WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday set strict emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks, buses and other large vehicles, an action that officials said will help clean up some of the nation’s largest sources of planet-warming greenhouse gases.

The new standards will especially benefit an estimated 72 million people in the United States who live near freight routes used by trucks and other heavy vehicles and bear a disproportionate burden of dangerous air pollution, the agency said.

The auto industry cited lower sales growth in objecting to the EPA’s preferred standards unveiled last April for passenger vehicles, a key part of President Joe Biden’s ambitious plan to cut planet-warming emissions.

Todd Spencer, president of the independent drivers association, which represents small trucking companies, said the Democratic administration “seems dead-set on regulating every local mom-and-pop business out of existence with its flurry of unworkable environmental mandates.”

The rule relies principally on zero-emission vehicles and “disincentivizes the development of other fuel-based technologies — including American-made renewable diesel — that are working in today’s heavy-duty fleet to reduce emissions,’' the groups said.

Margo Oge, a former director of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, said medium and heavy diesel trucks make up less than 6% of vehicles on the road “but spew more than half the smog and soot Americans breathe” and contribute to global warming.

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