The U.S. Postal Service is proceeding with plans to spend $11.3 billion on new trucks, most of which will be gasoline-powered vehicles, despite a request from the Biden Administration to consider buying much more electric vehicles (EVs) for its next-generation fleet.
The U.S. Postal Service has completed its obligations under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process, which, in this instance, evaluated the potential environmental impacts of the Postal Service's Next Generation Vehicle Delivery (NGDV) program, USPS said this week.
The NGDV program calls for the introduction of an initial 5,000 battery electric vehicles (BEV) to USPS's fleet beginning in 2023. This is just 10 percent of the order for new vehicles.
President Joe Biden vowed last year to replace the almost 650,000-strong federal vehicle fleet with electric cars as part of his climate agenda.
"The federal government also owns an enormous fleet of vehicles, which we're going to replace with clean electric vehicles made right here in America made by American workers," President Biden said last summer.
Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the White House Council on Environmental Quality urged USPS to address the climate crisis by accelerating the electrification of its delivery vehicle fleet.
"After thorough review and study we determined that EPA's request for a supplemental EIS and public hearing would not add value to the Postal Service's already year-long review. It is also important to note that a supplemental EIS and public hearing are not legally required," Mark Guilfoil, Vice President for Supply Management at the U.S. Postal Service, said in a statement.
Following USPS's decision to move forward with 90-percent gasoline vehicles in the new delivery fleet procurement order, Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory said on Wednesday:
"The Postal Service's continuing push toward buying a mostly gas-powered fleet for the next thirty years is out of touch with technology and puts the agency at a major disadvantage to its competitors, who are all going electric."
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More