By Timothy Gardner and David Ljunggren
WASHINGTON/OTTAWA (Reuters) - The United States finalized on Thursday its first greenhouse gas emissions rules on automobiles and boosted car efficiency standards, moves Canada is jointly imposing on its industry.
The moves are part of President Barack Obama's goal to cut emissions of gases blamed for warming the planet. Obama wants Congress to pass a long-delayed climate bill, but to push the legislation along, he has also set in motion steps for the EPA to begin regulating the emissions from cars and large polluters like power plants.
"By working together with industry and capitalizing on our capacity for innovation, we've developed a clean cars program that is a win for automakers and drivers, a win for innovators and entrepreneurs, and a win for our planet," said Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency which finalized the rules with the Department of Transportation.
The agencies have since last year said they will require that automakers' fleets of cars and trucks get on average 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. The current limit is 25 miles per gallon.
Canada's government will also implement the rules on Thursday, a Canadian source with knowledge of the matter said. The North American auto industry is highly interlinked.
Canada is expected to make an announcement later on Thursday.
The U.S. vehicle emissions standards, which will be phased in starting with the 2012 model year, will reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions by 900 million metric tons, according to the EPA.
Obama said this week he expects the U.S. rule will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the life of vehicles built during the 2012 to 2016 model years, equivalent to taking 58 million cars off the road for a year.
In many ways Canada's strategy on emissions hinges on U.S. policy. Ottawa has not revealed details of how it plans to force companies to cut emissions and set up a cap and trade system on polluters, saying it will wait until the United States settles upon its own plan.
Automakers support the separate vehicle regulations because it would create the first national standard for controlling car and truck emissions, superseding state plans that would have created a patchwork of regulations.
Many new vehicles, especially hybrid cars, already meet or exceed the planned standards.
Car companies are considering a range of ways to meet the new standards including more efficient combustion engines, new fuels and batteries.
Production changes are expected to add an average of $950 to the cost of new vehicles, the EPA said Thursday, down about $350 from earlier projections. That said, a driver would save about $3,000 over the life of a vehicle when the rules are fully implemented.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, Tom Doggett and John Crawley in Washington and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; editing by Jim Marshall)
