Can RI force fossil fuel companies to pay for climate change? Here’s how.

• Rhode Island lawmakers are considering a bill that would require fossil fuel companies to reimburse the state for costs incurred due to climate change.
• The proposed “Climate Superfund” would calculate expenses related to climate change impacts since 2009 and seek proportional payments from major fossil fuel companies.
• Supporters argue that the bill holds polluters accountable and eases the financial burden on taxpayers, while opponents cite legal concerns and potential cost increases for consumers.

PROVIDENCE – Is it possible for Rhode Island to add up all the money that’s been spent in recent years to respond to the impacts of climate change and bill fossil fuel companies for payment? 

It’s a question state lawmakers are asking in the form of legislation that would create a “Climate Superfund” for Rhode Island. 

Under the bill introduced by Rep. Jennifer Boylan and Sen. Linda Ujifusa, the state would calculate how much has been spent in Rhode Island on the impacts of climate change since 2009, divide up those costs among the fossil fuel companies responsible for the bulk of planet-warming emissions, and seek payments from them. 

The idea behind the measure is to hold polluters accountable for the impacts they’ve caused and take the burden off taxpayers who have had to bear, among other things, the costs to repair roads washed away by more powerful coastal storms and to expand stormwater systems to handle more frequent downpours.  

“This bill seeks to make polluters pay for the damage that they have caused,” Boylan, a Barrington Democrat, said at a House committee hearing Thursday. 

“In Rhode Island, climate change is not a distant threat,” she continued. “It’s happening right now. We see it with every record rainfall, every coastal storm, every heat wave, every drought, every forest fire. Our state is feeling the impacts and with it the costs, skyrocketing insurance premiums, increased demand for disaster and flood response and mounting infrastructure repair bills.” 

Long-standing efforts to make fossil fuel companies pay for climate emissions

Governments have tried other ways to force fossil fuel companies to pay for the costs of climate change. In 2018, Rhode Island became the first state to take companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron to court seeking recompense. 

But that case and others like it are still making their way through the judicial system. In the meantime, other states are trying a different way to hold the largest oil and gas companies responsible for damage caused by extreme weather tied to the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 

The legislation introduced by Boyland and Ujifusa mimics statutes that have already been enacted in New York and Vermont and are modeled on the federal Superfund program that requires companies to pay for the cleanup of toxic waste.  

But while Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland and California are also considering similar measures, legal challenges have already been mounted against the laws in Vermont and New York. 

The lawsuits are coming not just from industry associations that say the statutes are preempted by federal law but also from a host of Republican-led states arguing that the payments assigned to fossil fuel companies will raise costs for everyone. 

The American Petroleum Institute raised concerns about constitutionality and basic fairness in its letter opposing the Rhode Island legislation. 

“It is patently unfair to retroactively punish companies with punitive fees for producing fuels that were and remain legal,” Michael S. Giaimo, the institute’s Northeast region director, wrote in a letter to the House Committee on Environment and Natural Resources. 

And at the hearing, committee members asked about the cost issue, wondering how it would affect consumers. 

“This is another cost that will be passed down,” said Rep. Carol Hagan McEntee, a South Kingstown Democrat. 

Boylan, citing research from the Institute for Policy Integrity, said that oil and gas prices are set by global markets and wouldn’t be affected by the law.  

Rep. June Speakman likened the measure to past efforts to hold tobacco companies responsible for the negative health effects of smoking. 

“They knew it was a toxic substance,” the Warren Democrat said. “They lied about it. They continued to produce it. We had to pay in our health and the death of our loved ones. And eventually they had to pay us back.” 

‘These companies knew exactly what they were doing’

The bill targets fossil fuel companies responsible for more than 1 billion tons of emissions between 1990 and 2024. 

It’s unclear which companies would be held liable. Carbon Majors, a global database on greenhouse gases, has found that 57 coal, gas, oil and cement producers have been responsible for 80% of emissions since 2016. The biggest investor-owned companies on their list are ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron. Over the longer term, Chinese state coal production, fossil fuel production in the former Soviet Union and production by state-owned Saudi Aramco are the biggest emitters. 

The legislation tasks the state Department of Environmental Management with calculating the costs of all climate change response work by the state and municipalities and charging fossil fuel companies proportional amounts based on their associated levels of emissions. 

DEM director Terry Gray, in a letter to the committee, voiced support for the “polluter pays” concept behind the bill, but he expressed concerns about its legality. 

At the hearing, former state Rep. Aaron Regunberg, who is now director of the climate accountability project at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said there’s nothing unfair about making fossil fuel companies pay for climate impacts because their own internal research, as journalists have found, showed the threats posed by increasing emissions.  

“These companies knew exactly what they were doing,” he said. 

Timmons Roberts, environmental studies professor at Brown University and director of the Climate Social Science Network, agreed.  

“They buried the negative impacts of their product like the tobacco companies did,” he said. 

Speakman criticized the opponents to the bill for not testifying in person.

“They present in their written testimony lots of claims that I would have liked to explore further with them,” she said.