GM Gets EPA Nod for Building the Most Greenwashed Large SUVs on the Market

The Texas plant producing General Motors’ body-on-frame SUVs is clean and green, even if the vehicles it builds are anything but Prius-like.

In August, the 43 turbines of Southern Power’s 148 MW Cactus Flats Wind Facility became operational in Concho County, Texas. GM, along with General Mills (the tastier GM) both have contracts to purchase power from the facility — in GM’s case, some 50 MW of it per year. That means it can now claim its Arlington, Texas assembly plant is 100 percent powered by renewable energy. The Environmental Protection Agency just placed GM at No. 76 on its list of the country’s largest green power users.

It’s amazing the kind of tree-hugging press one can get for a factory that essentially builds dinosaurs.

While it’s easy to fully surrender to cynicism when it comes to environmental PR efforts, GM deserves kudos for going green on the manufacturing side of things. The power bought from Cactus Flats, plus that of another wind farm, is enough to keep the lights on and the assembly line humming at 16 GM facilities across Texas and the U.S. South. It’s part of a pledge to make the company’s facilities 100 percent green by 2050.

But at Arlington, there’s a bizarre juxtaposition. Of the models built there — the Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban, GMC Yukon, and Cadillac Escalade, the number of variants found with a hybrid drivetrain number zero. That same figure can be applied to vehicles sold without a V8 engine beneath the hood. GM cancelled the nearly invisible hybrid versions of its full-size SUVs half a decade ago. They weren’t missed. Currently, the highest combined fuel economy available from an Arlington-produced vehicle is 18 mpg. Curb weights don’t dip below 5,000 pounds, let alone 4,000.

Does the fact that these V8-powered behemoths appear in environmentalists’ nightmares take away from planet-saving efforts taking place in the vehicle’s periphery? Depends on who you ask.

If GM told the green movement to shove it and bought power straight from the Texas grid, it would be helping sustain a generation landscape where nearly half of power comes from coal, some 40 percent of it being high-polluting lignite. With this move, the big, brawny SUVs Americans clearly love have a nice, protective green blanket to wrap themselves in. Sure, the models’ popularity and generous engine displacement contributes to a countrywide fleet fuel economy average that hasn’t budged in years, but at the end of the day, that’s the consumers’ fault. Unless you’re Bill de Blasio, there’s always a cleaner alternative to your current ride.

GM didn’t have to do this, so it can be seen as admirable environmental penance. To other eyes, it’s purely cynical greenwashing — a PR solution that’s far cheaper than redesigning the current large SUVs with lighter frames and bodies, downsized engines, and MSRP-hiking hybridization. Whatever your view, GM will eventually have to revamp its BOF family to stay ahead of rival Ford. A restyling is due for 2020.

[Image: General Motors]