Senate passes fuel economy measure
Sets 35 m.p.g. average by 2020 for all vehicles
WASHINGTON -- The Senate voted yesterday to substantially increase fuel economy standards for automobiles for the first time since 1975 as it passed a wide-ranging energy bill that also encourages development of alternative fuels and efficiency in new appliances. The legislation also saves oil companies from a $29 billion tax bill.
The energy legislation, which passed in a 65-to-27 vote a few minutes before midnight, came together quickly after a bipartisan coalition of senators forged an agreement on the fuel economy standards, which would require Detroit automakers to make their entire lines of new passenger cars, trucks, and sport utility vehicles reach an average 35 miles per gallon on the highway by 2020.
The compromise agreement, brokered over the past two days during back-room negotiations that included key roles by Democrat John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and Republican Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, passed on a voice vote. It was the subject of fierce debate among environmentalists and senators backing the Big Three automakers.
In exchange for the mileage standard, senators did away with mandatory fuel efficiency increases after 2020. Senators supporting the automakers vowed afterward to fight the agreement. The House is hashing out its own energy bill, and Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat, said he would push to add the 35-miles-per-gallon standard into his chamber's legislation.
"This isn't the time for timidity," Snowe said after the Senate fuel-economy deal was struck. "We are now transitioning, hopefully, from a period of the oil age to the 21st century, where we're placing an emphasis on conservation, efficiency, technology, and alternative fuels."
The overall energy bill is aimed at reducing the nation's growing dependence on foreign sources of oil. It included provisions that would promote alternative fuels, including ethanol; enact more efficient appliance and lighting standards; provide grants and loan guarantees for research into fuel-efficient vehicles; and make gasoline price gouging a federal crime.
But Senate Democrats fell three votes short of the 60 needed to advance a tax package that would have levied $29 billion in new taxes on the oil industry to pay for developing renewable fuels and clean-energy programs. The new fuel economy standard would require that automakers reach a minimum level of fuel efficiency, averaged across their entire fleet -- from compact cars to minivans and heavyweight SUVs.
The legislation is offered at a time of growing public disenchantment over near-record gas prices that have lingered around $3 a gallon in most parts of the country. At the same time, scientists have accumulated mounting evidence on how greenhouse gas emissions are gradually heating the planet.
The White House has opposed allowing Congress to set specific fuel efficiency requirements, preferring to allow the federal Transportation Department to set the standard. Touring a nuclear power plant in Alabama yesterday, President Bush did not specifically address the fuel economy standards, but said Congress must "be realistic" about the overall energy legislation.
But senators from both parties were clearly pleased at reaching a compromise on fuel efficiency numbers, known as the CAFE standards, short for Corporate Average Fuel Economy. The four Republican senators from Maine and New Hampshire -- Snowe and Susan M. Collins from Maine and Judd Gregg and John E. Sununu from New Hampshire -- all voted for the energy legislation.
The fuel-efficiency deal was reached after senators struck a plan to increase the standards by 4 percent annually after 2020 and rewrote a section of the bill on "flex-fuels" that would encourage the development of several alternative fuels besides ethanol.
Less than a half-hour after the senators reached the compromise -- and during a news conference about the deal -- the Senate passed the measure on a voice vote. Kerry interrupted the news conference to announce the vote.
"Done deal," Kerry said.
"I'm flabbergasted," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat. "I thought we'd be arguing this all night."
Later, Kerry said Americans should see the measure as just one piece of a comprehensive energy package that addresses "all that we are trying to do: cleaner air, more efficient vehicles, not be as dependent on foreign oil. . . . It really puts us on the threshold of a revolution in our transportation fuels and power."
In 1975, the federal government set the first federal fuel standards in reaction to gas shortages and spiral ing prices at the pumps. In 1974, the average miles per gallon for automobiles was 12.9, but new legislation drove the average to 18 by 1978; senators increased it to 27.5 in 1985.
Since then, even though gas use steadily increased, the fuel standards have barely changed.
The standard for passenger cars remains at 27.5 miles per gallon, while the Bush administration has only slightly increased the requirement for light trucks and SUVs in recent years to 22.2 miles per gallon.
Americans' growing love affair with larger vehicles also helped erode CAFE's impact. In 1975, light trucks constituted 19.8 percent of new vehicle sales. But by 2001, light trucks, which included SUVs and minivans, represented slightly more than half of all US auto sales.
Now, under the Senate measure, the mileage distinctions among passenger cars, light trucks, and SUVs would evaporate.
"It closes the SUV loophole," said Feinstein. "This is a victory for the American public."
Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington state, said the high price of gasoline is a powerful incentive to act now. "Families are cutting their summer vacations short because they can't afford to fill the gas tanks in their cars. So these high energy costs are costing America," she said.
John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com. 