Carrboro, NC Sues Duke Energy In First Climate Deception Case Targeting An Electric Utility
Lawsuit follows several new climate and plastics deception cases filed against Big Oil.
A North Carolina community is taking utility goliath Duke Energy to court alleging a decades-long campaign of climate deception that has delayed the transition away from fossil fuels and exacerbated damaging climate change impacts like severe storms, flooding, and extreme heat. It is the first climate deception case targeting an electric utility company, and comes on the heels of a pair of climate and plastics deception lawsuits lodged last week against Big Oil by the state of Maine and Ford County, Kansas.
On Wednesday, December 4, the town of Carrboro, North Carolina filed the latest US climate accountability case. The lawsuit, filed in Orange County Superior Court, aims to hold North Carolina’s biggest energy utility accountable for allegedly deceiving the public about the damaging climate change consequences of burning fossil fuels.
“Our job is to speak truth to power, and that means holding Duke Energy, the third largest climate polluting corporation in the United States, and one of the largest corporate polluters in the world, accountable for its actions,” Carrboro Mayor Barbara Foushee said at a press conference announcing the lawsuit. “Duke Energy has known about the grave dangers of its dirty energy choices for decades,” she said, “and yet the corporation has increased its reliance on coal and gas for electricity, is building new gas-burning power plants as we speak, and helped lead a nationwide campaign of deception.”
According to the town’s complaint, Duke Energy engaged in a “conspiracy of deception” about climate change’s causes and consequences that has effectively delayed the transition away from fossil fuels, and the company continues to deceive the public to this day through greenwashing and falsely representing its business as a clean energy leader.
The lawsuit brings charges of public and private nuisance, trespass, and negligence under state tort law, and it seeks compensatory damages in an amount to be determined by a jury trial.
Carrboro, a small town just outside of Chapel Hill, is already incurring and will continue to incur millions of dollars in expenses to respond to climate-related impacts, from deadly heatwaves to damaging floods and tropical storms. Hurricane Helene recently brought devastating flooding to large parts of North Carolina, especially in the western area of the state. Carrboro is the first community in North Carolina so far to take legal action against a major corporate climate polluter, and the first to do so following Helene.
It is also the first climate lawsuit in the country filed against an electric utility. “Our town is the first in the nation to challenge an electric utility for deceiving the public about the dangers of fossil fuels and to seek damages for the harm it has caused our community,” Foushee said.
Multnomah County, Oregon, home to Portland, became the first US community to target a gas utility over climate when it sued regional gas provider NW Natural in October, adding the utility as a defendant in its climate deception lawsuit filed last year against major fossil fuel entities and consulting giant McKinsey & Company.
More than 30 climate accountability lawsuits have been brought by municipal, state, and Tribal governments against the fossil fuel industry, and additional cases are expected. Just last week, Maine became the ninth state to sue Big Oil for climate deception, joining the wave of litigation brought by states like California and New Jersey as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Michigan also has a climate case in the works.
Plastics deception lawsuits starting to take off
A parallel track of litigation is starting to take off targeting major oil and petrochemical firms over the plastics crisis, alleging deception around the viability of plastic recycling. Plastic is derived from fossil fuels and is a significant contributor to climate change, and some of the biggest fossil fuel companies that are driving climate breakdown are also producers of the precursors to plastic, the production and pollution of which has proliferated into an environmental and public health emergency.
In September, California filed a first-in-the-nation lawsuit against ExxonMobil, the world’s largest producer of single-use plastic polymers, for engaging in a “decades-long campaign of deception” to convince the public that recycling would solve the plastic pollution problem. Other plastics deception lawsuits have targeted plastic packaging suppliers such as PepsiCo, but California’s was the first to take on a major oil and gas company at the base of the supply chain. And it appears to be just the start.
Last week, Kansas’ Ford County filed a class action lawsuit against not only Exxon, but a handful of other big oil and petrochemical companies, accusing them of lying to the public for decades by promoting the “false promise” of plastic recycling. As stated in the county’s complaint, they have used the myth of plastic recycling to “exponentially increase virgin plastic production over the last six decades, creating and perpetuating the global plastic waste crisis and imposing significant costs on communities that are left to pay for the consequences.” The lawsuit brings a claim of public nuisance and proposes a class action on behalf of all counties in the state of Kansas.
“Like the tobacco scandal on steroids”
From Kansas to North Carolina, these legal actions indicate that communities across the country are increasingly turning to courts in efforts to challenge corporate malfeasance and deception that are harming the public.
“For far too long, corporations like Duke Energy have prioritized their executives’ personal fortunes at the expense of our communities, our planet, and our collective wellbeing,” Carrboro Mayor Pro Tem Danny Nowell said during Wednesday’s press conference. Jim Warren, executive director of nonprofit NC WARN, added that “this nationwide conspiracy is like the tobacco scandal on steroids.”
Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which is advising Carrboro on the case, said the action demonstrates climate leadership at the local level at a time when the US federal government is set to be run by an incoming administration that is hostile to climate action.
“We’ll soon have a climate denier-in-chief in the White House, but Carrboro is a shining light in this darkness, taking on one of the country’s largest polluters and climate deceivers,” Su said in a press release. “Climate action doesn’t stop at a national level, and Carrboro is holding Duke Energy and all fossil utilities’ feet to the fire. This town is paving a way for local governments to drive climate justice despite who’s in Washington.”
