version of the auto emissions standards.

“I think we need to get to a point first where Minnesotans have the choices to buy electric vehicle options and also that we have the infrastructure to support those choices,” Long said. “I think in the next few years that’s where I want my focus to be, is getting options for Minnesotans for new vehicle purchases.”

Would the reaction from Long, Walz and other Democrats be different if not for this coming midterm election that will decide who is governor and who controls the Legislature? 

Politics can’t be ignored in this case. The issue has been controversial, with some Democrats, particularly in rural areas, opposing the original Clean Cars standard.

Republicans lately have criticized Democrats for what they say is a lack of a clear “yes” or “no” answer on adopting California’s gas car ban. “Right now gas vehicles are $15,000 cheaper than electric,” said Rep. Chris Swedzinkski of Ghent, the top Republican on the House’s climate and energy committee. “This would represent a massive shift with expensive consequences for Minnesota families, businesses, and auto dealers, and we aren’t getting a straight answer from Gov. Walz or his agencies.” 

What Democrats hope to do instead

In the absence of banning sales of new gas cars, Long said he hopes to pass a bill to offer EV rebates, and he said there should be more state funding for electric vehicle chargers. But he also said there has been federal investment in charging and the Inflation Reduction Act will pay for an EV tax credit, among other provisions aimed at sparking the market. Some auto manufacturers have also set their own goals for stopping or limiting the sale of gas vehicles.

By 2025, when the Clean Cars standard in Minnesota is running its short course, Long said “there’s going to be a lot in motion” from the federal government and by auto manufacturers to advance the industry.

Rather than endorse a ban on selling new gas cars, the climate framework unveiled by Walz and the MPCA at an Ecolab facility in Eagan calls for more money for a statewide pedestrian and bicycle network, more transit, and land use policy that “facilitates multimodal transportation.”

One major policy proposal suggested in the framework for slashing carbon emissions from vehicles is what’s known as a “low carbon fuel standard,” which requires that fuels become less “carbon intensive” over time. That would need to be passed by a Legislature that is currently split between the majority-DFL House and the Republican-led Senate.

A version of the policy has been adopted in states like California, Washington and Oregon.

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Why Minnesota Democrats aren’t embracing California’s ban on new gas cars is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.