On Nov. 28, the 14 legislators making up the Legislative Regulatory Review Committee (LRRC) will vote on two proposed regulations which could effectively ban the sale of all new gasoline vehicles in Connecticut by 2035. If the committee votes against adoption of the regulations, then the full General Assembly would have to vote on the electric vehicle mandates in February.
To hear the Department of Environmental Protection (DEEP) explain it, the public feedback to the twin proposals has been overwhelmingly positive. But a closer look reveals that public feedback has been overwhelmingly negative.
From July 26 to Aug. 30, DEEP collected comments from thousands of Connecticut residents regarding the proposal for cars, the Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC) and the Medium and Heavy-duty Emission Standards (MHD) for trucks. The ACC comments could be accessed by downloading 15 batches of PDFs with thousands of pages from the portal.
On Sept. 21, DEEP released a Hearing Officer Report regarding responses to individual comments. This would have been the place to tally comments in support and opposition. But no tally was completed.
On Oct. 4, DEEP commissioner emailed legislators sitting on the committee endorsing both ACC and MHD proposals. The letter finishes with a startling statement, “…more than 4,000 comments were submitted to the department, despite some misinformation about the intent and effect of these proposed standards, comments submitted by the regulated community overwhelmingly favored adoption.”
This statement is erroneous on two points.
First, while DEEP did receive more than 4,000 comments, over 900 had identical email usernames and/or domain names, as I discovered in my research for Yankee Institute. Therefore, it is a good bet that fewer than 4,000 people actually commented. Nevertheless, because duplicates from the “support” and “oppose” camps were evenly distributed, this would not impact the tally of comments on a percentage basis.
More importantly, the unique commenters clearly opposed both regulations. Of the 3,898 unique individuals expressing an opinion in the ACC portal, 75.0% (2923) were opposed, while 25.0% (975) voiced support. Of the 2,752 unique individuals expressing an opinion on the MHD portal for trucks, 70.9% (1952) were opposed, while 29.1% (800) voiced support.
I can think of two possibilities for Commissioner Katie Dykes’ error. It is possible Dykes erred in considering the definition of a “regulated community.” Within the text of the proposed ACC rule, it states “no person shall sell or register, offer for sale or lease, import, deliver, purchase, rent, lease, acquire or receive a new 2027 or subsequent model year passenger car, light duty truck, or medium-duty passenger vehicle in the State of Connecticut unless such vehicle is certified to California emission standards.”
It may be true that only car dealerships will be the only parties forced to submit paperwork to regulators to ensure compliance, but to think that they are the only people who must comply with these regulations is to not see the forest for the trees. And, to be clear, if a dealership sells a car to a Connecticut resident that is not in compliance with the proposed regulation, both parties could be found in violation, and face legal penalties.
Another possibility for the error: DEEP did not tally the comments submitted in the final two weeks. In the first three weeks of the comment period, from July 26 to Aug. 13, commenters in support of the ACC to those against numbered 320 to 155, a more than 2-to-1 ratio of support to opposed. If Dykes began writing her letter to the LRRCat this point, she would be entirely accurate.
In the final two weeks, however, from Aug. 14 to Aug. 30, comments came flooding in. Those opposed outnumbered those in support 2,768 to 654, a more than 3-to-1 ratio.
While Yankee Institute was able to parse through all comments in about a week, perhaps DEEP wasn’t anticipating such a large response in the final two weeks and assumed that final comments would follow the pattern of the first three weeks. Which they clearly did not.
Or there might be another reason Dykes’ letter is in error. To err is to be human. But Connecticut residents deserve to hear that admission, and an explanation for it.
Banning gas vehicles by 2035 will have an enormous impact on the state economy, one for which no cost-benefit analysis has been forthcoming. Yankee Institute suspects that costs will far exceed the benefits, with the likely higher prices for all new and used vehicles and an overburdened electric grid dealing with more EVs.
For these reasons, we urge legislators sitting on the LRRC to listen to the overwhelming negative response regarding what the ACC and MHD standards will do to Connecticut.
David Flemming is Director of Policy and Research at the Yankee Institute.