Congressional actions in the past week essentially killed Colorado’s electric vehicle mandate and threaten billions of dollars in solar and wind power construction meant to ease greenhouse gas emissions and ozone, environmental and state political leaders said.
Congress overturned an EPA waiver granted to California to allow that industry-dominating state to ban fossil fuel vehicle sales by 2035, a move that Colorado officials say also negates copycat EV mandates passed by Colorado and a dozen-odd other states.
In 2023, Colorado air regulators voted to require 82% of new vehicles be EVs by 2032, and an increasing share of heavy trucks as well, going well beyond floors set by the EPA. They also required a study of how Colorado could match California’s fossil fuel car ban by 2035.
“I think that this is going to block Colorado from implementing our Clean Car and Truck Rules for now. States need the waiver to enforce their rules,” said Travis Madsen, transportation analyst with the nonprofit Southwest Energy Efficiency Project. “The approach here” — getting Congress instead of an EPA administrator to overturn the waiver “is unprecedented,” Madsen said.
“If it holds up in court, EPA may not be able to issue a similar waiver again in the future. Who knows what that means — it’s totally untested law,” he said. States are vowing to fight the Congressional overturn in court, Madsen said, but “while those challenges move forward, I’d bet that states will not be able to enforce the rules.”
Killing the California and copycat state plans by Congressional vote is at least “inappropriate” given that the General Accounting Office and the Senate parliamentarian said the Congressional Review Act could not be used that way, Colorado Energy Office CEO Will Toor said. California and others are vowing to fight Congress in the courts.
“States should have the ability to take action to protect clean air and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their state,” Toor said. “So we’ll see where that heads going forward. But it was a very disappointing action.”
Not only California, but all the other following states will lose their authority to establish standards more strict than federal rules, said John Boesel, president of the CalStart clean transportation trade group, in an interview. And the Trump administration has announced it plans to further reduce the already-weaker EPA targets for clean car and truck sales.
“The authority for California and other states to enact stronger standards has been an unqualified success,” Boesel said. “All of the states have been able to grow their economies while significantly improving air quality.”
Colorado’s targets for greenhouse gas reduction and finally meeting EPA ozone caps in the Front Range nonattainment area rely on the goal of nearly 1 million EVs on the road here by 2030. State officials said dealers and consumers were making good progress on that goal with the help of lucrative federal and state subsidies for EV buyers.
But wiping out the mandate on car manufacturers to produce steadily-rising percentages of EVs, along with Congressional budget action to eliminate the $7,500 consumer tax credit, could reverse that, environmental advocates said.
The budget passed by the U.S. House last week also erases many clean energy subsidies including tax credits that made it cheaper to develop utility-scale solar and wind farms, as well as battery and solar panel factories.
“Republicans are showing that they will take unprecedented congressional action to attack a growing and successful market to defend the desires of the polluting oil and gas industry,” said Sierra Club Colorado Chapter political director Garrett Royer.
“The Senate illegally and unconstitutionally” ended California’s EV mandate in a way that will “infringe on states’ rights to pursue clean air protections for their residents. We will continue to fight Congress’ attacks against our environment and affordability,” Royer said.
Clean energy advocates also say the combined moves will hurt Colorado’s economy by wiping out thousands of jobs, from rooftop solar panel installers to battery makers to wind turbine electricians and mechanics.
“The budget reconciliation bill that the U.S. House of Representatives passed overnight is deeply disappointing,” said Nate Bernstein, executive director of the union-backed Climate Jobs Colorado. “it completely guts the federal investments that we were counting on to create good union jobs and drive down energy bills. We hope this damaging proposal is walked back in the Senate.”
The Senate could make changes to the House version of the bill, including restoring some subsidies. But because the budgets are being voted on through a “reconciliation” process, they require only the small majority Republicans hold in both chambers and are not subject to a filibuster by Senate Democrats.
Clean energy trade groups are calling for Senate changes, but do not appear overly hopeful.
“The bill that House Republicans passed will devastate the Colorado solar industry, which accounts for over 8,000 employees and over $600 million of investment in solar installations in 2024 alone,” said KC Becker, CEO of the Colorado Solar and Storage Association and the regional EPA administrator under former President Joe Biden.
“I don’t want to sugarcoat it,” Toor said. “I think we are very concerned about all of the actions that both the administration and now potentially Congress are taking. I’m not sure that I can predict, but we’re certainly hopeful that cooler and wiser heads will prevail in the Senate than in the House.”
Western GOP lawmakers who supported both the killing of clean car waivers and the House budget were as jubilant as progressives were devastated. They pointed to both an end to what they call unfair and unproductive clean energy subsidies, and opening up of more federal and offshore spaces to oil and gas drilling and expanded coal production. They have been referring to the Obama and Biden clean economy efforts, dubbed the Green New Deal, as the “Green New Scam.”
The conservative-led Congressional Western Caucus said the House budget bill “saves Americans approximately $300 billion over 10 years by ending Biden-era electric vehicle mandates.”
U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, a Republican representing a rare swing constituency in Colorado’s 8th District that takes in north-metro suburbs along U.S. 85 into Greeley, supported the budget but also pointed to earlier statements advocating to preserve some clean energy tax credits that have boosted Colorado solar and wind farms and manufacturing. Evans calls it an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, expanding fossil fuel production while supporting new technology.
“With all this in mind, we request that any proposed changes to the tax code be conducted in a targeted and pragmatic fashion that promotes conference priorities without undoing current and future private sector investments which will continue to increase domestic manufacturing, promote energy innovation, and keep utility costs down,” Evans wrote in a letter to Congressional leaders.
Some Republican Senators now say they are hopeful the subsidy rollbacks, which went much farther in the final House version than some expected, can be reversed by the time the Senate votes.
The near-complete House rollbacks of Biden-era green energy subsidies last week were only the latest blows to national and Colorado environmental advocates.
Trump administrators had already frozen spending from a $5 billion Biden fund to build more EV charging stations around the country, calling it wasteful and mishandled spending. The Sierra Club, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and others have sued to end that freeze, saying the executive branch doesn’t have constitutional authority to reject Congressionally authorized spending.
The station-building program “benefits everyone, whether you drive an EV or not,” Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous said. “And the only people who benefit from blocking it are big oil and auto executives seeking to keep us hooked on fossil fuel-powered cars.”