The lawsuit challenging Colorado and Denver’s energy standards for large buildings, which was dismissed on March 28, has been revived by federal Judge Regina M. Rodriguez based on an amended complaint from four apartment and hotel trade groups.

The order, issued Thursday, reinstates the case after the plaintiffs corrected problems with standing to sue in the first filing.

Rodriguez dismissed the original filing without prejudice, meaning it could be amended and refiled after she characterized claims in the original filing as “insufficient to state a claim that Regulation 28 or Energize Denver directly regulate the energy efficiency or use of” natural gas-powered appliances, such as stoves and water heaters.

“At the time of the Complaint, Plaintiffs’ members merely alleged they were going to have to conduct energy audits or engineering analyses to see if their speculative injury would materialize, but those audits/analyses had not yet occurred,” said Rodriguez in the order accepting the amended complaint.

The plaintiffs, the Colorado Apartment Association; Apartment Association Of Metro Denver; Colorado Hotel And Lodging Association, Inc.; and NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, Colorado Chapter, sued in April 2022 claiming that the City of Denver and State of Colorado violated the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act (“EPCA”) by creating energy efficiency standards for large buildings both in Denver and statewide that had the effect of banning the use of natural gas-powered appliances like stoves, heaters and water heaters.

The EPCA reserves to the federal government the power to determine and regulate appliance energy efficiency.

The plaintiffs claimed that the new energy efficiency regulations made it impossible to meet the required state and Denver standards without fully electrifying their buildings, which they say would cost enormous sums of money to accomplish, and in some cases would be both economically and factually impossible, especially regarding older apartment buildings that were built with hot water or steam heating systems.

Both the City and County of Denver and the Colorado Energy Office justified the regulations, which apply to large buildings over 50,000 square feet, in the case of the state, and 5,000 square feet in Denver, saying that there are exemptions, adjustments to goals, avenues for appeals for some buildings and pathways to compliance that include discretionary permissions from the Colorado Energy Office for building owners having difficulty meeting the standards.

No hearings have been scheduled.

The case is; 1:24-CV-01093-RMR