(The Hill)

The Trump administration must carry out the implementation of four energy efficiency regulations that it has delayed for more than a year, a federal court ruled Thursday.

The Department of Energy (DOE) wrote the rules and made them public in December 2016, under the Obama administration.

But when President Trump took office Jan. 20, 2017, his administration took advantage of a 45-day window for error corrections to review the rules and potentially scuttle them. The DOE still has not published the rules in the Federal Register, the final step to implement them.

“This failure is a violation of the department’s duties under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act,” Judge Vince Chhabria, who former President Obama nominated to the federal District Court for the Northern District of California, wrotein the Thursday ruling.

“Summary judgment is therefore granted to the plaintiffs on this claim, and the department is ordered to publish the standards within 28 days of this ruling.”

The ruling stands as a setback in the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to delay, weaken or undo major parts of Obama’s aggressive environmental agenda.

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