ZETA urges United States Postal Service Board of Governors to halt vehicle procurements, resolve mistakes in environmental analysis
The Zero Emission Transportation Association (ZETA) sent a letter to the United States Postal Service (USPS) Board of Governors, urging them to halt the federal procurement process of next-generation delivery vehicles (NGDVs) until the myriad problems and defects in USPS’s final environmental impact statement (EIS) are resolved.
The final EIS determined that USPS should procure a 90% gas-powered vehicle fleet. To reach this conclusion, USPS contorted its modeling and data in order to weave a false narrative that justified its decision to lock generations of Americans into a carbon-intensive mail delivery system. Specifically, ZETA outlines that USPS 1) underestimated the financial and societal costs of not electrifying its fleet; 2) underestimated the technical and functional capabilities of BEVs; and 3) obscured the EIS’s fundamental models and assumed facts, preventing third parties from analyzing and replicating USPS’s analysis.
“The Postal Service’s decision to procure an overwhelmingly polluting fleet will leave Americans worse off by ignoring the crucial cost savings and societal benefits that electrification will bring,” said Joe Britton, the Executive Director of ZETA. “Electrifying the transportation sector is among our greatest opportunities to mitigate the devastating effects of climate change, improve public health, and create good-paying American jobs—and electrifying the Postal Service is a key opportunity to accelerate the electrification transition.”
ZETA previously coordinated with Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM) to send a letter to the USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and the Board of Governors, which also called on the Postal Service to supplement its inadequate environmental impact statement before initiating procurement. The letter was joined by fourteen other Senators and three Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and it was endorsed by twelve other pro-electrification partner organizations.
USPS could issue a Record of Decision (ROD) at any point. Procurement could begin as soon as the ROD is published in the Federal Register.
“USPS’s attempt to justify putting inefficient, increasingly polluting vehicles on the road for the next thirty years is indefensible,” continued Britton. “We urge the Board of Governors to quickly intervene in the USPS’s flawed decision-making process. Electrification will deliver marked cost savings directly to USPS—and to the American people via improved air quality and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.”
