McCuskey leads group fighting to keep natural gas appliances

By Chris Dickerson | Legal Newsline
The Center Square

West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey is leading a group of 21 state AGs asking the United States Supreme Court to reverse a decision that upheld Biden-era Department of Energy efficiency standards that would eliminate many natural gas appliances from the market and households.

The DOE’s amended efficiency standards require natural gas furnaces and commercial water heaters to meet performance thresholds that only condensing appliances can satisfy, effectively banning non-condensing appliances from the market.

The coalition’s amicus, filed in American Gas Association v. U.S. Department of Energy, argues the Energy Policy and Conservation Act prohibits banning appliances with protected “performance characteristics.”

“This decision from the D.C. Circuit will hurt working families in West Virginia, seniors on fixed income and those in our rural communities more than any other, as they will be forced to either pay for costly home renovations or give up natural gas altogether,” McCuskey said. “That is why it is so important for us to lead this coalition in asking the Supreme Court to step in and restore the rule of law.”

In West Virginia, more than 335,000 households — nearly four in 10 — rely on natural gas for home heating. A large share of the state’s housing stock was built before 1978 and is incompatible with condensing appliances, meaning many homeowners would face costly structural renovations simply to replace an aging furnace or water heater.

In the brief, McCuskey’s coalition argues the decision from D.C. Circuit Court failed to independently analyze the statute as federal courts are required to do.

“Loper Bright was decided to prevent exactly this kind of outcome,” the brief states. “When courts decline to ‘second-guess’ agency interpretations, they permit agencies to convert statutory ambiguity into sweeping regulatory power — power that falls hardest on the people least able to bear it.”

Joining McCuskey in the filing are the AGs from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas.