The administration of outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan will not renew Maryland’s participation in a multi-state agreement that requires new vehicles sold in the state to follow the same emissions standards as those sold in California, according to state officials.
Chris Hoagland, director of Air and Radiation at the Maryland Department of the Environment, revealed the decision on Monday during a meeting of the Air Quality Control Advisory Council, a 15-member panel that advises the department on draft air quality rules.
Hoagland said the state is still reviewing California’s new emissions rules, but has no plans to sign them before the end of the year. That means even if Gov.-elect Wes Moore, who will assume office in January, decides to get back on board next year, Maryland will effectively be out of the program for at least one year.
Carter Elliott, a spokesperson for Moore, would not confirm his plans with regard to California’s updated standards but emphasized Moore’s support for climate action.
“The Moore-Miller administration has aggressive goals around climate and energy that will require the implementation of a variety of strategies. Maryland’s Clean Cars program, which was passed into law in 2007, requires the state to adopt California’s emissions standards and conform to updates as they occur,” said Elliot. “The Moore-Miller administration will work expeditiously to meet the goals adopted by the legislature as well as the goals Gov.-Elect Moore outlined during the campaign.”
Maryland has followed California’s stricter emissions standards for new cars and light trucks since 2008. However, those guidelines are now expiring and the states who follow them — most on the East Coast — are now in the process of deciding whether they’ll adopt a new set of more stringent regulations dubbed Advanced Clean Cars II (ACCII).
Those new rules, approved by the California Air Resources Board in August, lay out a step-by-step plan to make all new cars and light trucks “zero-emissions vehicles” by 2035. That only applies to new vehicle sales, and doesn’t impact cars already on the road today.
The Hogan administration’s decision to drop out of the alliance has riled environmental advocates who say adopting these new standards is critical to fight climate change, and to reverse the damaging effect of vehicle emissions on public health. Vehicle emissions are linked to health issues like asthma and reduced lung capacity, and long-term exposure to some traffic-related pollution is “likely to cause lung cancer,” according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
In September, a group of lawmakers from the Maryland House of Delegates penned a letter to Hogan urging the governor to adopt ACCII regulations before the end of year.
“[T]hese regulations are our best opportunity to date to significantly mitigate the nation’s leading source of dangerous air and climate pollutants and reduce the State’s reliance on costly, volatile fossil fuels,” said the letter, co-signed by Dels. Kumar Barve, Marc Korman, and David Fraser-Hidalgo.
“This will be an important step in reducing the costly health impacts of noxious emissions,” the letter continued.
In neighboring Virginia, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has vowed to reverse a law passed under former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam that hitches the commonwealth to California standards on vehicle emissions. Youngkin, who is also working on pulling Virginia from a regional climate change program, called the law “ridiculous” in a statement posted on Twitter in August.
But state attorneys say decoupling Virginia from California’s emissions standards would require amending or repealing the 2021 legislation, which Republicans in the General Assembly failed to do earlier in 2022.
