Energy, Mining & Utilities

A U.S. federal court ruled in favor of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma after it sued Enel Group for violating its tribal sovereignty. Enel was ordered to remove a massive 84-turbine wind farm that it built without obtaining mining permission, in order to profit from the renewable energy boom.  Read More

When black rain poured down around the Tata Steel plant in IJmuiden, a shipping town in the Netherlands, residents were told that they had no need to worry so long as they kept their windows closed, peeled their vegetables, and washed their hands more frequently. That was in 2018. Read More

Spills from Petroperú’s oil drilling have devastated the Marañón river in Peru for some 50 years. In order to tackle the pollution, a group of Kukama Indigenous women sued the government and Petroperú asserting that the river is a living entity with rights that should be protected. In March 2024, a court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered the company to clean up the river.   Read More

A proposed US$2.5 billion open-pit copper and iron mining complex, under development by Andes Iron, that would have threatened Humboldt penguins and other marine species, has been denied permission to proceed after a years-long legal battle fought by local communities and environmental groups. The project was also embroiled in a corruption scandal linked to former president Sebastian Pinera. Read More

Petrochemicals group Kolmar, based in Zug, Switzerland, sued three journalists and two NGOs, for publishing a report alleging that the company was sourcing refined oil from the Zawiya refinery in Libya during the civil war. In February 2024, a Swiss court found that the report was in the public interest and ruled against Kolmar. Read More

Rio Tinto Zinc is quietly trying to restart a $2.4 billion plan to dig for lithium in the Jadar region of Serbia two years after the original mining permit was canceled in response to a massive popular uprising in 2022. Read More

Empresa de Energía del Pacífico (EPSA) dumped over 30 years of accumulated sediment from the Anchicayá dam in western Colombia in July 2001, polluting the river, killing fish, destroying farmlands and mangroves. The Afro-Caribbean community downstream sued EPSA and finally won Col$203,962 million (US$52 million) in compensation in February 2024, after 20 years of court battles.  Read More

Glencore was given a permit to build a dredging waste dump site to serve the McArthur River Mine lead and zinc extraction operation in Australia’s Northern Territories. The regional government was sued by members of the Yanyuwa and Yanyuwa-Mara community (who hold Aboriginal title to the site) for failing to consult them. The High Court of Australia ruled in the community’s favor in February 2024. Read More

Climate activist Mike Smith, a Māori elder in Aotearoa (New Zealand), sued seven of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the country to publicly admit that they caused a public nuisance and dramatically scale back emissions to reach net zero by 2050. In February 2024, New Zealand’s Supreme Court ruled that his lawsuit should b Read More

After the Netherlands implemented a sweeping ban on the use of coal in electricity generation by 2030, energy giant RWE took the country to arbitration court to demand €1.4 billion in compensation for the impact on its massive new coal plant in Eemshaven. RWE decided to drop the litigation in October 2023 when it was dealt a series of legal defeats in Read More