FWHA Reinstates Obama-Era Highway CO2 Measurements

On December 7, 2023, the Federal Highway Administration (FWHA) issued a final rule requiring state and metropolitan transportation planners that serve regions with federal highways to measure and report CO2 emissions from on-highway sources, and to establish declining targets for highway CO2 emissions. 

The 2012 Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP–21) and the 2015 Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act) transformed the Federal-aid highway program by establishing performance management requirements and tasking FHWA with carrying them out. Under MAP-21 and the FAST Act, FWHA undertook several rulemakings designed to set performance standards. One of these, System Performance Management (PM3), addressed measurement of a number of national transportation goals, including environmental sustainability. In the PM3 final rule, promulgated in 2017, FHWA established a GHG emissions performance measure, and required State Departments of Transportation to measure and report CO2 emissions based on annual fuel sales, Energy Information Agency emission conversion factors, and the proportion of statewide vehicle miles travelled that occur on the national highway system.

On May 31, 2018, under the Trump Administration, FHWA repealed the GHG measure, effective on July 2, 2018. FHWA identified three main reasons for the repeal: (1) reconsideration of the underlying legal authority; (2) the cost of the GHG measure in relation to the lack of demonstrated benefits; and (3) potential duplication of information produced by the GHG measure and information produced by other initiatives related to measuring CO2 emissions. However, on July 15, 2022, FWHA issued a notice of proposed rulemaking that would reinstate and update the standards set in 2017. 

In its final form, the new rule final rule amends FHWA’s regulations governing national performance management measures and establishes a method for the measurement and reporting of GHG emissions associated with transportation. It requires State departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations to establish declining CO2 targets for the GHG measure and report on progress toward the achievement of those targets. The rule does not mandate how low targets must be. Rather, state and local agencies have flexibility to set targets that are appropriate for their communities and that work for their respective climate change and other policy priorities, as long as the targets aim to reduce emissions over time

The new rule will take effect 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register.