ELR Citation: ELR 20054
No(s). C 05-01526 WHA (N.D. Cal. Mar 6, 2006)

A court holds that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) violated the Energy Policy Act in refusing to require large private and municipal fleets of motor vehicles to use alternative fuel vehicles. The Energy Policy Act, which was designed to reduce air pollution, global warming, and U.S. dependence on foreign oil, required DOE to consider imposing alternative fuel vehicle purchasing requirements on private and municipal fleets. Specifically, DOE was supposed to revise the "Thirty Percent by 2010" goal as needed to make it realistic and then, with the benefit of the revised goal, determine whether a fleet rule was necessary to meet that goal. Here, DOE simply refused to revise the goal, even while acknowledging that the goal was unachievable. The court, therefore, vacated the agency's decision and ordered it to revise the law's petroleum reduction goal to an achievable number and then decide whether to impose purchasing requirements on the fleets.