Postmaster General Says Gas-Guzzling Mail Trucks Are Here to Stay Unless Congress Acts

After going through fierce criticism from the Biden Administration and environmental teams over its resolution to prioritize new, gas-guzzling mail vehicles, the United States Postal service desires individuals to know it’s certainly nonetheless dedicated to electrical automobiles… if solely it had more cash!

In an announcement revamped the weekend, The Postal Service reiterated that its Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV) program would add 5,000 electrical automobiles to its fleet and claimed it hoped to realize a 70% electrical fleet by the top of the last decade. Those are daring statements contemplating the company not too long ago stated it will spend $11.3 billion on as much as 165,000 new automobiles over the subsequent decade, with 90% of these powered by fuel engines. In a press release, Postmaster General and USPS Chief Executive Officer Louis DeJoy stated the company stays dedicated to an “ambitious” electrification push however claimed they’re hamstrung by an absence of presidency funding.

“Absent such funding, we must make fiscally responsible decisions that result in the needed introduction of safer and environmentally cleaner vehicles for the men and women who deliver America’s mail,” DeJoy stated. “Our commitment to an electric fleet remains ambitious given the pressing vehicle and safety needs of our aging fleet as well as our dire financial condition.”

That tepid stroll again comes days after the Environmental Protection Agency and The White House Council on Environmental Quality wrote letters urging The Postal Service to re-evaluate its resolution to purchase principally gas-powered automobiles. The companies criticized the USPS’s strategies for figuring out the price of an electrification effort and warned its fiscally conservative strategy might threaten to upend the Biden Administration’s goal of getting all federal companies buy 100% zero-emission automobiles for the federal fleet by 2035. For some context, these new gas-powered automobiles being thought of by the USPS would obtain a meager .4-mile-per-gallon gas financial system enchancment over the present 30-year-old mannequin.

“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 EPA letter learn. “A ten-percent commitment to clean vehicles, with virtually no fuel efficiency gains for the other 90 percent is plainly inconsistent with international, national, and many state GHG emissions reduction targets, as well as specific national policies to move with deliberate speed toward clean, zero-emitting vehicles.”

When The Postal Service performed its environmental impact statement earlier this 12 months, it decided the added price of electrifying your complete fleet of automobiles would come out to round $3.3 billion. That’s substantial, however within the grand scheme of U.S. authorities spending, it’s comparatively little. A single F-35 fighter jet, for instance, prices round $1.5 trillion.

The price of electrifying The Postal Service’s fleet would have additionally simply been coated within the Biden Administration’s Build Back Better Act, which aimed to supply $6 billion to the USPS to deploy electrical mail vehicles. A Postal Service spokesperson told the Washington Post again in October that the $6 billion in funds might make the company’s car acquisitions fully electrical by 2028. However, after West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin blocked the act late final 12 months, Build Back Better seems much more like Build Back Never.

The Postal Service below DeJoy, in the meantime, has expressed a dedication to chopping prices wherever doable. Late final 12 months, DeJoy stated the company plans to chop $160 billion in predicted losses over the subsequent decade. That drastic belt-tightening comes after the company has reported a web lack of $100 billion since 2007, according to Reuters. Last 12 months alone, the USPS skilled a web lack of $4.9 billion. By the top of 2019, the Government Accountability Office decided the Postal Service had racked up $160.9 billion in debt, the Washington Post notes. These deficits are an obsession for DeJoy who repeatedly factors out the Postal Service has a “Congressional mandate to operate in a financially sustainable manner.”

But DeJoy’s feedback solely inform a part of the story. While the cost-cutting holdover from the Trump Administration would love individuals to consider his arms are tied with out an inflow of presidency funds, he might nonetheless nonetheless commit the Postal Service to allocate funds towards electrical mail vehicles. That wouldn’t assist stability the USPS’ books, however then once more DeJoy has run a deficit for years. And if he can’t come up with the money for the company’s priorities by his magical capacity to smell out authorities waste, then what good is he?

Sticking to his weapons, DeJoy might probably make cuts to important USPS companies, which he’s achieved earlier than, to squeeze out a number of billion for EVs, however that might virtually actually draw extra outrage from the general public. And that’s the very last thing DeJoy wants, contemplating multiple lawmakers have gone so far as to demand his resignation. They aren’t alone: a 2020 poll performed by left-leaning agency Data or Progress and 56% of U.S. voters stated they thought DeJoy needs to be eliminated or resign from workplace.

These identical arguments over prices are occurring in tandem with a bigger dialog of what position the Postal Service ought to play in day by day life. DeJoy, following the conservative playbook, desires to reimagine the Postal Service as extra akin to a personal firm. However, that sort of cost-cutting makes it practically unattainable to realize the big, formidable (and sure, costly) adjustments essential to drastically scale back emissions.

“Given our large fiscal deficits and significant financial challenges, Congress is well aware of the additional resources that would be required if Congress would prefer the Postal Service to accelerate the electrification of our delivery vehicle fleet as a matter of public policy,” DeJoy stated in his assertion.

That would be the case, but when the USPS is ready on Congress to allocate extra funds when it holds the slimmest of majorities and two saboteurs seemingly keen to nuke most reasonably costly insurance policies, they may be ready a very long time. That basically leaves two choices: begrudgingly settle for including some extra debt to fund EV mail vehicles or sit and do nothing. Given DeJoy’s previous report, the latter state of affairs appears way more possible, nevertheless it additionally comes with probably a lot graver prices. In 2019, emissions from transportation (which incorporates federal fleets just like the USPS) accounted for 29% of U.S. emissions according to the EPA— larger than every other supply. With air air pollution probably killing thousands and thousands worldwide yearly, one might (and the Pentagon has) argue emissions characterize their very own sort of nationwide safety risk worthy of military-style mobilization.

Then once more, an armada of silent vans actually simply doesn’t have the identical pizazz as these trillion-plus greenback fighter jets, do they?