A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit seeking to overturn regulations for achieving energy reductions in large buildings, finding the plaintiffs’ allegations about their injuries were too vague to sustain their legal challenge.
Industry groups representing Colorado’s apartment owners, hotel operators and real estate developers sued the state and the City and County of Denver in April 2024. They took issue with two related programs designed to lower greenhouse gas emissions or otherwise reduce the energy usage of large buildings: Energize Denver, whose performance goals were enacted in 2021, and Regulation 28, the state’s emissions benchmarks.
In each instance, the plaintiff groups alleged the only way many of their member buildings could achieve compliance was to replace items like washing machines or furnaces with ones that are more energy efficient than federal standards. That unwritten mandate, they argued, violated the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, in which federal energy efficiency regulations for “covered products” override state regulations…