Australia unveiled plans on Sunday to set mandatory fuel efficiency standards, matching long-existing rules in other advanced economies in a bid to get high-polluting gas guzzlers off the road.
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said a “New Vehicle Efficiency Standard” would be introduced by 2025, ending decades of footdragging and debate about the policy.
“The United States has had a similar policy in place for fifty years,” Bowen said. “Australia still stands alongside Russia as one of the only advanced economies without the Standard.”
“This is costing families and businesses thousands of dollars at the petrol pump,” he said.
Australia currently has no mandatory fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles.
In a 2022 study, the Australia Institute think tank suggested that the lack of an efficiency standard was costing the country billions of dollars on fuel, and meant vehicles were 30 percent more polluting than vehicles in the United States.