Judge Says U.S. Must Use Energy Standards in Loss to Trump

The Trump administration was ordered to begin using new national energy efficiency standards that the federal government had refused to implement, the attorneys general of New York and California said in a statement.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco ordered the Department of Energy Thursday to publish the standards within 28 days. New York Attorneys General Eric Schneiderman and his California counterpart,  Xavier Becerra, led a coalition of states that sued the agency in June for allegedly violating federal law by refusing to use the new standards.

The new standards relate to portable air conditioners, air compressors and commercial packaged boilers, as well as “uninterruptible power supplies,” according to the ruling.

A representative of the U.S. Department of Energy didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The Trump administration has made a point of rolling back basic, common sense energy efficiency standards — putting polluters before everyday New Yorkers and Americans,” Schneiderman said in a statement about the ruling.

Becerra said that this is a “tremendous victory for the American people and for our planet.”

The state coalition contends the new efficiency standards — approved by the Obama administration in December 2016 — are estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 98.8 million tons over three decades. That compares to taking more than 21 million cars off the road for a year, according to the statement.

The case is Natural Resources Defense Council v. Perry, 3:17-cv-03404, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).