US Chamber, oil industry sue Vermont over law requiring companies to pay for climate change damage

Source: AP

Updated 8:09 PM EST, January 3, 2025


MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a top oil and gas industry trade group are suing Vermont over its new law requiring that fossil fuel companies pay a share of the damage caused over several decades by climate change.

The federal lawsuit filed Monday asks a state court to prevent Vermont from enforcing the law, which was passed last year. Vermont became the first state in the country to enact the law after it suffered catastrophic summer flooding and damage from other extreme weather. The state is working to estimate the cost of climate change dating back to Jan. 1, 1995.

The lawsuit argues the U.S. Constitution precludes the act and that the state law is preempted by the federal Clean Air Act. It also argues that the law violates domestic and foreign commerce clauses by discriminating “against the important interest of other states by targeting large energy companies located outside of Vermont.”

The Chamber and the other plaintiff in the lawsuit, the American Petroleum Institute, argue that the federal government is already addressing climate change. And because greenhouse gases come from billions of individual sources, they argue it is impossible to measure “accurately and fairly” the impact of emissions from a particular entity in a particular location over decades.

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