Bloomberg reports:

Biden administration officials are pushing the U.S. Postal Service to buy more electric vehicles instead of spending billions on gas-powered models as it replaces its aging fleet.

The efforts, mounted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Council on Environmental Quality, follow separate warnings by activists that the Postal Service’s plan to buy mostly conventional delivery trucks downplayed the potential climate benefits of a shift to electric, non-emitting alternatives.

The Postal Service’s plan “represents a crucial lost opportunity to more rapidly reduce the carbon footprint of one of the largest government fleets in the world,” the EPA said in a letter to the agency Wednesday.

EPA Associate Administrator Vicki Arroyo faulted the environmental analysis underlying the Postal Service’s purchase plans, saying it underestimates greenhouse gas emissions, doesn’t disclose economic assumptions and was conducted after a contract for next-generation delivery vehicles was already awarded.

“The agency committed to walk down a path before looking to see where that path was leading,” Brenda Mallory, the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, said in a separate letter to the Postal Service. [Continue reading…]