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Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Law
Promoting Clean Energy In The American Power Sector: A Proposal For A National Clean Energy Standard, Joseph E. Aldy
Promoting Clean Energy In The American Power Sector: A Proposal For A National Clean Energy Standard, Joseph E. Aldy
Joseph E Aldy
The difficulty of coming to agreement on comprehensive energy and climate change legislation highlights the need for a more targeted and incremental approach. One promising intermediate step would be a technology-neutral national clean energy standard for the power sector. I propose a standard that would lower carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 60 percent relative to 2005 levels over twenty years, streamline the fragmented regulatory system, generate fiscal benefits, and finance energy innovation. Through a simple design and transparent implementation, the national clean energy standard would provide certainty about the economic returns to clean energy that would facilitate investment …
Federal Energy Efficiency And Conservation Laws, John Dernbach, Marianne Tyrrell
Federal Energy Efficiency And Conservation Laws, John Dernbach, Marianne Tyrrell
John C. Dernbach
This paper provides an overview of U.S. law and policy concerning energy efficiency and conservation. The United States appears torn between two narratives - one expressing the abundant demonstrated opportunities provided by energy savings and the other based on a fear of deprivation from using less energy. Rather than choosing between the two, U.S. law and policy splits the difference - embracing efficiency and conservation more or less halfheartedly. Energy efficiency and conservation policy thus has a Groundhog Day aspect, in which the same or similar arguments are made year after year, decade after decade, and often (it appears) to …
Closing The Gap: Using The Clean Air Act To Control Lifecycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Energy Facilities, Colin Hagan
Closing The Gap: Using The Clean Air Act To Control Lifecycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Energy Facilities, Colin Hagan
Colin Hagan
In the midst of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ongoing efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, this manuscript assesses whether the Clean Air Act authorizes EPA to require a lifecycle greenhouse gas analysis as part of the statute’s pre-construction permitting requirements. A lifecycle analysis calculates emissions from all processes directly and indirectly related to electricity generation. In this manuscript, I argue that requiring lifecycle greenhouse gas analysis will help identify cost-effective measures for reducing emissions and avoid unintended consequences from switching to low-emitting resources such as natural gas, biomass, or nuclear power.
Closing The Gap: Using The Clean Air Act To Control Lifecycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Energy Facilities, Colin Hagan
Closing The Gap: Using The Clean Air Act To Control Lifecycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Energy Facilities, Colin Hagan
Colin Hagan
In the midst of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ongoing efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, this manuscript assesses whether the Clean Air Act authorizes EPA to require a lifecycle greenhouse gas analysis as part of the statute’s pre-construction permitting requirements. A lifecycle analysis calculates emissions from all processes directly and indirectly related to electricity generation. In this manuscript, I argue that requiring lifecycle greenhouse gas analysis will help identify cost-effective measures for reducing emissions and avoid unintended consequences from switching to low-emitting resources such as natural gas, biomass, or nuclear power.
Playing Without Aces: Offsets And The Limits Of Flexibility Under Clean Air Act Climate Policy, Nathan D. Richardson
Playing Without Aces: Offsets And The Limits Of Flexibility Under Clean Air Act Climate Policy, Nathan D. Richardson
Nathan D Richardson
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to move ahead with regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act (CAA). Previous work has indicated that basic forms of compliance flexibility—trading—appear to be legally permissible under the relevant part (Section 111) of the CAA. This paper takes a close look at more expansive and ambitious types of flexibility: trading between different kinds of sources, biomass co-firing, and, above all, offsets. It concludes that most types of such extended flexibility are either legally incompatible with the CAA, or so legally problematic that EPA is unlikely to adopt them. This has …
How Epa Could Implement A Greenhouse Gas Naaqs, Rich Raiders
How Epa Could Implement A Greenhouse Gas Naaqs, Rich Raiders
Rich Raiders
Massachusetts v. EPA started a wide ranging debate concerning how, if at all, the United States Environmental Protection Agency should regulate greenhouse gases. While EPA has begun to regulate GHGs and require GHG reporting, it has not developed any comprehensive GHG regulatory strategy. This paper explores what steps EPA may, or must, take to regulate GHGs under the existing Clean Air Act. Just as EPA was forced to regulate lead as a criteria air pollutant in the 1970s, EPA now must decide if it must regulate GHGs as criteria air pollutants today. In the lead process, once EPA found that …