Another day, another Ken Paxton lawsuit, this one against BlackRock over coal.
Texas and 10 other states have sued three of the world’s largest financial companies, alleging the trio violated antitrust laws to push coal power plants out of commission.
Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he and 10 other attorneys general sued BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street in federal district court in Tyler, Texas.
“Each Defendant has individually acquired substantial stockholdings in every significant publicly held coal producer in the United States,” the filing asserts.
“Each has thereby acquired the power to influence the policies of these competing companies and bring about a substantial lessening of competition in the markets for coal. And each has used its power to affect a substantial reduction in competition in coal markets.”
The suit then points to the Climate Action 100+ agreement onto which all three firms signed, a 2021 pact that laid out decarbonization commitments; BlackRock and State Street announced their withdrawal from the pact earlier this year.
The lawsuit continues, “Rather than individually wield their shareholdings to reduce coal output, therefore, Defendants effectively formed a syndicate and agreed to use their collective holdings of publicly traded coal companies to induce industry-wide output reductions.”
Paxton’s position seems to be: Pressuring coal companies by yourself is fine, but get together to pressure them collectively is forming an illegal, anti-competitive cartel.
The plaintiffs are asking the court for forced divestiture of each company’s coal plant holdings and to fine the defendants $10,000 per violation under the Texas Business & Commerce code, along with miscellaneous other requests.
In total, seven counts across the various states were brought against the financial titans.
“Texas will not tolerate the illegal weaponization of the financial industry in service of a destructive, politicized ‘environmental’ agenda. BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street formed a cartel to rig the coal market, artificially reduce the energy supply, and raise prices,” Paxton said.
“Their conspiracy has harmed American energy production and hurt consumers. This is a stunning violation of State and federal law.”
BlackRock responding that they’re as pure as the driven snow snipped.
Like many other places across the country, Texas’ main power grid — the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) region — has seen a reduction in its coal power fleet as aged plants retire and nothing new is built.
Coal has fallen out of fashion both politically and within the industry. Environmentalists push for wind and solar to replace it in the power portfolio, while the cheaper natural gas prices around the world have steadily forced coal generators out of commission.
ERCOT currently has 14,321 megawatts (MW) of installed coal and lignite capacity, though about half of that is usually operating at any given time; that’s down from around 20,000 MW of coal capacity in 2015.
This lawsuit is an extension of the fight over the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) movement in the world of capital — a generally politically progressive phenomenon that tries to push policies like decarbonization and pro-choice views in boardrooms.
BlackRock has been involved in various nefarious ESG skullduggery, only now they’re taking much greater pains to hide it. But they still want all that sweet Texas government and business money. Having Paxton sue them will complicate that.
Paxton might have difficulty prevailing should the issue come to trial, as there’s no shortage of U.S. agency declarations of “decarbonization” as an official government goal that BlackRock can point to. But I’m pretty sure neither side wants this in court. Especially BlackRock, who is on the wrong side of anti-woke culture shift with Trump II incoming and most of the rest of the corporate world backtracking on social justice and ecomadness.
Expect them and their co-defendents settle to avoid long, nasty bouts of discovery making its way into the news.
