A small town in North Carolina has filed the nation’s first climate action lawsuit against an electric utility.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday morning by officials in Carrboro, North Carolina, accuses Duke Energy of waging a “campaign of deception” to obscure the climate dangers of fossil fuels. These efforts resulted in delayed action to curb pollution caused by a warming planet, which has increased today’s costs of climate action, the lawsuit says.

“When you’re dealing with something like the existential threat of climate change, it requires us to take bold steps,” said Carrboro Mayor Barbara Foushee, who helped file the lawsuit.

The litigation follows a November report from the nonprofit research group Energy and Policy Institute that found that some of the utilities that make up what is now Duke Energy Corporation — including Duke Power, Carolina Power & Light and Public Service Indiana — were warned about the climate crisis decades before.

“Although Duke has known about the dangers of climate change for decades, the company actively engaged in a widespread, decades-long campaign to deceive the public and decision-makers about these dangers,” the lawsuit says.

In 1969, the lawsuit says, officials from utility companies now owned by Duke attended a meeting of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group, where they were informed that scientists believed rising carbon emissions were a ” “a long-term problem with significant consequences”.

The same trade group commissioned a study in 1984 that contained two hypothetical news stories from the future – one in which fossil fuel emissions continued unabated and had devastating effects, and another in which emissions were curbed and a safer future was secured it in the lawsuit.

Despite those warnings, Duke continued to expand fossil fuel infrastructure, opposed legal limits on pollution caused by a warming planet and supported efforts to cast doubt on climate science, the lawsuit says.

In 1991, the lawsuit says, the Edison Electric Institute took out newspaper ads with the message: “How much are you willing to pay to solve a problem that may not exist?” Duke retained his membership in the institute.

“They tried to sow confusion about climate change and the fact that there is a threat to us in the future,” said Howard Crystal, legal director of the Energy Justice Program at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, who is advising the plaintiffs on the case .

The deception is still a problem today, now in the form of “greenwashing,” Crystal said.

On social media, Duke has portrayed itself as a leader in providing “cleaner energy solutions” even as it plans one of the largest gas expansions of any company in the United States.

“They continue to expand fossil fuels and suppress renewable energy — contrary to scientists’ demands that we do just the opposite,” Jim Warren, executive director of local nonprofit NC Warn, said in a statement.

Duke Energy had the third-largest emissions footprint of any company in the United States in 2021, according to a study.

Duke Energy’s deception about its emissions resulted in delayed climate action, which in turn placed a burden on Carrboro, the lawsuit says. The company is accused of violating five state laws, including laws protecting citizens from public and private nuisances.

“Carrboro is a real victim here, and they have suffered a lot of harm,” said Matthew Quinn, an attorney with the North Carolina firm Lewis and Roberts who is representing the plaintiffs.

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The city, located about 20 miles (32 km) southwest of Durham, is seeking damages for climate-related costs of adapting roads and infrastructure to increased flooding, as well as increased energy costs.

“Those costs could be in the millions, many millions,” Crystal said.

Exactly how high the damages could be is unclear.

“We’re content to let a jury of our peers decide what we get,” Foushee said.

It may not be easy for a community of 22,000 to compete against a large corporation, Foushee added, but the city is no stranger to grappling with climate issues. She said she has long worked to reduce her emissions and advocate for environmental justice.

“It may seem like a David versus Goliath situation, but in reality it is,” she said. “But when it comes to this kind of injustice, it doesn’t matter who denounces it, as long as someone does.”

The new filing is part of a wave of lawsuits from dozens of states and localities accusing fossil fuel interests of sowing doubt about the environmental risks associated with their products. On November 26, Maine’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against Exxon, Shell, Chevron, BP, Sunoco and the American Petroleum Institute. The following day, Ford County, Kansas, sued major fossil fuel interests, saying they had waged “a decades-long campaign of fraud and deception about the recyclability of plastics.”

In October, Multnomah County, Oregon, which includes Portland, became the first municipality to sue a utility for climate deception when it included regional gas utility NW Natural in its 2023 lawsuit against fossil fuel companies for fueling a deadly heat dome in the Year 2021 included.

Randee Haven-O’Donnell, a Carrboro council member, said more utilities could soon be named in similar lawsuits.

“We are the little engine that could, and we hope other cities can too and hold their polluting utilities accountable,” she said in a statement.