The Tenth Circuit upheld on constitutional grounds Colorado's mandate that 20% of the electricity that generators sell to Colorado consumers come from renewable sources. A conservative energy group claimed that the renewable energy standard will harm out-of-state coal producers in violation of the C...

The D.C. Circuit upheld an EPA regulation that requires automobile manufacturers to use "commercially available" fuel when testing the emissions of new vehicles under the CAA. Several producers of E30, a fuel that contains 30% ethanol, argued that a fuel shouldn't have to be commercially available i...

A district court ordered Oklahoma to file a brief by July 16 explaining why the court should have jurisdiction over the state's lawsuit challenging EPA's proposed "Clean Power Plan" to reduce carbon dioxide emissions on a nationwide basis. Numerous states, including Oklahoma, recently filed a case i...

A Colorado court upheld a city's decision to create a local electric utility. An electric company argued that the city council exceeded its authority when it created the utility. But the company missed the 28-day deadline for challenging quasi-judicial decisions. When the city declared that the cond...

The Supreme Court of Oklahoma held that a woman injured in a 2011 earthquake may go forward with her suit against two energy companies for allegedly causing the quake due to hydraulic fracturing operations. A lower court dismissed the case, concluding that the Oklahoma Corporation Commission has exc...

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed and remanded EPA's rule limiting hazardous air pollutant emissions from power plants, holding that the Agency interpreted CAA §112(n)(1)(A) unreasonably when it deemed cost irrelevant to the decision to regulate power plants. CAA §112(n)(1) directs EPA to regulate e...

The Ninth Circuit denied petitions for review challenging EPA's promulgation of 40 C.F.R. §52.245, a regulation that revised the scope of a previous EPA decision, after the Agency determined that it had mistakenly approved certain new source review rules in 2004 as part of California's SIP. EPA iss...

The Ninth Circuit denied a petition for review challenging EPA's approval of a revision to California's SIP that authorized the San Joaquin Valley air pollution control district to impose fees on mobile sources of pollution—primarily motor vehicles—as an alternative to the fees previously impose...

The Ninth Circuit granted in part and denied in part petitions for review challenging EPA's federal implementation plan to reduce regional haze at two power plants in Montana. The owner and operator of the plants, as well as environmental groups, filed separate petitions for review, and the court ag...