The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, represents the latest front in an escalating legal battle over the remaining pieces of Obama’s climate change legacy — led by a coalition of blue states, which are also fighting attempts to roll back Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
The pro-climate states have already made headway. Earlier, the Energy Department announced it would move ahead on energy-efficiency standards for ceiling fans, after a prior lawsuit by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and his colleagues. The agency said that the regulation would take effect in September.
The current lawsuit involves the final five in a large batch of rules issued by the Obama administration’s Energy Department, which were left in a curious state of limbo after Trump’s inauguration.
The standards were finalized shortly before Trump’s inauguration, but subjected to a mandatory 45 day “error correction” review, focused on catching typographical errors and other minor problems.
But the Trump administration did not, at the end of that review period, send the regulations on for formal publication in the Federal Register.
The case was filed by attorneys general from the states of California, New York, Maine, Connecticut, Illinois, Vermont, Oregon, Washington, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and the city of New York. Three environmental and public interest organizations, the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Consumer Federation of America, also filed suit Tuesday on the same topic.
The regulations cover air compressors, commercial boilers, portable air conditioners, uninterruptible power supplies, and walk-in freezers.
The rules require manufacturers to improve the energy efficiency of their products over time, so as to consume less energy for the same level of performance.
Read more at California and New York Just Sued to Protect Obama’s Final Energy Rules
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