Utah has enacted a first-in-the-nation law protecting companies from being held liable from damages related to greenhouse gas emissions, a move that comes just a few months after a legal challenge was brought against the state’s fossil fuel industry over the issue.
Republican Gov. Spencer Cox on Monday signed HB 222 into law, shielding any person in the state from criminal or civil liabilities related to damages from climate change stemming from greenhouse gas emissions, unless the person has violated a specific restriction or permit. Plaintiffs also would have to “show by clear and convincing evidence that unavoidable and identifiable damage or injury has resulted or will result as a direct cause of the” violation, according to the law.
State Rep. Carl Albrecht (R), the law’s sponsor, said industry trade groups brought the idea for the legislation to him. Albrecht, a former CEO of a rural electric cooperative, said his goal was to prevent environmental organizations from bringing “frivolous” legal challenges, and he wants the state to still be able to keep running its three coal-fired power plants.
“We like our rates low and we don’t like frivolous lawsuits from the environmentalists,” according to Albrecht, who said he worries a lawsuit would ultimately raise ratepayers’ costs.
Albrecht said if there’s a utility “in the state that actually violates a clean air emission rule that’s already on the books,” someone can still bring a lawsuit against them.
A representative for Cox’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on why he signed the legislation.
Utah enacted its new law not long after Our Children’s Trust, the law firm behind a swath of youth-led climate lawsuits around the US, brought a legal challenge against the state’s oil and gas industry. The firm and Deiss Law sued the state’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining, its board, and director in state court in December, alleging permits granted to the fossil fuel industry are harming the 10 youth plaintiffs.
The Utah Supreme Court roughly a year ago affirmed a lower court’s move to dismiss a similar lawsuit brought by seven youth climate plaintiffs against the state and shepherded by the same two law firms. Cox at the time said the court made a “great decision” and said “these are frivolous claims that have no basis in law or under our Constitution.”
Several of the youth plaintiffs in the current case are the same as in the prior one.
The Iowa legislature this week passed legislation similar to the law Utah just enacted to protect farmers and the agriculture industry in the state from being sued over greenhouse gas emissions.
Utah’s new law and Iowa’s proposal mark a completely different approach to liability over climate change compared to that of New York and Vermont. Those states have enacted laws in recent years seeking to recover costs from fossil fuel companies for climate damages to help pay for adaptation efforts, and the Trump administration has sued them both.
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