The Canadian Federal Government is set to announce a new rule requiring all new vehicles be zero emissions by 2035.
Policymakers in Ottawa are expected to unveil a new rule requiring that all new vehicle sales be zero emissions by 2035. According to Bloomberg, vehicles can be powered by electric batteries, hydrogen, or plug-in electric motors under the new rule. The rollout will be tiered with 20% of all new car sales in 2026, 60% in 2030 and 100% in 2035.
Maryland’s Governor Wes Moore announced a similar policy earlier this year by signing onto the Advanced Clean Cars II rule (ACC2), requiring manufacturers to continuously increase their share of electric vehicle sales, reaching 100% of passenger car and light truck sales by model year 2035. The ACC2 is a vehicle emissions standard first adopted by California using its unique authority under the federal Clean Air Act. While the US federal government has yet to take such aggressive action, several states have joined Maryland in adopting ACC2 and prioritizing vehicle electrification as a major part of their emissions reduction strategy.
The furthest action the US federal government has taken was the adoption of new EPA rules to reduce tailpipe emissions starting in 2027. According to the EPA, the proposed federal standards would avoid nearly 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions, equivalent to more than twice the total U.S. CO2 emissions in 2022, while saving thousands of dollars over the lives of the vehicles meeting these new standards and reduce America’s reliance on approximately 20 billion barrels of oil imports.