In their continuing quest to electrify the U.S. automotive fleet against the clear will of the American people, the zealots in the Biden administration rolled out their new requirements related to heavy trucks on Good Friday. Amazingly, they did it in a way that will make the mandates even more expensive than the trillions of dollars their passenger car mandates will cost the American economy.
That’s quite an accomplishment.
Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is mandating that 60% of urban delivery trucks and 25% of heavy rig sales become electric by 2032. Never mind the overwhelming challenges achieving this goal faces in terms of infrastructure, manufacturing, and supply chains for equipment and critical energy minerals, the dogma of the global church of climate alarmism orders its true believers to “do something,” and this is the something the EPA bureaucrats are choosing to do.
According to the Institute for Energy Research (IER), the cost of a new electric 18 wheeler is “two to three times” the price of a new diesel rig, which is one of myriad reasons why this conversion would never take place unless forced by government mandate. IER points out that these new requirements will require the trucking industry to invest $620 billion for charging infrastructure, and “will likely cost utilities $370 billion to upgrade their networks. Replacing diesel trucks with electric will cost the trucking industry tens of billion dollars each year and truckers will need to pass these costs on to the customers–manufacturers and retailers, who will pass the higher costs on to Americans in higher prices for merchandise.”
This, of course, means that the rate of inflation that is already too high is about to go even higher thanks to this latest mandate by the EPA. If you feel as if the dollar is being systematically devalued by this president and his appointees, you aren’t wrong.
So, what’s the supposed benefit of this mandate to spend trillions of dollars that an America already more than $34 trillion in debt simply doesn’t have? EPA claims its new rule will “avoid” one billion metric tons of carbon emissions in the next decade. IER points out that seemingly impressive number amounts to less than last year’s increase in emissions from India and China. The emissions by both countries continue to rise each and every year. Thus, all this cost and deprivation will be forced on American truckers and consumers to address what is basically a rounding error in overall global emissions.
It is key to note here that, as of today, not a single company is mass-producing long-haul trucks. The isolated demonstration models that have been produced typically are able to achieve less than 170 miles on a single charge in ideal conditions, and we all know that conditions are seldom ideal. In other words, electric long-haul trucking is simply an impractical application, which helps to explain why the market would never support making such investments in charging and grid infrastructure unless forced to do so by a central authoritarian government entity like the EPA has become in this increasingly oppressive administration.
Like so many other aspects of the Biden Green New Deal energy and climate agenda, the best one-word description to use for this heavy truck mandate is “insanity.” Should he manage to win the election in November, Donald Trump needs to place the rolling back of this insane suite of policies right at the top of his own administration’s to-do list.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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