While the recently announced White House fuel efficiency standards are an important step in weaning the U.S. off its dependence on foreign oil and reducing the levels of CO2s dumped into the atmosphere, we would be mistaken to overlook the role that individual U.S. states, as well as the trucking industry itself, play when it comes to cleaning up our environment and moving away from oil imports.

Let's start with Rocky Mountain Doubles (RMD), Triple Trailers (TT) and Turnpike Doubles (TPD). These are very important concepts when it comes to improving fuel efficiency standards in the U.S. RMDs, TTs and TPDs are three of the most common type of Longer Combination Vehicles (LCVs) allowed on U.S. highways today and they represent a great way of transporting large quantities of goods over long distances cleanly, quickly and efficiently. By doubling or tripling up trailers to a single cab, trucking companies cut down the number of trips they need to make (When it comes to triples, for every two trips made, one trip is eliminated.), significantly reducing the amount of fuel burned.

According to the American Trucking Association (ATA), heavy trucks burn close to 40 billion gallons of diesel fuel each year. By deploying smarter truck combinations, we can significantly reduce this number. However, most U.S. states ban LCVs from their highways.

This leads to the obvious question of why. While popular opinion focuses on lingering concerns about the safety record and impact of LCVs on highway infrastructure, these fears have never been substantiated. Therefore, when thinking about how to make their states cleaner, state legislators would be wise to reexamine their stances on RMDs, TTs and TPDs, and think about opening their roadways to them.

The other way that individual states factor into the fuel efficiency equation is by working with the federal government to set a national speed standard for trucks. According to the ATA, a truck traveling at 75 mph consumes 27 percent more fuel than one going at 65 mph. Bringing down speed limits for trucks to 65 mph would save 2.8 billion gallons of diesel fuel in just 10 years and reduce CO2 emissions by 31.5 million tons - equal to the CO2 generated by 9 million Americans each year.

Finally, as far as the changes needed to be adopted by the trucking industry itself, trucking companies must continue to take on the responsibility of improving average fuel consumption through two key measures: first, the development of engineering innovations and second, stressing to their drivers the importance of employing "best practice" driving techniques for safety and efficiency.

The U.S. government got the ball rolling with its recent announcement. Now it's up to us – the industry and the state legislators - to keep it going.

We have miles yet to go, but yes, as a first step the Obama Administration has found a winning formula in setting the first-ever fuel and pollution standards for heavy-duty vehicles with broad consensus.

These vehicles consume up to 37 billion gallons of fuel every year and account for 20 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution from the transportation sector, although they make up just 4 percent of all vehicles on the road. As a result, these standards represent an incredible opportunity to lower fuel costs for truckers, cut pollution, save oil, and create jobs.

The estimated cumulative oil savings — more than 500 million barrels of oil over the 5-year program — is equivalent to what America imported last year from Venezuela and Iraq. Furthermore, the estimated market cost to implement these standards would be $7.7 billion, while truckers would save $28 billion at the pump. This means less money spent on oil and reduced shipping costs for goods and services, which means more money going back into the U.S. economy and into the pocketbooks of American workers and families.

Most importantly, it means more job creation to deliver an American-made cleaner truck fleet. Developing and manufacturing cleaner vehicles and their underlying components domestically will bolster efforts to re-energize the U.S. manufacturing sector, which has shed more than a million jobs in the recent economic recession, and strengthen America’s ability to compete in the global economy.

According to recent analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, widespread deployment of more-efficient trucks could create 63,000 additional jobs by 2020, and 124,000 jobs by 2030. All states would see net job growth, with California, Texas, Florida, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Michigan leading the way — each potentially adding more than 4,000 jobs by 2030.

It’s important to note that these savings will largely be accomplished using off-the-shelf technology. Some could argue we are leaving energy savings and pollution reduction on the table with what are generally seen as a mild standard that has buy-in from industry. But make no mistake; this is just the first step. We see this as an opportunity to set a good standard now using today’s technology, and for these vehicles now under a strong, national program that promotes innovation and domestic production, to develop even stronger standards in the future using the technology of tomorrow, creating good jobs along the way.

There are many more controversial issues with the light-duty fuel economy standard approach than the heavy-duty final rule. One major difference is the Administration’s direct and indirect efforts to pick technology and fuel winners and losers in its approach to the light duty vehicles, where it seems to envision fuel savings primarily in the context of anything but existing fuels and technologies, favoring instead unproven and mostly unavailable fuels and technology (electricity) as the future transportation fuel. Discounting or disadvantaging the proven technologies that are delivering fuel savings to consumers today and in the near term doesn’t make sense. Clean diesel cars, which might not sound as exotic as lithium-ion batteries and plug-in EVs, are however delivering real and proven 30 percent fuel savings today over gasoline vehicles.

As Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood stated at the May 24th opening of the new Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, TN: "If one-third of all vehicles in the USA were already clean diesel vehicles today, we would be saving 1.4 million barrels of oil every day. That is equivalent to the amount of oil we currently import from Saudi Arabia."

Compared to fuel economy standards for cars, there are many and different motivations and considerations that went into the fuel efficiency standards announced last week for commercial work trucks. The success of this particular effort is rooted in several places. First and foremost is the central longstanding importance for fuel efficiency for truckers since fuel costs have long been the number one or two operating expense for truckers. Using less fuel means more profitable operations in a very marginal industry to start with, so the motivation is very high. The other success point in this process is the value of certainty -- providing manufacturers with certainty and the ability to plan for future investments. With California proceeding on steps to implement its climate change and GHG emissions rules, this rulemaking assures a single national approach in an industry characterized by longer lead times and smaller markets where recouping research and development costs is far more challenging. Consider that where automakers might sell 11 or 12 million new cars in a year, the commercial truck and engine manufacturing sector will produce probably less than a million overall vehicles this year, maybe less particularly if the economy slows further. And those vehicles will be anything but uniform.

The commercial truck rule will yield “robust” petroleum reductions,—provided that the economy allows for the continued and future investment of these new technologies. Because of the sheer magnitude of commercial vehicles operating in the United States, this regulation has the potential to result in significant environmental and energy efficiency gains. The U.S. fleet of trucks consumes about 22 billion gallons of diesel fuel every year, and at today’s diesel fuel prices hovering around $4.00 a gallon, 23 percent gain in fuel efficiency envisioned by the rule will significantly slash trucker fuel costs.

The new generation of clean diesel engines deployed since 2010 are today showing fuel efficiency gains on the order of five percent and more. Given the many complexities in the trucking sector with thousands of types of truck and engine combinations in a variety of weight categories, the standards are robust enough and provide necessary flexibilities in dealing with this diverse sector. Diesel engines power over 90 percent of all commercial trucks and this rule will further push engine and truck makers to make both engines and vehicles more efficient.

As more fuel efficient cars and commercial trucks come into the population it only adds to the pressure for figuring out how to finance the nation’s transportation infrastructure as traditional fuel tax revenues dwindle with less fuel being consumed. Vehicle efficiency standards are but one part of the equation. The elephants in this crowded room are taxes and productivity. The advanced clean diesel engines used to power heavy duty commercial trucks can certainly handle heavier trucks and trucks pulling more trailers - which would add additional productivity and energy efficiency value to truckers and reduce environmental impacts and energy consumption, but that is a whole other conversation.

To get these more fuel efficient technologies on the road sooner, the Administration should also be thinking more and doing more to get these technologies deployed – i.e. incentives for purchasers of more fuel efficient cars and steps to encourage truckers to move into more fuel efficient technology, such as eliminating the 12 percent federal excise tax levied on all new heavy duty commercial trucks.