Attorney General Bonta Calls for Department of Energy to Withdraw Proposed Sunset Rule

OAKLAND - California Attorney General Rob Bonta, alongside 13 attorneys general nationwide, submitted comments opposing the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Sunset Rule, which would add one-or five-year termination dates to over 500 DOE regulations as well as many future DOE rules. This proposal could create regulatory instability for businesses and states by making hundreds of regulations covering numerous different issues ineffective. In the comment letters, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition call out DOE's failure to provide any explanation for selecting these regulations or the effect of sunsetting them, in violation of legal requirements, and urge DOE to withdraw the proposal.

"With DOE's proposal, the Trump administration failed to conduct an individualized and considered decision-making process, which undermines the certainty that states, businesses, and communities rely on to plan, invest, and operate. Not only is the impact of automatically expiring these rules unclear because of the lack of sufficient factual detail and rationale, but this failure denies the public the opportunity for meaningful and informed comment," said Attorney General Bonta. "DOE should withdraw this proposal immediately."

In President Donald Trump's Executive Order 14270, "Zero-Based Regulation to Unleash American Energy," DOE proposes to add conditional sunset dates into the regulations contained in 28 separate parts of the Code of Federal Regulations, which would automatically terminate over 500 substantive regulations unless DOE later acts to extend those regulations. Many of the regulations relate to significant matters such as access to nuclear devices, funding for foundational scientific research, and nuclear waste disposal.

For example, in California, funding goes to universities and National Laboratories pursuant to some of the covered regulations. Without any explanation from DOE of its intentions or how sunsetting these regulations would affect these programs, the state cannot fully evaluate the Sunset Rule's impact if implemented.

In the comment letters, the coalition writes that the DOE fails to provide any meaningful information about the covered regulations and DOE's rationale for sunsetting these particular regulations. The coalition strongly urges the DOE to rescind the proposal.

In filing the comment letters, Attorney General Bonta leads the attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.

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