Conservation Law Foundation, Inc. v. Moore

Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) filed a citizen suit under Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act (GWSA) alleging that the Secretary of Natural Resources had failed to comply with statutory duties under the GWSA. CLF asked the court to direct the Secretary to conduct a review to determine whether new or amended rules were necessary to achieve the GWSA’s requirement that the State reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26% below 2005 levels by 2025 and also to require the Secretary to adopt or update rules to ensure that the 2025 emissions reduction requirement would be achieved by a date certain. CLF also alleged that the Secretary had failed to conduct public hearings as required by the GWSA. CLF alleged that an outside consultant retained by CLF had predicted that the State’s emissions level would exceed the 2025 reduction requirement by approximately 307 thousand metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (kMTCO2e), which was “equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions generated by Vermonters driving more than 785,000,000 miles in gasoline-powered passenger vehicles over the course of calendar year 2024.” CLF alleged that the Secretary—in a July 2024 letter notifying the Vermont Climate Council that the State was “narrowly on track” to achieve the 2025 requirement—had relied on a report prepared by another consultant that relied on a model that “cannot reliably predict future greenhouse gas emissions” and that was not intended to be “indicative of the [S]tate’s likelihood of achieving” required emission levels in 2025 or the other compliance years. CLF also alleged that the Agency of Natural Resources had not adopted any rules since December 2022 to achieve the 2025 reduction requirement.