Power the Future warns of the large scale attack on US energy platform in an article Green Groups’ 600+ Lawsuits Are Driving Up Energy Costs.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

As the Trump Administration meets with oil and gas CEOs to discuss lowering gas prices, there’s a growing question that can’t be ignored: Who is working just as aggressively to stop it?

Green groups have filed over 600 lawsuits targeting energy policies and projects. These efforts are not isolated; they form a coordinated strategy to challenge nearly every aspect of an energy agenda focused on increasing supply and lowering costs.

Organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club,
and Earthjustice openly tout their litigation records.

NRDC alone has reported suing the administration more than 160 times, including efforts that helped halt major infrastructure projects like Keystone XL. The Sierra Club has claimed more than 300 cases during Trump’s first term and over 100 additional legal actions in 2025 alone. Earthjustice similarly boasts more than 200 lawsuits.

This is not routine legal oversight; this is a full-scale attack to reshape U.S. energy policy through the courts.

Many of these organizations operate within a broader network of donors, including foreign billionaires like Hansjörg Wyss, whose funding has supported a range of environmental advocacy initiatives. That raises important transparency concerns: if overseas money is helping fuel legal campaigns that influence U.S. energy policy, the public deserves to know.

“The environmental movement has weaponized litigation to deliberately undermine and slow down American energy production at every turn,” said Daniel Turner, Founder and Executive Director of Power The Future. “These groups operate as a well-funded and aggressive adversary to U.S. energy independence, not as some innocent third party simply looking out for nature. While American families and workers suffer from higher energy costs and lost opportunities, these organizations file lawsuit after lawsuit to block responsible domestic development. It’s time to treat them as the serious obstacle they are and shine a light on who is really pulling the strings behind this coordinated campaign against our nation’s energy industry.”

Economist Wayne Winegarden describes the economic damages done by this litiigation in his Forbes article Fossil Fuel Lawsuits Are A Tax On Consumers.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Announcing the state’s lawsuit against energy producers, California AG Rob Bonta claimed it is time to make energy companies pay for “the harm they have caused.” It is one of more than thirty such lawsuits around the country.

As I have argued here, here, and here, these lawsuits are not heroic efforts to safeguard the environment. The filings by cities and state AGs, as well as the dozens of other suits they hope to inspire, will primarily harm families by worsening the affordability crisis that is already harming households across the country. As with any policy that drives up the costs of energy, low- and middle-income families will bear the brunt of the costs.

Of course, harming families and local businesses through higher energy costs is not how the plaintiffs justify their lawsuits. California and other elected officials around the country sell their lawsuits to their local constituents with populist tropes about corporate accountability.

Yet, based on the comments of many of the AGs and plaintiff attorneys, the litigants recognize that one impact from the lawsuits will be higher costs on consumers. For many plaintiffs, imposing larger costs on families and businesses is an intended outcome.

Take comments California’s attorney general made in late April to an environmental group about this litigation. Responding to a questions from the host, he said

“One goal for the litigation is to make oil and gas more expensive as a way to disincentive use of these energy sources and impose billions of dollars in costs that these companies will have to share with their shareholders.”

Higher energy costs harm families’ financial stability. As the Federal Reserve notes, “when gasoline prices increase, a larger share of households’ budgets is likely to be spent on it, which leaves less to spend on other goods and services. The same goes for businesses whose goods must be shipped from place to place or that use fuel as a major input (such as the airline industry). Higher oil prices tend to make production more expensive for businesses, just as they make it more expensive for households to do the things they normally do.”

If the plaintiffs are able to extract a $200 billion settlement from the energy companies, which is much less than what they are asking for, then the price of gasoline would increase by 62-cents a gallon based on my previous analysis relating higher oil prices to higher gasoline costs. That is a more than 17 percent increase in the average price of a gallon of gas as of May 13, 2024.

Further, due to energy’s ubiquitous use, prices would also increase for a wide range of goods such from cell phones to groceries, as well as services, particularly heating and cooling our homes. These higher costs will diminish national economic growth and reduce economic opportunities.

Making matters worse, climate litigation deters companies and investors from allocating their capital toward developing potential clean energy innovations. The deterrent is even larger because technologies that were once heralded as important sources of low-emission energy now face the same serious litigation exposure.

For instance, increasing use of natural gas is an important reason why carbon emissions have been declining over the past twenty years. However, natural gas producers are still targeted in these lawsuits. Given the pollution associated with all energy sources – including solar and wind – the lawsuits send an anti-innovation signal to all potential energy entrepreneurs.

Then there is the lawsuits’ hypocrisy. For example, the California attorney general claims he wants to punish fossil fuel companies because the companies allegedly knew that global climate change was a risk but intentionally hid these risks from the public. But California, the U.S. Government, and governments around the world were also well aware of these risks.

Suing fossil fuel producers for the costs of climate change is economically
damaging, environmentally suspect, and based on dubious claims.

It will also harm families, particularly working families, at a time when they are already struggling with the high cost of living. Ultimately, there are many serious adverse consequences from state and local litigation against traditional energy companies, but no economic upsides should the plaintiffs prevail.