Court says U.S. energy rules must be enforced
A federal appeals court ordered the Trump administration Thursday to enforce longdelayed energyefficiency standards for portable air conditioners, building heaters and other appliances, rules that the previous administration said would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 705,000 cars a year.
The regulations were issued by President Barack Obama’s Energy Department in December 2016, after lengthy deliberations, and were scheduled to take effect in March 2017. But President Trump’s energy secretary, Rick Perry, put the changes on hold and has said they remain under review.
The ruling by the Ninth U.S.Circuit Court of Appeals “is good news for our
climate future, and for the rule of law,” said Kit Kennedy of the Natural Resources Defense Council, part of a coalition of environmental groups that sued to enforce the new standards. Suits were also filed by California and 10 other states, New York City and Washington, D.C.
The conservation standards “will save consumers money and protect both public health and the environment,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
The Energy Department said it was reviewing the ruling and it could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to postpone enforcement while it appeals the decision. A trade organization of appliance manufacturers filed arguments backing the administration.
The new standards would apply to floorstanding portable air conditioners, commercial boilers that heat office and apartment buildings, air compressors that power various tools, and battery chargers that provide backup power supplies for electronic products.
Federal law requires the Energy Department to set energysaving standards for specific categories of appliances, and then to update them every six years. The department last updated its standards for commercial boilers in 2009, but has no current standards for the other appliances, according to the lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s action.
Obama’s Energy Department said the conservation standards would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 99 million tons over 30 years, the equivalent of taking 705,000 cars a year off the road, and save $8.4 billion for consumers and businesses in the same period.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of San Francisco had ordered the Trump administration to enforce the new standards in February 2018, but a panel of the Ninth Circuit put his ruling on hold two months later while the administration appealed. On Thursday, however, a different Ninth Circuit panel said federal law requires the government to publish and enforce the regulations.
While a new presidential administration is normally free to reconsider and change or revoke previous administration’s regulations, federal law does not authorize withdrawal of energyconservation standards that have undergone final review by the former administration, Judge Paul Watford said in the 30 ruling.
Watford said the law and Energy Department regulations required the department to publish and enforce the rules as scheduled in March 2017, allowing changes only for drafting errors that misstated the rules’ intentions. He said the department received only one minor correction request from the public, for a change in punctuation, in the prescribed 45day period after the rules were announced in December 2016.
After the required enforcement date, Watford said, the administration’s hands were tied by an “antibacksliding” provision of the energyconservation law, which prohibits the Energy Department from imposing “an amended standard that is less stringent” than the existing standard. In other words, the new rules could not be weakened or repealed unless Congress changed the law.