Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finalized new fuel economy standards for motor vehicles, in combination with the first-ever federal greenhouse gas emissions reductions requirements in the United States. The new standards apply to passenger vehicles and light-duty trucks in model years 2012 through 2016, and are designed to cause the average fuel economy of new vehicles to increase to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. They require that automakers reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of the new vehicle fleet by about 5 percent each year from 2012 through 2016. The new standards are projected to save 1.8 BILLION barrels of oil and about 960 million metric tons of global warming pollution over the lifetime of the vehicles. This is the equivalent of the pollution reduction benefits of taking 32 million cars off the road.

This unusual action fulfills the terms of a government-industry agreement reached a year ago among the Obama Administration, the state of California, and the major automakers. Under the 2009 agreement, the automakers agreed to stop challenging emissions standards in the courts, and California agreed to abstain from enforcing its own global warming emissions standards. In return, the cars of tomorrow will be cleaner and cost less to fuel than the cars of today.