National Electrical Manufacturers Association v. United States Department of Energy

Six states and the District of Columbia filed a motion to intervene to defend federal energy efficiency standards for lamps in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The United States Department of Energy (DOE) issued the standards for “general service lamps” on January 19, 2017, after which the National Electrical Manufacturers Association filed its petition for review challenging the regulations. The states and the District of Columbia asserted that energy conservation resulting from the lamp standards would be critical to their efforts to reduce energy use and costs and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The states noted that since federal law generally preempted their own efforts to impose standards on lamps, their interests would therefore be impaired by weakening or delay of the lamp standards. The states also contended that their interests in defending the lamp standards might not be aligned with DOE’s interests in the future. The court did not act on the motion to intervene before the case was placed in abeyance and then voluntarily dismissed.