Connecticut is expected to have more electric vehicles on the road in the next decade. But over the past eight months, Republicans, and some Democrats, have tried to back the state out of California’s standards for clean air, which would have banned the sale of new gas powered vehicles after 2035.
WSHU’s Molly Ingram spoke with Republican Senate Leader Stephen Harding (R-Brookfield) about what he thinks Connecticut should do to curb greenhouse gas emissions instead.
The conversation has been edited for length.
WSHU: When did you realize electric vehicles had become such a hot topic in Connecticut?
SH: It was about a year ago, because at that time, California had passed this EV mandate. So what happened was, when California then issued regulation, which implemented this EV mandate, there began the conversation of whether or not that EV mandate now pertains to us here in Connecticut, as we had shifted basically our authority as it relates to emission standards, to wherever California was setting a new standard. And so many individuals argued that, yes, this now structured us to have to abide by this EV mandate that was passed in California, and not here in Connecticut.
And that was the genesis of the DEEP commissioner taking that regulation that was passed in California, and bringing it to our regulations in the review committee late last year. That was rejected on a bipartisan basis, there were Democrats that opposed the measure in the regulations and review committee, and therefore the regulation that was brought forward by the commissioner, again, based upon what happened in California, did not pass. And then the EV mandate went through other multiple iterations, it was advocated for to be legislation in the regular session, that was defeated because there was not enough support amongst both Democrats and Republicans.
WSHU: What issues did you have with the legislation?
SH: Frankly, we don't even have the structure, whether it be electrically, whether it be even as it relates to purchasing these vehicles, supply, infrastructure as it relates to charging these vehicles on the road. Transport, for example, if you're a tractor-trailer company, the battery, the size you would need to travel, what a current regular truck goes now, there is no suspension bridge in the United States of America that can actually take on that weight of that battery. These are like logistical questions that you have to have answers to before you mandate that everyone buys an electric vehicle.
And that's all we're saying, as Republicans. We're not saying that electric vehicles are bad. We're not saying that it can't be helpful towards addressing our carbon footprint. We're not saying that we don't believe in doing what we can do and doing our part to contribute towards making our environment better. We're saying if you're gonna do this, and you're going to mandate that every family purchase these vehicles, then what is your plan to actually do that?
WSHU: So, what does the state do now? Are we still abiding by those California standards, or how do we get out of them?
SH: So there's some legal ambiguity to that. If you speak with the governor's office, and the governor kind of alluded to this, the governor has said publicly that he supports moving to a more federal EPA standard based upon what has happened with the emission standards and the EV mandates coming out of California. There are some lawyers that I've heard from that indicate that if you don't enact every regulation, within a certain amount of time that California emissions have passed, that some would argue that you automatically then revert to the federal EPA standard.
I don't think that that's necessarily the appropriate way to handle this. Because I think it does lead you to some gray area and some ambiguity as it relates to what standard you're abiding by, because, you know, by doing something essentially passively, that would then subject you to a different standard. But that is probably not the best way to implement that type of policy. My argument would be we can always pass legislation that would put us under the auspices of a federal EPA standard, that that can be done simply through legislation, just as legislation was enacted, to put us into California standards.
