The United States Postal Service is objected by the Biden government to reevaluate its billion-dollar investment on the new fleet of gas-powered mail delivery trucks.
The White House Council and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent a letter to USPS this week regarding the Environmental Quality, requesting them to reconsider the multi-billion-dollar plan which would be 10 percent of its 165,000 new vehicles electric fleet.
Vicki Arroyo, the EPA’s associate administrator wrote;
“The Postal Service’s proposal as currently crafted represents a crucial lost opportunity to more rapidly reduce the carbon footprint of one of the largest government fleets in the world.”
“The cleaner the Postal Service vehicles that are deployed in communities across the country, the more air quality and public health will be improved.”
As for the plan, the USPS announced to purchase the vehicles in February 2021, from Oshkosh – a Wisconsin-based defense contractor for both electric drivetrain and gasoline. The deal was to spend about $11.3 billion on the trucks in the next ten years.
Besides, USPS operates around 230,000 electric vehicles, which is approximately one-third of the total government vehicle fleet. Louis DeJoy Postmaster General, who is a Trump nominee, is committed to executing 10% of the mail trucks in the Electric power.
“This action will lock in highly polluting vehicles for at least 30 more years (beyond 2050) and is inconsistent with national, and many state and local goals for GHG emissions reductions,” Arroyo wrote.
Moreover, major mailing service providers like FedEx and Walmart have also planned to switch their entire fleet to electric by 2040. Plus, UPS and Amazon planned to move to net-zero emission by 2050 and 2040, respectively.
“We are carefully reviewing EPA’s most recent letter, to determine if any new matters have been raised that have not already been thoroughly addressed in our prior responses to the EPA, and that might therefore warrant further consideration,” Kim Frum, a Postal Service spokeswoman, said in a statement.
On the other hand, Environmental groups have widely criticized USPS for not spending on the electric fleet.
Director of the Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All campaign, Katherine García, praised the Biden’s administration’s push to go against the plan and criticized the electric-fleet plan from the USPS as a ‘no-brainer’.
“Electric mail trucks will reduce noise, air and climate pollution in communities across the nation while slashing fueling costs,” García said. “There’s no reason USPS should be locking in decades of fossil fuel consumption by considering a fleet of 90 percent gas-powered trucks.” Despite the rise in the sales of electric vehicles in the United States in recent years, the auto market has become the largest contributor to US greenhouse gas emissions.
