Environmental groups are supporting a coalition of renewable energy industry groups challenging the Trump administration’s actions preventing federal permitting for wind and solar energy projects.
The lawsuit, filed in December against the Dept. of the Interior by eight renewable energy groups, including Renew Northeast, is challenging six actions by the Trump administration that unlawfully punish wind and solar development while elevating the fossil fuel industry. Today, environmental groups — Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Conservation Law Foundation, Citizens Campaign for the Environment, Environmental Defense Fund, Environmental League of Massachusetts, Environmental Protection Information Center, National Wildlife Federation, New York League of Conservation Voters, and Earthjustice on behalf of Sierra Club — filed a friend of the court brief supporting the renewable energy industry groups’ request for a preliminary injunction.
“These illegal actions undermine fair markets, ratepayer affordability and state and local efforts to meet state climate and energy mandates,” the groups stated in its brief. It will increase “reliance on fossil fuels—an outcome that carries well-documented risks to public health, wildlife, and the environment.”
The environmental groups’ amicus brief focuses on the Department of the Interior’s Secretarial Order 3438, the Army Corps of Engineers’ new “capacity density” restrictions and the Fish & Wildlife Service’s Eagle Take Permit ban. The group claims all are unlawful and unsupported by adequate reasoning.
“Although wind and solar are variable resources, they are critical to meeting grid reliability needs,” the brief states. “Particularly because wind and solar energy are inexhaustible and geographically diverse, they have delivered more reliable electricity to Americans during extreme weather events, when fossil fuel sources — which are dependent on limited resources and vulnerable to supply chain interruptions — experienced higher levels of outages.”
Currently, wind and solar account for 17% of U.S. electricity generation, with costs dropping dramatically in recent years. The lawsuit is in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
News item from NRDC
