Last week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards (CAFE) for model years 2011 to 2015.

The new notice “initiates the NEPA scoping process to identify the environmental issues and reasonable alternatives to be examined in the EIS, and requests comments regarding those and others matters related to the scope of NHTSA’s NEPA analysis for the new standards.”

Specifically, “[t]he scoping process initiated by this notice seeks to determine ‘the range of actions, alternatives, and impacts to be considered’ in the EIS and to identify the most important issues for analysis involving the potential environmental impacts of NHTSA’s CAFE standards.”

Readers may recall our ongoing coverage of the CBD v. NHTSA case, which involves the agency’s refusal to conduct an EIS for model years 2008 to 2011.  While it may seem strange that NHTSA would fight having to prepare an EIS for one range of model years while agreeing to conduct one for a other years, NHTSA has not here conceded the central issue of the CBD case.  That question is whether the EIS must take into account the effect of auto emissions on global climate change.  The notice makes no mention of climate change as a potential environmental effect, so the agency may still try to avoid any discussion in the EIS.

Once the official proposal is issued, environmental groups will presumably submit comments demanding the agency account for its effects on climate change, while the auto industry and its supporters will demand the opposite.  How the agency resolves this issue will determine whether yet another set of fuel economy standards ends up in a prolonged court battle.

According to the notice, a final EIS should be ready by the end of this year.

Hat tip to Warming Law.

For further information about this topic, please contact Akin Gump.