Louisiana lawmakers have filed a trio of bills that would protect oil and gas companies from climate change-related legal and financial risk and limit the state’s ability to reduce climate pollution.

One bill would bar the state from spending money on policies aimed at zeroing out greenhouse gas emissions. The two others overlap, and both are aimed at making it exceedingly difficult to sue companies over climate change. 

Rep. Charles “Chuck” Owen, R-Rosepine, introduced House Bill 566, which would prohibit the state from spending funds on any program that contributes to reaching net zero carbon emissions, which refers to the goal of slashing greenhouse gas emissions to essentially zero.

The other two bills, House Bills 419 and 804, introduced by Reps. Michael “Gabe” Firment, R-Pollock, and Brett Geymann, R-Lake Charles, cover similar ground. Both seek to prevent high-profile climate change lawsuits from being filed in Louisiana against oil and gas companies.

No such lawsuits have been filed in the state to date, but there are about 40 lawsuits across the U.S., from municipalities including Honolulu, Hawaii, and Boulder, Colorado, that seek to make fossil fuel companies pay for costs associated with the impacts of climate change, like more intense storms and sea level rise. 

The legislative activity represents an unusual surge in climate policy attention at the statehouse. Behind that surge is a political climate more amenable to opposing climate policy and a growing opposition to carbon capture projects, the lawmakers said. And if the bills become law, Louisiana would have one of the most explicit anti-climate legal frameworks in the U.S., according to two law professors who study the issue. 

The three bills have only been introduced, and each will need to move through committee, be voted on in both legislative chambers, and signed by Gov. Jeff Landry before they become law. 

Banning ‘net zero’

In an interview, Owen described net-zero climate policies as “self-destructive” for Louisiana. Though he says he’s adamant about policies aimed at keeping air and water clean, policies aimed at zeroing out climate emissions “subjugate us to the whims” of foreign governments. 

“I kind of look at it as witchcraft,” he said of the climate policies.

Similar bills have arisen in other Republican dominated state legislatures. A bill moving through the Florida legislature would ban local governments from pursuing net zero goals. Another bill out of Wyoming, the “Make Carbon Dioxide Great Again” bill, would have gone even further than Owen’s, prohibiting the state from taking any action to limit carbon dioxide emissions. It died in committee and did not become law.

Keith Hall, a law professor at Louisiana State University, noted that any state-supported effort to reduce emissions could be targeted under Owen’s bill.

“Is anything that you do to reduce emissions covered under this bill? Some of these programs to help lower-income people insulate their homes — is that net zero?” Hall said. The bill “may cover some things that Rep. Owen didn’t intend.”

In response, Owen said that he isn’t against energy-efficiency measures or making oil and gas production cleaner.

“What my bill is intended to cover are things that are explicitly aimed at a net zero framework,” Owen said.

He said that federal policy under the Trump administration has moved away from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and his bill would bring Louisiana more in line with the federal government’s current stance. Owen is also taking aim at a 2022 framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions put forward under former Gov. John Bel Edwards. An opponent of carbon sequestration, Owen said that companies pursuing those projects cited the 2022 plan in permit applications.

Jackson Voss, the government affairs and policy coordinator for the Alliance for Affordable Energy, a nonprofit that advocates for energy ratepayers, opposes the bill. 

He noted that the bill could discourage renewable energy projects at a time when new projects, like data centers, need new sources of energy. “If they want to build these things fast, they need the energy quickly,” he said. “They’ll need solar and wind power.”

‘Abusive state climate lawsuits’

While Owen’s bill targets state spending, the two others seek to shield fossil fuel companies from lawsuits related to greenhouse gas emissions and the destructive impacts of manmade climate change.

Firment said his bill, HB 419, was a response to the Trump administration’s Feb. 12 rollback of a 2009 finding from the Environmental Protection Agency. Known as the endangerment finding, it found that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare, which required the agency to regulate them under the Clean Air Act.

The administration’s move to eliminate the endangerment finding means less regulation for industry. But it also may open fossil fuel companies up to state-level lawsuits over the impacts of climate change, because it removes the federal regulation that oil companies used to shield themselves from state-level claims.

When cities or states sued companies over climate change, the companies argued that the federal government was regulating climate pollution, and so state courts had no role to play in taking on those cases.

A case filed by the city of Honolulu against fossil fuel companies is among the furthest along, with a judge denying a motion to dismiss the case last year. 

If either bill passes, it would grant the fossil fuel companies immunity from this type of litigation in state courts. Lawmakers in Utah and Oklahoma have introduced similar legislation.

Pat Parenteau, an emeritus professor at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, said the bills are part of a broader effort to limit climate lawsuits. “The companies are seeking immunity in states,” he said. “They’re seeking immunity from Congress. They’re begging the Supreme Court to step in and squash all these cases.”

Indeed, the American Petroleum Institute said earlier this year that stopping what it said were abusive state climate lawsuits would be a top priority for 2026.

While Firment’s bill seeks to shield most energy players from litigation, it includes a carveout that allows for lawsuits against carbon capture companies.

“There’s so much controversy and so much debate over carbon capture and sequestration that I thought it best to just leave that completely out of my bill,” he said.

Geymann’s bill, HB 804, also seeks to limit lawsuits, but it goes further than Firment’s bill. It would require prior written approval from the governor, the attorney general, and the chairs of the House and Senate natural resources committees. Geymann said his bill came out of meetings with industry representatives at which the risk associated with climate litigation came up.

“If we can create a landscape here that would be more attractive for industry to come and invest and they don’t have to worry about the risk of climate lawsuits, we want to do that,” he said. 

To Firment, his bill isn’t about climate science, but about allowing the legislature, rather than the courts, to dictate climate policy. Still, he acknowledged that the weather is getting worse.

“I’m not sure if it’s manmade climate change or not, but let’s face it: We seem to be experiencing a period of more catastrophic, more devastating hurricanes,” he said.