The EPA is announcing expected new emissions rules today that will save Americans trillions of dollars in health and fuel costs, avoid nearly 10 billion tons of emissions, and result in an EV market share of about 60% by 2030 and 67% by 2032.
The rules are an improvement from President Biden’s previous commitment of 50% electric by 2030. But they’re also far ahead of what many automakers are planning, leaving millions of EV sales up for grabs come 2030.
On a press call in advance of the announcement, White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi noted that the auto industry has progressed significantly since Biden’s original executive order targeting 50% EVs was signed two years ago. The number of available EV models has doubled, charging stations have doubled, and total EV deployments have tripled.
As a result of the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Bill, there has been significant public and private investment into electric car infrastructure and manufacturing. Zaidi said this will enable the production of 13 million vehicles’ worth of batteries in the US in 2030 – more than enough to meet today’s targets.
The investment and spending from these laws enabled the EPA to set more stringent targets with today’s rules than it might have been able to otherwise. While today’s regulations are stronger than previous targets, projections for BEV market share have been continually increased in recent years, such that an additional increase from today’s estimate seems feasible.
The new EPA rules do not mandate a certain percentage of EV sales, but rather mandate rapidly decreasing average fleet CO₂ emissions. Between 2026 and 2032, fleet emissions will need to drop by an average of 13% per year, until reaching 82g CO₂ per mile by 2032. By comparison, the average new vehicle in 2021 emitted 347gCO₂/mi – about four times as much as the 2032 rule.
They also target emissions of several other pollutants such as NOx, PM2.5, VOCs, SOx, and so on, reducing each by about half in the long term.
Watch EPA Administrator Michael Regan’s formal announcement of the new rule below, at 11 a.m. EDT:
Automakers can meet these mandates with whichever technology they choose, whether battery electric vehicles or otherwise. However, it is likely that most automakers will lean heavily on BEVs as they emit nothing at the tailpipe and are more easily scalable than other technologies like hybrids, fuel cells, or attempting to wring more efficiency out of gasoline engines.
The new rules cover not only passenger cars but also medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, with additional targets specific to those sectors. These standards will result in greater deployment of “vocational vehicles” like electric delivery trucks, dump trucks, transit, school buses and more – EPA estimates 50% of these will be electric by 2032.
EPA calculated costs and benefits from the new rules and estimates that the benefits of the new standards would exceed costs by at least $1 trillion, potentially much more in optimistic scenarios. The average consumer will save $12,000 over the life of a vehicle, in addition to hundreds of billions of health and climate benefits and reduced dependence on foreign oil to the tune of tens of billions of barrels.
And most importantly, EPA says that these new guidelines should contribute to the goal of limiting global warming to “well below 2ºC,” which is important to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
In addition to these emissions guidelines, the regulations seek to establish a minimum warranty period for EV batteries of at least 8 years and 80,000 miles and to require onboard battery health monitors. They will also reduce the gap between passenger car and “light truck” (SUV/pickup) emissions requirements, which could reduce some incentive that automakers currently have to build bigger and deadlier SUVs.
While the EPA’s guidelines do not match California’s new ACC2 regulations which ban sales of new ICE cars by 2035, EPA does acknowledge that a number of states have or will adopt ACC2, and a number of other countries are targeting similar all-EV timelines. Regions representing about 25% of global auto sales have already adopted goals banning new ICE cars by 2035, which establishes the global trend towards electrification. EPA also acknowledged that the largest US automaker, GM, requested an all-electric by 2035 target, but still decided to limit its rulemaking to model year 2032, rather than 2035.
The proposed regulations will go up for public review in the Federal Register, where the EPA also seeks feedback on three additional alternatives. These alternatives are 10gCO₂/mi more or less stringent than the proposed standards, with “Alternative 1” being the most stringent of the three. You can probably guess which of those alternatives we as Electrek would prefer.
Electrek’s Take
Reading through these regulations is quite a relief for someone who has been advocating for stronger emissions standards for so long, especially through four years of lying incompetence with previous EPA leadership. It’s nice to read government speak plainly about the necessity of a regulation, how it will help, how it will be achieved, and that it is achievable, all supported with real science.
With so much of our political discussion these days centered around 140-character regurgitations vomited uncritically from one talking head to another, sitting down to dig into (*checks notes*) 1,475 pages (oh-god-I’m-not-sleeping-tonight-am-I) of competent regulation is actually a bit of a breath of fresh air.
Whatever, call me a nerd. I accept it.
Importantly, these regulations are a significant increase from current automaker commitments, so we will need to see updates on those coming soon. As I argued after NYTimes leaked the upcoming rules over the weekend, the auto industry is up for grabs with these new rules.
I estimated that there will be a gap of roughly 2 million electric vehicles between this new EPA regulation and current automaker commitments for 2030 (EPA included a similar table in their proposed rule today, with similar numbers). That gap will need to be filled, and the most likely companies to fill it are the EV-only brands who have jumped in cannonball-style, instead of testing the water one toe at a time like some incumbent automakers have.
While these rules may be challenged, they still give industry a baseline that they need to target, and that they need to start working on now given the length of car development timelines. Any company that isn’t ready to meet these guidelines will be in a tough spot if the rules do survive inevitable challenges, or alternately, if the rules get strengthened over time.
And they just might, because we think there’s a good chance nobody’s going to want a gas car well before 2035 anyway. So automakers better get to work, and a swift kick in the pants by government might be just the motivation they need to save themselves.
If I’m going to criticize, I would like to have seen the EPA just copy California’s ACC2, unifying emissions rules across the US. This last happened when current President Biden was Vice President back in 2012, when CARB and the EPA worked together on emissions targets.
CARB intentionally set ACC2 targets a little lower than what California is probably capable of in the hopes to bring other states along, perhaps with the hope that the whole nation might adopt these standards. And 2035 is achievable nationwide, so we should do it, especially since it’s necessary to keep warming to 1.5ºC. But maybe, when it comes time to propose 2035 rules (since EPA stopped at 2032), we’ll be ready to ratchet things up a bit more, just as today’s rules did from the previous 50% target.
The proposed rules lag behind public opinion as well. According to a recent poll, a majority of US voters support a requirement that 100% of new cars sold be electric starting 2030. The idea was “strongly” or “somewhat” supported by 55% of respondents, and opposed by just 35%. This is another reason we ask “why not sooner?” about a 2035 target for 100% electric car sales.
But despite our misgivings, these actions taken today are still enormously important, a huge step forward for EVs, for Americans’ health and pocketbooks, and for the climate. It’s great to see.
On Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump issued an executive order indefinitely halting permits for new onshore wind energy projects on federal land, as well as new leases for offshore wind farms in U.S. coastal waters. The action not only fulfilled Trump’s “no new windmills” campaign pledge, but struck yet another blow to the wind industry, which has been hit hard over the past few years by supply chain snags, price increases upending project economics, public opposition and political backlash against federal tax credits, especially those spurring the fledgling offshore wind sector.
Nonetheless, the nation’s well-established onshore wind industry, built out over several decades, is generating nearly 11% of America’s electricity, making it the largest source of renewable energy and at times last year exceeding coal-fired generation. On April 8, the fossil-fuels-friendly Trump administration took measures to bolster coal mining and power plants, but as the infrastructure driving wind energy ages, efforts to “repower” it are creating new business opportunities for the industry’s key players.
This repowering activity has emerged as a bright spot for the wind industry, giving a much-needed boost to market leaders GE Vernova, Vestas and Siemens Gamesa, a subsidiary of Munich-based Siemens Energy. Following several challenging years of lackluster performance — due in particular to setbacks in both onshore and offshore projects — all three companies reported revenue increases in 2024, and both GE Vernova and Siemens stock have moved higher.
GE Vernova, spun off from General Electric a year ago, led overall onshore wind installations in 2024, with 56% of the U.S. market, followed by Denmark’s Vestas (40%) and Siemens Gamesa (4%).
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GE Vernova stock performance over the past one-year period.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, installed wind power generating capacity grew from 2.4 gigawatts (GW) in 2000 to 150.1 GW as of April 2024. Although the growth rate for launching new greenfield onshore wind farms has slowed over the last 10 years, the U.S. is still poised to surpass 160 GW of wind capacity in 2025, according to a new report from energy research firm Wood Mackenzie.
There currently are about 1,500 onshore wind farms — on which more than 75,600 turbines are spinning — across 45 states, led by Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Illinois and Kansas. Virtually all of the wind farms are located on private land, and many of the largest ones are owned and operated by major energy companies, including NextEra Energy, RWE Clean Energy, Pattern Energy, Clearway Energy, Xcel Energy and Berkshire Hathaway‘s MidAmerican Energy, which generates 59% of it renewable energy from wind, including 3,500 turbines operating across 38 wind projects in Iowa.
A growing number of the turbines are 20-plus years old and nearing the end of their lifecycle. So increasingly, operators have to decide whether to upgrade or replace aging turbines’ key components, such as blades, rotors and electronics, or dismantle them altogether and erect new, technologically advanced and far more efficient models that can increase electricity output by up to 50%.
“What’s becoming clear is that more and more of the U.S. installed base [of onshore turbines] has exceeded its operational design life,” said Charles Coppins, research analyst for global wind at Wood Mackenzie, “and now operators are looking to replace those aging turbines with the latest [ones].”
To date, approximately 70 GW of onshore wind capacity has been fully repowered in the U.S., according to Wood Mackenzie, while an additional 12 GW has been partially repowered. The firm estimates that around 10,000 turbines have been decommissioned and that another 6,000 will be retired in the next 10 years, Coppins said.
Damaged wind turbine that was first hit by a tornado then lightning.
Ryan Baker | Istock | Getty Images
Beyond the fact that aged-out turbines need to be upgraded or replaced, repowering an existing wind farm versus building a new site presents economic benefits to operators and OEMs. To begin with, there’s no need to acquire property. In fact, in certain situations, because today’s turbines are larger and more efficient, fewer turbines are needed. And they’ll generate additional electricity and have longer lifecycles, ultimately delivering higher output at a lower cost.
Even so, “there are some limitations on how much capacity you could increase a project by without having to go through new permitting processes or interconnection queues” to the power grid, said Stephen Maldonado, Wood Mackenzie’s U.S. onshore analyst. As long as the operator is not surpassing the allowed interconnection volume agreed to with the local utility, they can add electricity to the project and still send it to the grid.
Public opposition, Maldonado said, may be another hurdle to get over. Whether it’s a new or repower wind project, residents have expressed concerns about environmental hazards, decreased property values, aesthetics and general anti-renewables sentiment.
RWE, a subsidiary of Germany’s RWE Group, is the third largest renewable energy company in the U.S., owning and operating 41 utility-scale wind farms, according to its CEO Andrew Flanagan, making up 48% of its total installed operating portfolio and generating capacity, which also includes solar and battery storage.
One of RWE’s two repower projects underway (both are in Texas), is its Forest Creek wind farm, originally commissioned in 2006 and featuring 54 Siemens Gamesa turbines. The project will replace them with 45 new GE Vernova turbines that will extend the wind farm’s life by another 30 years once it goes back online later this year. Simultaneously, RWE and GE Vernova are partnering on a new wind farm, immediately adjacent to Forest Creek, adding another 64 turbines to the complex. When complete, RWE will deliver a total of 308 MW of wind energy to the region’s homes and businesses.
Flanagan noted that the combined projects are related to increased electricity demands from the area’s oil and gas production. “It’s great to see our wind generation drive the all-of-the-above energy approach,” he said. What’s more, at its peak, the repower project alone will employ 250 construction workers and over its operating period bring in $30 million in local tax revenue, he added.
In turn, the twin projects will support advanced manufacturing jobs at GE Vernova’s Pensacola, Florida, facility, as well as advancing the OEM’s repower business. In January, the company announced that in 2024 it received orders to repower more than 1 GW of wind turbines in the U.S.
Koiguo | Moment | Getty Images
Siemens Gamesa has executed several large U.S. repowering projects, notably MidAmerican’s expansive Rolling Hills wind farm in Iowa, which went online in 2011. In 2019, the company replaced 193 older turbines with 163 higher-capacity models produced at its manufacturing plants in Iowa and Kansas.
Last year, Siemens Gamesa began repowering RWE’s 17-year-old Champion Wind, a 127-MW wind farm in West Texas. The company is upgrading 41 of its turbines with new blades and nacelles (the housing at the top of the tower containing critical electrical components) and adding six new turbines.
In early April, Clearway announced an agreement with Vestas to repower its Mount Storm Wind farm in Grant County, West Virginia. The project will include removing the site’s 132 existing turbines and replacing them with 78 new models. The repower will result in an 85% increase in Mount Storm’s overall electricity generation while using 40% fewer turbines.
Preparing for ‘megatons’ of turbine recycling and tariffs
Another benefit of repowering is invigorating the nascent industry that’s recycling megatons of components from decommissioned turbines, including blades, steel, copper and aluminum. Most of today’s operational turbines are 85% to 95% recyclable, and OEMs are designing 100% recyclable models.
While the majority of mothballed blades, made from fiberglass and carbon fiber, have historically ended up in landfills, several startups have developed technologies recycle them. Carbon Rivers, for example, contracts with the turbine OEMs and wind farm operators to recover glass fiber, carbon fiber and resin systems from decommissioned blades to produce new composites and resins used for next-generation turbine blades, marine vessels, composite concrete and auto parts.
Veolia North America, a subsidiary of the French company Veolia Group, reconstitutes shredded blades and other composite materials into a fuel it then sells to cement manufacturers as a replacement for coal, sand and clay. Veolia has processed approximately 6,500 wind blades at a facility in Missouri, and expanded its processing capabilities to meet demand, according to David Araujo, Veolia’s general manager of engineered fuels.
Trump’s new-project moratorium isn’t his only impediment to the wind industry. The president’s seesaw of import tariffs, especially the 25% levy on steel and aluminum, is impacting U.S. manufacturers across most sectors.
The onshore wind industry, however, “has done a really good job of reducing geopolitical risks,” said John Hensley, senior vice president for markets and policy analysis at the American Clean Power Association, a trade group representing the clean energy industry. He cited a manufacturing base in the U.S. that includes hundreds of plants producing parts and components for turbines. Although some materials are imported, the investment in domestic manufacturing “provides some risk mitigation to these tariffs,” he said.
Amidst the headwinds, the onshore wind industry is trying to stay focused on the role that repowering can play in meeting the nation’s exponentially growing demand for electricity. “We’re expecting a 35% to 50% increase between now and 2040, which is just incredible,” Hensley said. “It’s like adding a new Louisiana to the grid every year for 15 years.”
GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik recently told CNBC’s Jim Cramer that the growth of the U.S.’s electric load is the largest since the industrial boom that followed the end of the second world war. “You’ve got to go back to 1945 and the end of World War II, that’s the infrastructure buildout that we’re going to have,” he said.
As OEMs and wind farm developers continue to face rising capital costs for new projects, as well as a Trump administration averse to clean energy industries, “repowering offers a pathway for delivering more electrons to the grid in a way that sidesteps or at least minimizes some of the challenges associated with all these issues,” Hensley said.
Capable of delivering up to 1,200 kW of power to get electric commercial trucks back on the road in minutes, the new ABB MCS1200 Megawatt Charging System is part of an ecosystem of electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) that ABB’s bringing to this year’s ACT Expo.
ABB E-mobility is using the annual clean trucking conference to showcase the expansion of its EVSE portfolio with three all-new charger families: the field-upgradable A200/300 All-in-One chargers, the MCS1200 Megawatt Charging System for heavy-duty vehicles shown (above), and the ChargeDock Dispenser for flexible depot charging.
The company said its new product platform was built by applying a computer system-style domain separation to charger design, fundamentally improving subsystem development and creating a clear path forward for site and system expansion. In other words, ABB is selling a system with both future-proofing and enhanced dependability baked in.
“We have built a system by logically separating a charger into four distinct subsystems … each functioning as an independent subsystem,” explains Michael Halbherr, CEO of ABB E-mobility. “Unlike conventional chargers, where a user interface failure can disable the entire system, our architecture ensures charging continues even if the screen or payment system encounters issues. Moreover, we can improve each subsystem at its own pace without having to change the entire system.”
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The parts of ABB’s new EVSE portfolio that have been made public so far have already been recognized for design excellence, with the A400 winning the iF Gold Award and both the A400 and C50 receiving Red Dot Design Awards.
New ABB chargers seem pretty, good
ABB’s good-looking family; via ABB.
ABB says the systemic separation of its EVSE enhances both reliability and quality, while making deployed chargers easier to diagnose and repair, in less time. Each of the chargers’ subsystems can be tested, diagnosed, and replaced independently, allowing for quick on-site repairs and update cycles tailored to the speed of each systems’ innovation. The result is 99% uptime and a more future-proof product.
“The EV charging landscape is evolving beyond point products for specific use cases,” continued Halbherr. “By implementing this modular approach with the majority of our R&D focused on modular platforms rather than one-off products … it reduces supply chain risks, while accelerating development cycles and enabling deeper collaboration with critical suppliers.”
Key markets ABB is chasing
HVC 360 Charge Dock Dispenser depot deployment; via ABB.
PUBLIC CHARGING – with the award winning A400 being the optimal fit for high power charging from highway corridors to urban locations, the latest additions to the A-Series All-in-One chargers offer a field-upgradable architecture allowing operators to start with the A200 (200kW) with the option to upgrade to 300kW or 400kW as demand grows. This approach offers scalability and protects customer investment, leading to Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) savings over 10 years.
PUBLIC TRANSIT AND FLEET – the new Charge Dock Dispenser – in combination with the already in market available HVC 360 – simplifies depot charging with a versatile solution that supports pantograph-, roof-, and pedestal charging options with up to 360kW of shared power and 150m/490 ft installation flexibility between cabinet and dispensers. The dispenser maintains up to 500A output.
HEAVY TRUCKS – building the matching charging infrastructure for commercial vehicles and fleets represents a critical innovation frontier on our journey to electrify transportation. Following extensive collaboration with industry-leading truck OEMs, the MCS1200 Megawatt Charging System delivers up to 1,200kW of continuous power — 20% more energy transfer than 1MW systems — providing heavy-duty vehicles with purpose-built single-outlet design for the energy they need during mandatory driver breaks. To support other use cases, such as CCS truck charging, a dual CCS and MCS option will also be available.
ABB says that the result of its new approach are chargers that offer 99% plus uptime — a crucial statistic for commercial charging operations and a key factor to ensuring customer satisfaction. The new ABB E-mobility EVSE product family will be on display for the first time at the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo (ACT Expo) in Anaheim, California next week, then again at Power2Drive in Munich, Germany, from May 7-9.
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Along with Tennessee Tech, Tennessee-based ultralight aircraft company Whisper Aero has secured a $500,000 grant to help advance the company’s innovative electric jet motor concept off the drawing board and onto the testing phase.
Earlier this month, the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD) announced plans to award $500,000 to Tennessee Tech and Whisper Aero through the Transportation Network Growth Opportunity (TNGO) initiative.
“We look forward to using these award dollars to place students in internships working directly with Whisper Aero leaders,” said Tennessee Tech President Phil Oldham. “By learning from an electric propulsion innovator like Whisper Aero, our students will gain invaluable perspective and can take what they have learned in the classroom and apply it right here in Tennessee.”
The grant will see a Whisper Aero glider fitted with a pair of the company’s eQ250 electric-powered jet “propulsors” for UltraQuiet flight. Tennessee Tech faculty and students will carry out copper-bird ground testing to ensure the safe integration of engines, batteries, and controllers, and kickstart Tennessee Tech’s new Crossville Mobility Incubator.
Whisper Aero’s main claim to fame is its innovative UltraQuiet WhisperDrive (above). It’s effectively an electrically spun ducted fan jet engine that uses a large number of stiff composite fan blades inside a lightweight, acoustically treated duct. With so many blades, the Whisper Aero propulsor can push more air than a conventional prop while spinning much more slowly. As such, the “blade passage frequency” moves up to more than 16,000 Hz – outside the range of most human hearing but not, supposedly, high enough to freak out the beagles.
The Whisper Aero ultralight is effectively an Aériane Swift3 glider fitted with a pair of Whisper’s eQ250 propulsors, each capable of up to 80 lbs. of thrust. The Ultralight has a wingspan of over 40 ft with a maximum L/D of 35:1 and can be stressed to a design loading of +6/-4g, making it capable of some pretty impressive acrobatic feats.
The Swift3 glider is designed for a low speed, low power cruising speed of 45–55 knots with “just” 6.5 hp. Power-off glides from a few hundred feet showed a low sink rate, and a climb rate of 1,250 ft/min with full self-launching power (in other words: the Whisper glider doesn’t have to be towed by a launch vehicle, like a conventional ultralight glider).
Quiet cool
Dual WhisperDrive fans deliver ~160 lbf of thrust; via Whisper Aero.
Range under full power is about 109 miles with current battery tech, but it’s expected that range under the latest EPiC 2.0 energy batteries would rise to nearly 170 miles.
Nathan Millecam, CEO of Electric Power System, said, “EPiC 2.0’s leap in energy density and thermal performance has enabled a significant increase in range, a clear validation of our next-gen cell technology. We are impressed by what the Whisper team continues to achieve in advancing electric aviation.”
The press release concludes explaining that flight tests are expected to show that the Whisper Aero glider can be flown, “a few hundred feet away from neighborhoods without any disturbances, while carrying a 220 lbs. payload with full range,” which is all kind of ominous in today’s political climate, but still pretty neat from a purely tech perspective.
With support from TNECD’s Transportation Network Growth Opportunity (TNGO) initiative, Tennessee Tech University and Whisper Aero are partnering to advance next-generation propulsion technology in the aerospace industry. This collaboration will enhance aerospace research and workforce development, ensuring Tennessee remains a leader in cutting-edge mobility solutions.
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