Climate hawks scorn Postal Service plan to stick with gas-powered delivery trucks
Spurning President Joe Biden’s clean air goals and the auto industry’s pivot to electric vehicles, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on Wednesday announced a plan to buy up to 165,000 new mail delivery trucks, most of them running on gasoline rather than batteries.
Described by the Postal Service as a “fiscally and environmentally responsible” plan to modernize its vehicle fleet — one of the largest in the world — the announcement culminated a yearslong debate and prompted outrage from congressional climate hawks and environmentalists who had pressed for a pivot to electric vehicles.
“I would love for him to resign,” said Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Virginia, who heads the House subcommittee overseeing the U.S. Postal Service. “And if he will not resign, I want the Board of Governors to fire him.”
But DeJoy, a Republican megadonor who was appointed during the Trump administration, does not have to abide by presidential executive orders.
The nine-seat board that oversees the Postal Service has the sole authority to remove the Postmaster General, and it unanimously selected a Republican, Roman Martinez IV, to serve as its new chairman in January, a move expected to secure DeJoy’s position.
His plan calls for buying up to 165,000 mail trucks over the next 10 years with as many as 90% burning gasoline.
The plan would deliver the first 5,000 electric vehicles beginning in 2023, providing “significant environmental benefits,” according to a Postal Service news release.
Defending the 10% cap on electric vehicles, DeJoy told a board meeting this month the commitment was “frankly ambitious, given the pressing vehicle and safety needs of our aging fleet and our dire financial condition.”
Full electrification of the Postal Service fleet would cost $3.3 billion more than his proposed plan, DeJoy said.
Postal service workers “have waited long enough for safer, cleaner vehicles” to deliver to 161 million addresses six days a week,” he said.
Vicki Arroyo, associate administrator of policy at the Environmental Protection Agency, said the EPA estimated the cost of fossil fuel emissions and other climate impacts associated with the new fleet at $900 million.
Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said the vehicle plan was “completely indefensible and makes no sense economically or from any other perspective.”
“It’s as if Louis DeJoy is once again trying to sabotage the Postal Service by saddling it with a fleet of gas guzzlers that will be literally built for obsolescence,” Huffman said.
Huffman, who has sought to phase out combustion vehicles in the Postal Service’s fleet as far back as 2014, said he has been doing “everything I can to get the Postal Service turned around on this and I am not giving up.”
“From the jump, it’s been clear that DeJoy is not concerned about the long-term sustainability of the USPS nor our climate,” Huffman said on Twitter.
“This fossil fuel friendly contract is rife with flaws, and my colleagues and I will continue working to ensure the USPS maximizes EVs.”
Wednesday’s decision allows the agency to begin buying gasoline-powered trucks from Wisconsin military truck maker Oshkosh Corp. under a $6 billion contract awarded last February, Bloomberg News reported.
The Postal Service rejected a bid from fledgling electric vehicle specialist Workhorse Group Inc. and rejected pressure from Biden administration officials to boost electric vehicle purchases beyond its planned 10% baseline, the report said.
Critics noted that Oshkosh plans to build the new trucks with nonunion labor in South Carolina, away from the United Auto Workers-organized employees in Wisconsin.
Ellie Cohen, CEO of The Climate Center, a Santa Rosa nonprofit, said the decision is “completely at odds with the Biden administration's stated focus on clean energy and accelerated, equitable climate action.”
“We're in a climate emergency, and our federal tax dollars should be invested in climate-smart solutions,” she said. “Transitioning the U.S. Postal Service to an electric vehicle fleet should have been a no-brainer that would have reduced pollution and improved local air quality.”
Biden issued an executive order in 2021 calling for the federal government to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Government vehicles should transition to zero emissions by 2034, the president said.
Adrian Martinez, senior attorney for Earthjustice’s Right to Zero campaign, said DeJoy’s plan “will drag us back decades with a truck model that gets laughable fuel economy.”
“We may as well deliver the mail with Hummers,” he said, referring to the heavyweight SUVs manufactured by GMC. The company has announced the introduction of “the world’s first all-electric supertrucks.”
Earthjustice said the Postal Service’s new combustion trucks get “a harrowing mileage of 8.6 mpg with the air conditioning on” — far worse than most full-size pickups.
It would also get worse mileage than the current 1988 Grumman postal truck when new, the organization said.
Electrifying the Postal Service fleet — the nation’s largest civilian vehicle fleet — would prevent the government from burning 110 million gallons of fuel a year, Earthjustice said.
Earthjustice is a nonprofit environmental organization with more than 150 lawyers dedicated to advancing clean energy and combating climate change.
Environmental groups are preparing an immediate challenge to the vehicle replacement plan in federal court, asserting the Postal Service relied on a “fundamentally flawed analysis that underestimates greenhouse gas emissions, relies on faulty economic assumptions and fails to consider alternatives,” Bloomberg reported.
You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.
By: GUY KOVNER
Source: Press Democrat
Next Article Previous Article