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Shopping For State Constitutions: Unequal Gift Clauses As Obstacles To Optimal State Encouragement Of Carbon Sequestration, Nicholas Houpt
Shopping For State Constitutions: Unequal Gift Clauses As Obstacles To Optimal State Encouragement Of Carbon Sequestration, Nicholas Houpt
Sabin Center for Climate Change Law
Carbon capture and sequestration technology (CCS) could drastically reduce CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants, thereby mitigating climate change. CCS, however, faces a difficult barrier to market entry: liability for the technology’s many long-term risks. States would like to alleviate this long-term liability problem to capture CCS’s social benefits. Some state constitutions, however, have provisions called “gift clauses” that prohibit giving aid to private parties. This Note argues that some state constitutions’ gift clauses prevent indemnification of private CCS developers. As this Note’s fifty state survey shows, other state constitutions allow indemnification. This asymmetry in constitutionally-allowed financial encouragement results in …
Environmental And Energy Legislation In The 112th Congress, Michael B. Gerrard
Environmental And Energy Legislation In The 112th Congress, Michael B. Gerrard
Faculty Scholarship
When Barack Obama succeeded George W. Bush in January 2009, backed by solid majorities in both the House and the Senate, the country seemed poised for the first major environmental legislation since 1990, the year of the Oil Pollution Act and the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. Under the leadership of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), the House passed a comprehensive climate change bill based on an economywide cap-and-trade system. The House also passed a bill to lift oil spill liability caps and adopt additional reforms in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico spill. …
What’S Ahead For Power Plants And Industry? Using The Clean Air Act To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Building On Existing Regional Programs, Franz T. Litz, Nicholas Bianco, Michael B. Gerrard, Gregory E. Wannier
What’S Ahead For Power Plants And Industry? Using The Clean Air Act To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Building On Existing Regional Programs, Franz T. Litz, Nicholas Bianco, Michael B. Gerrard, Gregory E. Wannier
Faculty Scholarship
In the absence of congressional action on climate change, all eyes are on the states and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to see how they will regulate greenhouse gas emissions from existing large power plants and industrial facilities. Indeed, power plants and industrial facilities are the sources of half of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, making those plants and facilities central to any effort to reduce the country’s total emissions. This working paper explores a promising pathway for the states and EPA to make these reductions using the standards of performance under section 111 of the Clean Air …