ARNOLD Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, was accused of betraying his green credentials yesterday after the state slashed its targets for zero-emission vehicles.
Friends of the Earth complained that the state has bowed to car manufacturers by weakening a mandate, set five years ago, for at least 25,000 electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles to be on California's roads by 2014.
The California Air Resource
s Board (CARB) yesterday revised the target to just 7,500, a 70 per cent reduction.
It is the latest in a series of drastic erosions of the zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) programme, which decreed that 10 per cent of cars made by the country's main manufacturers should be emission-free by 2003.
"This is another step backwards," said Danielle Fugere, FoE's West Coast director, yesterday. She said the gradual watering down of targets had saved car makers more than $6 billion.
CARB, a state agency, is independent of Schwarzenegger, whose Hummers run on hydrogen and bio-fuels. But campaigners have been disappointed by his failure to take a public stand on the ZEV issue before the board's decision, given his otherwise noisy advocacy of the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
"The move by CARB is political, it's because of pressure from auto-makers," Ms Fugere claimed. "We didn't see him pushing CARB to do the right thing."
The decision is expected to affect 12 other states that had adopted California's ZEV target.
Car manufactures – which had lobbied aggressively and even threatened to go to court to fight the old mandate – said they were pleased with the revised measure. They said that the previous target was too rushed and they needed more time to develop affordable hydrogen and battery-powered vehicles.
The rules apply to Ford, General Motors, Toyota, Honda and Nissan.
To help compensate for downgrading its ZEV mandate, the CARB has set new rules requiring them to build nearly 60,000 plug-in hybrid vehicles in California while the technology that will allow mass production of pure zero-emission vehicles is developed.
Hybrids run on a combination of electricity and petrol. The plug-in variety envisioned by the CARB have yet to come into production. General Motors, for example, is developing a rechargeable vehicle it hopes to have on the market in 2010.
Plug In America, which campaigns for electric vehicles, expressed disappointment at CARB's "shameful weakening" of the ZEV programme.
And doubts remained over the board's pledge to overhaul its ZEV programme to bring it into line with emission standards enacted in California in 2006, which aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. The overhaul will not take place until at least the end of next year.
"It's a huge blow," Chelsea Sexton, executive director of Plug In America, complained.
But Mary Nichols, chair of CARB, hit back. "We're introducing a whole new category of vehicles to the public," she said. "I don't think it's a step backwards in the real world."
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