By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 18, 2009; 4:02 PM

The Obama administration is set to announce tough standards for tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide from new automobiles, establishing the first ever nationwide regulation for greenhouse gases.

It will also establish high fuel efficiency targets for new vehicles that would set a 35.5 mile per gallon average for new passenger vehicles and light trucks by 2016, four years earlier than required under the 2007 energy bill, sources close to the administration said.

The administration is embracing standards stringent enough to satisfy the state of California which has been fighting for a waiver from federal law so that it could set its own guidelines, sources said. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-Calif.) will be among a variety of state and industry officials attending an announcement tomorrow, said sources close to the administration.

The compromise deal, which has been under negotiation since the first days of the administration, includes the White House, the state of California, and the automobile industry, which has long sought a single national emissions standard and has waged an expensive legal battle against the California waiver. The industry will get its single national standard, but at the price of one that approximates California's targets.
Under the compromise, the federal government will establish two parallel sets of standards, both using the federal approach of pegging those standards to the attributes of vehicles, such as size and engine type, said sources familiar with negotiations over the deal. California, by contrast, planned to use just two broad categories of vehicles.

The Transportation Department's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will set the new fuel economy standards.

The Environmental Protection Agency, using its power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, will propose a tailpipe emissions standard of 250 grams per mile for vehicles sold in 2016, roughly the equivalent of the mileage standard. Vehicles sold in 2009 are expected to emit about 380 grams per mile, industry sources said. The EPA would need to go through a rulemaking process to allow responses before the standards would go into effect and it was not clear whether it would announce those specific targets tomorrow.

The EPA is also expected to impose restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions resulting from leaks of air conditioning coolant in vehicles. The automakers would be able to use some credits for complying with those regulations to offset a small part of fuel efficiency requirements, sources familiar with the talks said.

One source close to the administration said that President Obama would still grant a waiver to California, but that the state would not exercise it in light of the new national standards.

Proponents of tougher fuel efficiency standards hailed reports of tomorrow's announcement.

"If media reports are true, after years of oil price inflation, policy stagnation and automotive industry litigation, President Obama has solved the energy and economic policy equivalent of a Rubik's Cube," said Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who was a principal author of the 35 mile-per-gallon standard that Congress adopted in 2007.

"In addition to dramatically reducing the global warming emissions from our vehicles, this move will slash our dependence on oil and make us more energy independent," Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope said in a statement. "Congress put us on the road toward more fuel efficient vehicles two years ago when it passed the first increase in fuel economy standards in more than 30 years. Now President Obama is dramatically accelerating our progress."