Big Oil wants to rig the courts. You’ll pay for it on your utility bill.
Ask anyone in California what keeps them up at night and energy costs land near the top of the list. Electricity rates have climbed sharply. Gas prices spike every time there is turmoil overseas. Families are being asked to absorb costs they did not create and cannot control.
The good news is that high energy prices are not inevitable. Somebody chooses them. Before I came to Congress, I spent years as an environmental lawyer fighting for affordable clean energy, because I understood then what the data confirms now. Renewable power is among the fastest and lowest-cost energy we can add to the grid, and when we block it, families pay more.
There are two ways your energy costs climb, and they feed each other. One is the price of power itself, driven up when we sideline lower-cost sources and lean harder on volatile fossil fuels. The other is the growing bill for the damage those fuels leave behind, which arrives through insurance, disaster recovery and taxes. Both are getting worse, and both trace back to the same set of choices.
The costs of getting this wrong are already staggering. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded 27 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in 2024 alone, causing nearly $183 billion in damage. Over the last five years such disasters have cost more than $746 billion, and that works its way into insurance premiums, utility rates and taxes.
Last year, climate-fueled wildfires in the Los Angeles area killed 440 people, displaced more than 200,000, and devastated the communities of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, leaving residents to shoulder billions in recovery costs with little help from the federal government. When disasters mount, families and taxpayers pick up the tab.
So, it is worth asking who benefits when the lowest-cost energy gets pushed aside and who ends up holding the bill.
The fossil fuel industry spent decades trying to convince Americans that climate change was not real. What is happening now is quieter but just as damaging. As accountability draws closer, the industry has moved on from denying the science to discrediting the scientists who produce it, influencing the judges who hear these cases, and rewriting the rules before the evidence is heard.
The question of who pays now sits before the Supreme Court in Suncor v. Boulder, where the court will decide whether states, tribes and local governments can go to court to recover the costs of disasters made worse by the industry’s deception about climate change. Internal Exxon documents from the 1970s and 1980s warned executives that continued fossil fuel use could lead to catastrophic climate change, even as the industry publicly cast doubt on the science. Most of the cases brought by states and local governments, including California, are paused pending the court’s review.
Consider what happened before the National Academies of Sciences released its report on the Pacific Northwest’s deadly 2021 heat wave. Opposition researchers combed through scientists’ emails before a single page was public. One panel member resigned fearing political attacks. Another was removed after being targeted by an oil-industry website. A member of Congress demanded records before the report came out.
There is also troubling evidence that the campaign has reached into our courts. According to a Guardian investigation, a fossil fuel-funded center at George Mason University’s law school hosted expense-paid seminars for federal judges while receiving funding from ExxonMobil, the Charles Koch Foundation, and other interests tied to companies facing lawsuits related to their role in causing climate change.
Internal fundraising materials reportedly sought to instill judges with a healthy skepticism toward climate science. One featured speaker was Chris Wright, then a fracking CEO and now the secretary of Energy. Allies in Congress have introduced legislation to shield these companies from liability entirely. All of it follows President Trump’s promise to oil CEOs that he would do their bidding in exchange for a billion-dollar campaign contribution.
Here is what that means for your family. When the biggest polluters avoid paying for the damage they cause, the cost does not disappear. It shifts onto you. The same thing is happening on the grid, where utilities pass billions in new infrastructure costs onto residential ratepayers to serve data centers and large corporations that should be paying their own way. Electricity rates have already risen by as much as 13 percent since Trump took office, and that was before this year’s overseas turmoil sent gas prices climbing again.
Recently, I joined Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) to introduce the Energy Bills Relief Act, now with more than 160 House co-sponsors. The bill expands affordable clean energy, restores the tax credits that were keeping costs down, invests in home efficiency and low-income energy assistance for families who need it, speeds up grid interconnection so lower-cost power can reach the grid, and ensures data centers and large corporations pay their fair share rather than passing costs onto your family.
The fossil fuel industry has run the same playbook for decades. Deny the problem, delay the reckoning, and leave someone else to pay. Americans should see it clearly, because the cost of letting it work shows up on a bill with your name on it. We must do better, for our planet and our pocketbooks.
By: Rep. Mike Levin
Source: The Hill