Eight states sue Southern Co., others over global warming

Eight states sue Southern Co., others over global warming

By jeffn@coxnews.com
Cox News Service
Thursday, July 22, 2004

WASHINGTON — Attorneys for New York City and eight states filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday to force five utilities, including the Southern Co. in Atlanta, to reduce emissions of the planet-warming gas carbon dioxide.

Officials filing the suits said the five utilities together release 650 million tons each year of carbon dioxide, the gas atmospheric scientists say is most responsible for global warming.

Southern Co., which operates Georgia Power Co., Savannah Electric and Power Co. and other utilities in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, accounts for a reported 171 million tons a year.

Other defendants are the Tennessee Valley Authority; American Electric Power Co. of Columbus, Ohio; Cinergy Corp. of Cincinnati, and Excel Energy Inc., of Minneapolis.

The suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, charged that American Electric Power is the country's largest producer of carbon dioxide and that Southern Co. is second.

A Southern Co. spokesperson said the company was "extremely disappointed" by the lawsuit.

"We do not feel this is a way to deal with an important issue, which can affect our economy, the nation's energy operation and energy security," said spokesperson Tiffany Gilstrap.

Filing the lawsuit were the attorneys general of Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, California, Iowa, New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin and the New York City corporation counsel.

"The science underlying our lawsuit is universally accepted," Attorney General Elliot Spitzer of New York said at a Manhattan news conference announcing the action. "The law is clear. Defendants' contribution to global warming is beyond dispute. All that is lacking is action."

He said the five companies put more carbon dioxide into the air every year than the entire Northeast, "from New Jersey to Maine."

The suit asks the court to declare that the companies' outputs of carbon dioxide constitute a "public nuisance" that must be regulated.

The attorneys general are not seeking monetary damages. "We're not seeking a nickel," said Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's attorney general.

An organization that represents Southern Co. and other coal-burning power companies in Washington issued a statement before the suit was even filed, calling the action "nuisance litigation."

"Simply put, a public nuisance lawsuit based upon carbon emission is frivolous," said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council. "Given that every human emits carbon dioxide every day, the next thing we anticipate from these attorney generals is a collective demand to hold our breath."

Segal also noted that "some of the key factual issues in this suit are already before the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in a case against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."

Spitzer and attorneys general of New York, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Washington sued the Bush administration earlier this year, seeking to force EPA to update power plant pollution standards and include carbon dioxide.

However, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, an environmental group based in Knoxville, Tenn., welcomed the action.

"Southern Co. is aggressively thwarting efforts to promote policies and actions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions," the group said in a press release issued in the name of its executive director, Stephen A. Smith.

The statement said that "Southern Co. continues to use lobbying and political pressure to discourage activities on the state and federal level to promote responsible actions to confront global warming."

But Gilstrap, the Southern spokesperson, said the company had voluntarily taken action to reduce or avoid about 100 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions under the Department of Energy's "Climate Challenge" program.

In addition, she said, Southern Co. is waiting for permit approval for construction of a coal gasification plant in Florida. She said gas produced from coal produces the same amount of electric power with one-third less carbon dioxide emissions.

John Topping, president of the Climate Institute, an environmental organization, said the lawsuit might lead to other state global warming suits and stimulate companies to seek federal standards.

"The practical effect may be to move industry to try to get some action on the national level," he said, "because companies would like the ability to plan over the longer term, rather than facing a whole series of lawsuits and state action."

Thomas R. Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, trade association of the electric power industry, said in a printed statement that "climate policy should be fashioned by policy makers, with due consideration to environmental, energy and economic implications, not by lawyers in the courtroom.

"We hope the court will dismiss the lawsuit and allow policy makers to set national energy and environmental policy," he said.

Jeff Nesmith's e-mail address is jeffn@coxnews.com