Brian Reil, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, said EEI’s political ads can’t come from consumer dollars and said the trade group has provided a “careful accounting breakdown” in its annual lobbying and advocacy report. He also defended the ads and EEI’s broader engagement with policymakers.

“These misguided state policies are driving up costs for customers at a time when electric companies are hard at work trying to keep costs down,” Reil said in an email.

“Increasingly, we are seeing environmental groups and dark money groups masquerading as environmental ‘watch dogs’ that believe they are the only ones that policymakers should be allowed to speak with, which is absurd,” he added.

Karen Harbert, president and chief executive of the American Gas Association, which has lobbied state lawmakers across the country to prohibit local governments from banning natural gas in new buildings, also criticized the legislation.

“Efforts to silence the voice of the American Gas Association … could undercut the industry’s ability to access the very services that directly benefit their customers and communities,” Harbert said in an email.

So just how much money can residents of Maine, Colorado and Connecticut expect to save on their energy bills in the coming months? The bills’ backers acknowledge that the financial impact might be small — but they say the impact on transparency might be greater.

Meanwhile, the bills’ backers hope the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission takes similar action at the national level. In 2021, the commission said it would consider preventing utilities from charging customers for trade association dues in response to a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity.

Update: This story has been updated with EEI’s response to Fenberg’s quote.

A federal court yesterday limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, or coolants that significantly contribute to climate change and are typically used in air conditioners or refrigerators, Bloomberg’s Jennifer Hijazi reports.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the EPA can continue to set strict limits on HFCs, but the agency can’t require refillable, coded containers that make those limits easier to enforce. The decision, which was written by Trump appointee Justin Walker, comes after Congress last fall ratified the Kigali Amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a treaty aimed at slashing the global use of HFCs.

Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee yesterday sent a letter to the League of Conservation Voters expressing concern that the environmental group potentially violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The lawmakers wrote that they are concerned about LCV’s “potential funding by foreign nationals.” They noted that since 2016, the Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss has donated $245 million to the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund, which in turn have contributed to LCV. The Wyss Foundation also issued a grant of $210,000 to the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund in 2020.

Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, foreign nationals such as Wyss are prohibited from contributing either directly or indirectly to domestic political campaigns. The Republican lawmakers asked LCV to provide a tranche of documents, including communications between its employees and representatives of the Wyss Foundation, by July 15.

Asked for comment on the letter, LCV spokesman David Willett said in an email: “LCV & related entities comply fully with the law. We will review the letter to determine our appropriate response.”

Thousands of households, companies and cities purchase renewable electricity credits to meet their climate goals and bolster sustainability claims. But buying those credits doesn’t actually mean they’re running on clean energy, The Post’s Shannon Osaka and Hailey Haymond report.

In theory, a company in West Virginia might use 25 megawatt-hours of electricity a year that’s primarily coming from coal. But the company could buy renewable credits from a wind farm in Texas — which supplies the local power grid there — and claim that its electricity is entirely pollution-free.

That company “could report publicly that its emissions have gone to zero,” said Michael Macrae, a senior manager at the World Resources Institute. “But does the Earth see less emissions?”

When the renewable energy sector was just getting started, such credits were meant to help get fledgling wind and solar farms off the ground. But now, as renewables become cheaper and more accessible, the credits seem more like a way for companies to claim to be green without doing much.

One possible solution, experts said, is realigning renewable credits with the needs of the electricity grid by requiring companies to buy credits for each hour that they operate and on their own state’s grid.

• The troubling heat in Texas and its ties to climate change in 5 maps — Dan Stillman for The Post   
• Meet the Texas commissioners who could stymie Biden’s climate agenda — Ben Lefebvre for Politico 
• Groundbreaking youth-led climate trial comes to an end in Montana — Dharna Noor for the Guardian 
• EPA nominee: 200 enforcement jobs ‘will be restored’ — Kevin Bogardus for E&E News