The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, under the leadership of administrator Scott Pruitt, is reopening the review of 2022?2025 standards that had been closed by the previous EPA administration ahead of the original timeline. While that alone could affect the future market?and automakers? research and development decisions for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids?there’s another dark cloud hanging on the electric-car horizon: Plug-in vehicles of all kinds are bound to be a little bit dirtier over their lifetime than they might have been.
That?s because electric cars are only as clean as the electricity used to charge them. With the expected dissolution of the Clean Power Plan, after an EPA review initiated by President Trump’s ?energy independence? executive order this week, it?s likely that some states could take considerably longer to clean up their power generation. There would no longer be an assumption that all states would work to wean themselves from coal and toward renewable sources and natural gas. The EPA previously said of the Clean Power Plan that it ?establishes the foundation of long-term clean energy investments that will ensure the reliability of our electric grid, maintain affordability for consumers, and establish the U.S. as a leader in addressing climate change.? It aims to cut pollution from the power sector by 32 percent by 2030 and sets carbon-pollution standards across the nation in which it says ?all gas and coal-/oil-fired p...