Natural Resources Defense Council Executive Director Peter Lehner, in a blog today, said this goal is achievable.

We can achieve 60 mpg by 2025 using and improving on technologies that already exist such as hybrid electric cars. And, of course, we have the know-how to do it without compromising affordability, safety, or consumer choices.

And he says new standards will help reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil:

Not only will they save drivers money at the pump and make America’s car industry more competitive, but they will also dramatically reduce our need for foreign oil and cut down on global warming pollution. By 2030, it will cut our oil consumption by 49 billion gallons per year and more than 535 million metric tons of carbon pollution.

The letter comes as the Obama administration is expected to release new fuel efficiency rules later this month.

LaHood emphasized that the new guidelines will benefit not only the planet, but also American drivers, who will see their fuel costs drop as vehicles become more efficient.

“Putting more fuel-efficient cars on the road isn’t just the right thing to do for the environment,” he said. “It’s also a great way for Americans to save more at the pump.”

Jackson, who called the guidelines “historic” and a “win-win program for our economy and the environment,” added that they will also benefit American innovators, who will work to develop more efficient car parts and new batteries, and will mean “$2.3 billion that can stay at home in our economy rather than buying oil overseas.”

In response to a question from FOX News about whether this move has implications for further regulation of greenhouse gases, Jackson said the program will show people that emissions can be easily regulated, without harmful consequences to the economy. “It puts to rest these doomsday scenarios” about greenhouse gas regulations, she said. This is only the first step in regulating emissions, she emphasized; “the president’s big plan for dealing with energy and climate is new legislation.”

The guidelines drew immediate praise from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which has long advocated national emissions and efficiency regulations rather than patchwork state-by-state rules.

“America needs a roadmap to reduced dependence on foreign oil and greenhouse gases, and only the federal government can play this role,” Dave McCurdy, president and CEO of the Alliance, said in a press release. “Today, the federal government has laid out a course of action through 2016, and now we need to work on 2017 and beyond.”

Update: Elana Schor has some more details on the new guidelines, which would raise average vehicle efficiency to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. The rules are more lax for luxury car manufacturers like Mercedes and BMW; they will have extra time to comply.

That’s precisely what happened.

Roughly 13 weeks after Congress infused $2 billion more into the Clunkers program — and about 10 weeks after the program ended — the Department of Transportation finally unveiled the final figures surrounding the program, posting the details of all 677,000 transactions on its Website. The Associated Press undertook the unenviable task of crunching the data, to discover that the single most popular swap was that of an old Ford F-150 pickup for a new Ford F-150 pickup.

Owners of that pickup were 17 times more likely to buy a new F-150 than, say, a Toyota Prius. The new pickups’ EPA combined city/highway mileage ratings ranged from 15 mpg to 17 mpg, depending on the powertrain and other factors, up 1 mpg to 3 mpg over the old ones.

That’s not to say there wasn’t some environmental benefit to the program. Indeed, the average trade-in vehicle got 15.8 miles per gallon, while drive-away vehicles averaged 24.9 mpg. Still, how much better could those numbers have been if Congress had summoned the guts to pass a slightly different Clunkers bill — one that bumped up the mileage requirements to prevent drivers from trading clunkers for clunkers? As Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), the sponsors of the alternative bill, wrote in The Wall Street Journal in June, the original program was “expertly designed to provide Detroit one last windfall in selling off gas guzzlers currently sitting on dealer lots because they’re not a smart buy.”

Of course, in the end, both Feinstein and Collins voted for the $2 billion extension of that very windfall.

“This action will give our auto companies some long-overdue clarity, stability and predictability,” Obama said Tuesday in a speech at a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio.

The new rules unify the Environmental Protection Agency’s goals to reduce the emissions from automobiles and the Department of Transportation’s rules on fuel economy. The proposed program will cover model years 2012 through 2016, increasing fleet-wide fuel economy by 5 percent per year. This means by 2016, the fleet-wide average would hit 35.5 miles per gallon, and would need to meet a new limit on emissions per gallon. The new rules will need to go through the traditional approval process before they are finalized, which needs to happen by March 2010. But the administration estimates that they will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 950 million metric tons.

More importantly, it will be the Obama administration’s first action toward meeting its stated goals of reducing emissions and complying with the Supreme Court’s directive to the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

The real question is whether the administration will follow through with its threat to move onto setting limits for stationary sources of carbon dioxide emissions, like power plants, refineries, and manufacturers. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson declined to offer much information about their progress on that front at a press conference on Tuesday.

“EPA will continue to do it’s job, which is to respond to the now 2-plus-year old ruling about the Clean Air Act,” said Jackson. “I think it is fair to say that today’ announcement is path-breaking … It is the beginning of regulation. We should expect the EPA to continue to do its job.”

But she also made it clear that the administration would still prefer not to write the regulations. “I hope that doesn’t come to pass,” she said. “I believe that legislation is the preferable route.”

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The Department of Transportation released figures Wednesday indicating that, as of yesterday morning, more than 316,000 new vehicles have been sold under the program, at a cost of $1.33 billion. The DOT has also released occasional top-10 lists of the best-selling models. But requests for more detailed information have been met with silence.

DOT spokeswoman Patricia Swift-Oladeinde said Wednesday that the agency simply hasn’t crunched those numbers.

Yet Lena Pons, policy analyst at Public Citizen, doubts that claim. “They have the information,” Pons said. “They have to have it to reimburse the dealers.”

Indeed, if the DOT has the data to compile top-10 lists, it surely knows also which models fill slots 11 through the rest. But, despite several Freedom of Information Act requests seeking the data (including one from Public Citizen), the administration is refusing to give up the details.

Those details could have significant consequences. When the Senate last week passed a $2 billion extension of the program, several powerful lawmakers threatened to fight the additional funding unless the guidelines were altered in favor of stricter mileage standards. But Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) — the three who led the push for better fuel efficiency rules — were convinced those changes were unnecessary after the DOT released summary data claiming that drivers were buying up small, highly efficient cars.

“What we’ve learned is that American consumers are choosing vehicles with much higher fuel efficiency than is required,” Feinstein said in a statement announcing her change of heart.

Yet there are indications that the program isn’t promoting the vehicle sales the DOT has claimed. Indeed, although the agency says the 10 best-selling vehicles under cash for clunkers are all small cars, a separate study by Edmunds.com, an auto analysis group, found that both the Ford F-150 and Chevrolet Silverado trucks have crept onto that list. The New York Times this week quoted an anonymous White House aide conceding that the program is one “in which you trade old clunkers for new clunkers.” Dealerships are reporting sales of Cadillac SRXs and Hummer H3Ts. And even Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has said that, given the chance, he’d use the program to scoop up a Ford Explorer SUV, the 4WD version of which gets just 15 miles per gallon.

Considering the popularity of the program — both with consumers and the auto industry — there’s certain to be pressure on Congress to extend the program yet again if the extra $2 billion runs out quickly. Some lawmakers have hinged their support for additional funds on first getting a better understanding of what the program is doing. They can’t know the answer, however, if the administration continues to withhold the trade-in figures.

The vote — 60 to 37 — came less than a week after the House approved the same proposal. Senate passage of an identical bill means that drivers can continue receiving between $3,500 and $4,500 to trash their gas guzzlers in favor of vehicles that get better mileage.

Seven amendments to the House proposal were offered on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon, with Democratic leaders, behind Michigan’s influential delegation, successfully urging lawmakers to oppose each proposal, one by one. If any of the amendments had passed, then the entire bill would have required re-approval by House lawmakers, who left Washington last week for August recess. The delay would have left car dealers uncertain when (or if) the funding would arrive, likely stalling the cash for clunkers program altogether.

The impetus for Senate lawmakers to pass the House bill was clear: Though the environmental benefits of the program are slight, the initiative has been a boon to auto dealers and consumers alike. Few lawmakers wanted to return home for the August break to face an angry constituency.

Looking ahead, there are still questions about what would happen if the $2 billion runs out while Congress is on recess. And there remain concerns about how and when that money — which was siphoned from a loan program encouraging the development of green technologies — might be replaced.

But for now, most lawmakers are just breathing sighs of relief that the bill is passed, and vacation has arrived.

President Obama has promised to sign the bill into law as soon as it hits his desk.

The amendments are:

1) Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa): To limit the provision of vouchers to individuals with adjusted gross incomes of less than $50,000 or joint filers with adjusted gross incomes of less than $75,000.

2) Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.): In the nature of a substitute.

3) Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.): To protect generations of tomorrow from paying for new cars today.

4) Sen. David Vitter (R-La.): To provide for a date certain for termination of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

5) Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.): To provide assistance to charities and families in need.

6) Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.): To prohibit the Federal Government from holding ownership interests, and for other purposes

7) Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.): To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide an income tax credit for certain home purchases, and to transfer to the Treasury unobligated funds made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in the amount of the reduction in revenue resulting from such credit.

Of course, most supporters of the underlying cash for clunkers extension, including President Obama, want to pass a clean bill without any amendments attached, because any changes to the bill would require agreement from the House, which is on a five-week vacation.

As a Reid spokesperson said yesterday, “Obviously, we don’t want them to pass because then the bill doesn’t go anywhere.”

Expect the clean bill within a few hours.

The Los Angeles Times lays out the significance:

Today’s decision sets the stage for the proposed national vehicle emissions standards that President Obama announced in May: New cars and trucks sold in the U.S. will be required to improve their fuel efficiency gradually over the next seven years, reaching an average of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016 — a 40% improvement over the current 25 mpg level. The federal government agrees to adopt California’s standards as its own, and the state agrees not to toughen the standards before 2017. Automakers agree to drop lawsuits against California’s standards.

California has been pushing the stricter greenhouse gas standards for five years, but the EPA under the Bush administration sided with the auto industry in rejecting them. The argument was that the Clean Air Act doesn’t govern auto emissions — an interpretation that new EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson has rejected outright. “This waiver is consistent with the Clean Air Act as it’s been used for the last 40 years,” Jackson said Tuesday in a statement.

Now if only the administration would apply the same logic to the Clean Water Act, it could end mountaintop mining as well.

Indeed, under the proposal someone who turns in a vehicle getting 18 miles per gallon could be eligible for a $3,500 credit on a car getting 22 mpg. The credit would jump to $4,500 if the newly purchased car gets at least 28 mpg.

Three questions spring immediately to mind: (1) Why is this program encouraging sales of cars so far below even this year’s average efficiency standard of 27.5 mpg? (2) How is this program going to meld with last month’s White House announcement that, in the name of cutting emissions, new cars must get fleet-wide averages of 39 mpg by 2016? And (3) why are Michigan Democrats still pretending this is an environmental effort?

Answer quickly. The Senate could vote on the amendment as early as this evening.

Enter Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who issued a statement Tuesday attempting to straddle these conflicting interests.

I have always said that a strong, national fuel-economy standard is what our country needs, not a confusing patch work of different state standards. I am pleased that the Obama administration heeded my call and developed a national standard for our automakers to follow — a clear standard that will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Yet Stabenow’s voting record tells a different tale. In 2002, for example, the Senate killed a proposal that would have forced automakers to create vehicles with fleet-wide averages of 40 miles-per-gallon by 2015 — “a strong, national fuel economy standard” that Stabenow voted against.

Five years later, in June 2007, the upper chamber approved new fuel standards mandating fleet-wide averages of 35 mpg by 2020. Although the proposal was watered down to eliminate a requirement that automakers increase that efficiency floor by four percent each year between 2020 and 2030, Stabenow again voted against the bill.

And finally, when the Senate approved sweeping energy reforms in December 2007 — including the move to 35 mpg by 2020 — Stabenow was among only eight senators to vote against the bill.

Yeah — good thing the Obama administration heeded her call.