Court Declines to Rehear Calif. Low-Carbon Fuel Case

A federal appeals court has declined to rehear a legal challenge to block implementation of California’s low-carbon fuel standard aimed at lowering greenhouse-gas emissions in the transportation sector.

By refusing to revisit the issue, the ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco leaves standing a three-judge panel’s decision last year that allowed the state to move forward with its plan to require California oil producers to lower by 10% the carbon content in transportation fuels by 2020.

In last year’s ruling, the panel called the regulation an “innovative, nondiscriminatory regulation to impede global warming.”

The next step open to oil producers would be to seek a review of the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.