Dive Brief:
- An Oregon county is suing its state’s largest gas utility for allegedly deceiving the public about the climate change impacts of burning fossil fuels.
- Multnomah County on Monday added the utility NW Natural as a defendant to a climate accountability lawsuit it first filed in 2023 against numerous major fossil fuel companies. The county also added to the suit the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, a research group that it alleges deceived the public about climate change.
- The county hopes to recover more than $51 billion to prevent, mitigate and adapt to climate change impacts it says the defendants have substantially contributed to. Climate advocates say this is the first time a U.S. community has named a gas utility in a climate accountability lawsuit.
Dive Insight:
Dozens of municipalities, states and tribal governments have filed lawsuits in recent years to hold big oil and gas companies accountable for what plaintiffs say is a decades-long effort to deceive the public about the planet-warming effects of fossil fuels.
Multnomah County’s lawsuit specifically blames polluters for one extreme weather event that researchers said was supercharged by climate change: the heat dome that settled over the Pacific Northwest in 2021, bringing triple-digit temperatures to Oregon. That event led to 69 people in the county dying from overheating — more than have died from overheating in the entire state over the last 20 years, the lawsuit says.
Multnomah County accuses NW Natural of deceiving the public “by claiming that its product is safe, clean, and environmentally friendly” despite its known climate impacts. The suit also says that the utility has paid for ads that mislead the public about its commitment to carbon neutrality. It alleges that this year NW Natural engaged in a disinformation campaign about an in-progress state climate policy that would require fossil fuel companies and other polluters to drive down greenhouse gas emissions over time.
“NW Natural has routinely misrepresented to the public the climate impacts of extracting, transporting, storing and burning their product while over-estimating the costs of transitioning to renewables or reducing their pollution in an effort to frighten customers and discourage policy makers from using their authority to protect the public,” the suit says.
An NW Natural spokesperson told Oregon Public Broadcasting in an email that the utility believes “adding the company to the suit now is an attempt to divert attention from legal and factual flaws in the case.” If the claims come to court, the utility will “vigorously contest” the county’s arguments, the spokesperson told OPB.
But some climate advocates see this as potentially the first of numerous climate accountability lawsuits targeting gas utilities.
“Gas utilities have been significant players in the historic and ongoing deception campaigns to mislead the public about the dangers of fossil fuels,” Alyssa Johl, vice president of legal and general counsel of the Center for Climate Integrity, which advocates for climate accountability lawsuits, said in a statement. “NW Natural is now the first to be named as a defendant in a climate deception lawsuit, but it likely won’t be the last.”
