The move had widely been expected since last year, when California announced an ambitious schedule for automakers to swap traditional internal-combustion engines with cleaner electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles. Under the Clear Air Act, states may choose to follow either California's emission standards or a less stringent set of federal regulations.
Connecticut has long opted to follow the lead of California's Air Resources Board when it comes to regulating the exhaust from passenger cars, and last year Lamont signed legislation adopting a similar set of standards for medium and heavy-duty trucks.
Along with CARB, officials said Wednesday that they are working with their counterparts in states like New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts — almost all with Democratic governors — to create a market of millions of drivers for electric vehicles.
"I'm tired of people saying 'Let's wait, let's wait until West Virginia comes on board, let's wait and see what China wants to do," said Lamont, who made the announcement at a Toyota dealership that has received recognition for its EV sales. "We can't do it by ourselves but we can take the lead."
The new regulations will require dealers to market a minimum number of zero or low-emission cars, passenger trucks and SUVs, beginning with 2027 model year vehicles. The ratio of clean cars will steadily increase until 2035, when all new sales must be of fully electric, hydrogen or the "cleanest-possible plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles."
In addition, a separate set of rules governing larger trucks, buses and RVs will start phasing in more electric models beginning in 2027, according to a draft of the proposed regulation.
Neither regulation will prohibit the sale of existing, used gasoline-powered vehicles.
While several major automakers, including Ford and General Motors, have already announced plans to electrify their fleets along a timeline similar to the one set by California, opponents of the regulations have argued that consumers, dealers and regional power grids will be unable to keep up with the pace of the transition. In some states, critics have sued to block the implementation of the new rules.
"The wholesale elimination of gas-powered vehicles by 2035 is a policy decision that a majority of Americans don't agree with, yet Democrats here, using scary words such as 'survival,' aggressively insist on forcing Connecticut down California's ideological regulatory rabbit hole no matter the financial cost to our state or the people who live here," House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R- North Branford, said in a statement Wednesday.
Officials said Wednesday Connecticut had recently surpassed 36,000 electric vehicle registrations, a 20 percent increase since January but still just a fraction of the nearly 3 million total vehicles in the state.
The decision by major automakers to focus on electric, meanwhile, has left their franchises with "no choice" but to go along with the transition, according to Jeff Aiosa, a board member for the Connecticut Automotive Retailers Association. (Many popular electric brands, such as Tesla, are unable to sell directly to consumers in Connecticut under the state's decades-old franchise law).
For many dealers, Aiosa said that has meant investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in charging infrastructure, solar panels and other upgrades to cater to the electric vehicle market.
"We're on an irreversible path to electrification," Aiosa said. "It's just a matter of how quickly we can accelerate it."
Exhaust fumes from cars and trucks are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Connecticut, and environmental activists and regulators long argued said that the state is not moving fast enough to get gas-guzzling vehicles off the road.
"We need aggressive, let me emphasize aggressive, regulations if we have a chance of meeting this state's 2040 carbon emissions goals," said Michelle Eckman, the associate director of the Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs.
In order to ease the transition to electric vehicles, Connecticut is planning to spend $52 million over the next five years to build out a network of EV chargers, according to a spokesman for the state's Department of Transportation.
In addition, lawmakers voted last year to expand the state's rebate program for customers to purchase electric vehicles, while also removing restrictions that had prevented some renters and condo owners from installing vehicle chargers in their homes.
Still, activists have complained that they hit a setback in 2023, when Democrats failed to advance many of their proposals to follow up and strengthen last year's climate legislation, including the adoption of California's medium and heavy-duty truck standards.
When asked about that malaise on Wednesday, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes called on lawmakers to give the agency more regulatory control over emissions in other sectors of the economy, while also targeting other factors that have kept tailpipe emissions stubbornly high.
"Our emissions are not coming down because we're driving more," Dykes said. "So we have to both improve fuel economy and clean up the emissions from the vehicles but also provide for more transit-oriented development, for more types of pedestrian [travel] and biking options that will help us to reduce [driving]."
Both of the proposed regulations to adopt the California emissions standards were drafted by DEEP and will have to go through review by a bi-partisan legislative panel before taking effect.
In addition, the agency said Wednesday that it will accept public comment on the rules through Aug. 23 and, if requested, will hold hearings on the issue next month.
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