(credit: Tamara Dunn / Flickr)
New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said on Monday that the state is suing the Department of Energy (DOE) for delaying the date on which rules about ceiling-fan efficiency are supposed to take effect. The AG said he would sue the department again if it failed to publish a separate set of previously-approved efficiency rules promulgated by the DOE during the final days of the Obama administration.
The New York attorney general is joined in these legal actions by the attorneys general from California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the City of New York. The lawsuit against the DOE is one of the first taken by a coalition of states against the Trump administration’s energy policies, which have been environmentally regressive.
The energy-efficiency rules for ceiling fans were published on January 19, 2017 and were set to take effect March 20, 2017. However, the DOE under Trump has twice delayed the date on which the rules are supposed to take effect. Currently, the rules won’t take effect until September 30, 2017. The state officials suing the DOE filed a petition with the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit asking the court to intervene; the states say that federal law compels the DOE (PDF) to offer a public comment period if rules are changed substantively after final publication, including if the “effective date” of the rule is delayed.
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