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- Clean Air Act; environmental justice; coal; solar energy; climate change; renewable portfolio standards; Central Appalachia; Global South (1)
- Clean energy; clean energy development; clean energy resources; path dependencies; path dependence; path dependency theories; fossil fuels; institutional stickiness (1)
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- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); Clean Power Plan; Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reduction; Fossil Fuel-Fired Power Plants; Target Reduction Rates; Administrative Deference; International Climate Change Efforts; Economic Ramifications; Utility Rates; Electric Grid Reliability; Chevron Deference; UARG v. EPA; Michigan v. EPA; Interim Target Goals; Flexible Regulations; Compliance Formula; Endangerment Finding; Section 111(D) of the Clean Air Act; Legislative Intent; "Appropriate and Necessary" Standard; Costs of Implementation; "Tailpipe Rule"; Health Benefits (1)
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- Environmental justice; energy justice; clean power plan; solar; distributed generation; power plants; energy regulation; low-carbon; energy transition (1)
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- Life Cycle Analysis; Electric Vehicles; EVs; Greenhouse Gas Emissions; Ethanol; Renewable Fuel Standard; California Low-Carbon Fuel Standard; LCFS; transportation (1)
- Organizational field; field theory; renewable energy; smart meters; smart grid; technological visions; energy policy; Internet of Things; energy transition; Washington State; electric utilities; sociotechnical system (1)
- Renewable energy; renewables; solar; wind; decarbonization; clean energy; energy economics; energy law; environmental law; environmental policy; green energy; energy transition (1)
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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Energy and Utilities Law
Paradoxes Of “Decarbonization”, David B. Spence
Paradoxes Of “Decarbonization”, David B. Spence
Brooklyn Law Review
Scholars and policymakers continue to debate the shape of a post-carbon world, and how fast the United States can “decarbonize” its energy sector. Recent trends—including the reduced costs of renewables, regulatory and market pressure on coal-fired power, and successful integration of large amounts of wind power into the grid—have fed optimism about the possibility of rapid and “deep” decarbonization. Unfortunately, however, encouraging ever-more substitution of renewables for fossil fuels creates unintended consequences—paradoxes—that stem in part from two sometimes unavoidable and under-appreciated truths. First, the three attributes we value in the electricity system—cost, reliability and environmental performance—are in tension with one …
Breaking Energy Path Dependencies, Amy L. Stein
Breaking Energy Path Dependencies, Amy L. Stein
Brooklyn Law Review
Of the many barriers to clean energy development discussed in the literature, the power of the status quo is not normally one of them. Yet beyond the need for more transmission lines, the need to decouple electricity sales from revenue, or the need to amend our environmental laws to more fully capture the externalities of energy, efforts to develop clean energy are faced with over a century of institutional “stickiness” associated with the legal and regulatory framework governing energy. This article explores how path dependency theories can inform the practical legal efforts to overcome such stickiness, identifying the troublesome approaches …
The Political Economy Of Decarbonization: A Research Agenda, Eric Biber, Nina Kelsey, Jonas Meckling
The Political Economy Of Decarbonization: A Research Agenda, Eric Biber, Nina Kelsey, Jonas Meckling
Brooklyn Law Review
Addressing climate change entails daunting policy challenges for nations seeking to decarbonize their energy systems. Current policies are inadequate to achieve the necessary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in major part because of political resistance to more aggressive policies. Academic policy research to date has primarily focused on what policies are economically optimal, or on what is politically feasible in the short-term. But given the long-term nature of the problem and the scale of the policy challenges, an essential question is how to improve the political landscape for aggressive climate policies over time. In this paper we outline a research …
Field Of Visions: Interorganizational Challenges To The Smart Energy Transition In Washington State, Scott Frickel, Daniela Wühr, Christine Horne, Meghan Elizabeth Kallman
Field Of Visions: Interorganizational Challenges To The Smart Energy Transition In Washington State, Scott Frickel, Daniela Wühr, Christine Horne, Meghan Elizabeth Kallman
Brooklyn Law Review
The smart grid promises an efficient, reliable, and sustainable energy system. Smart meters provide machine-to-machine communication capacity and are key elements of the smart grid. Smart meters allow utilities to improve system efficiency and reliability and allow electricity users to closely monitor, fine-tune, and reduce energy consumption and costs. For these and other reasons, positive expectations for the smart grid and smart meters run high among policymakers, regulators, engineering and computer science professionals, industrialists, environmentalists, and others. Even so, different organizations and stakeholders define and understand the technology in different ways. For some actors smart meters are a tool for …
Grassroots Innovation Systems For The Post-Carbon World: Promoting Economic Democracy, Environmental Sustainability, And The Public Interest, Shobita Parthasarathy
Grassroots Innovation Systems For The Post-Carbon World: Promoting Economic Democracy, Environmental Sustainability, And The Public Interest, Shobita Parthasarathy
Brooklyn Law Review
This article uses a sociotechnical systems approach to advocate for an alternative way of thinking about the role of innovation in international development efforts, specifically those focused on environmental sustainability and a post-carbon world. This approach views technology and society as inextricably linked, highlighting how particular values, norms, individual rights and responsibilities, social practices and relationships, and aspects of political culture are embedded in the design, development, implementation, and use of technology. Using the example of clean cookstoves, this article argues that technologies customarily deployed to achieve international development goals are embedded in particular values, assumptions, and social structures that …
Fairness In The Low-Carbon Shift: Learning From Environmental Justice, Uma Outka
Fairness In The Low-Carbon Shift: Learning From Environmental Justice, Uma Outka
Brooklyn Law Review
This article looks to the environmental justice movement for how it can inform the current transitional moment in the energy sector. As policy and market forces solidify a low-carbon trajectory, this article argues there is a unique and time-sensitive context for justice concerns in the energy transition. The decades-long failure to substantiate legal protections for environmental justice underscores the importance of building into legal structures as they emerge in the evolving energy regulatory landscape. Change is happening quickly and discordant notions of fairness are competing for validation in the energy policy space. This article highlights examples of competing fairness claims …
Environmental Injustice And The Pursuit Of A Post-Carbon World: The Unintended Consequences Of The Clean Air Act As A Cautionary Tale For Solar Energy Development, Shannon Elizabeth Bell
Environmental Injustice And The Pursuit Of A Post-Carbon World: The Unintended Consequences Of The Clean Air Act As A Cautionary Tale For Solar Energy Development, Shannon Elizabeth Bell
Brooklyn Law Review
Most policy decisions aimed at improving the environment have been conceived and implemented without attention to issues of environmental justice, creating what sociologist Julian Agyeman calls an “equity deficit” in the discourse and practice of environmental sustainability. This article presents the unintended consequences of the Clean Air Act (CAA) and its amendments as a cautionary tale for what can happen when environmental regulations are enacted without adequately considering environmental justice concerns. Although the CAA has been responsible for much good in the United States as a whole—including significant reductions in acid rain and health-harming pollutants—it has also brought significant harm …
Life Cycle Analysis And Transportation Energy, Alexandra B. Klass, Andrew Heiring
Life Cycle Analysis And Transportation Energy, Alexandra B. Klass, Andrew Heiring
Brooklyn Law Review
As government actors and the private sector attempt to decarbonize the economy, the role of life cycle analysis (also know as life cycle assessment or LCA) has become increasingly important. In this essay, we explore the use of life cycle analysis in the transportation sector to assess its influence in federal and state policy efforts to move to a low-carbon energy future. We first define life cycle analysis and explain its use in evaluating the environmental impacts of all stages of a product from production, to use, to disposal. We then review the use of life cycle analysis in considering …
Stranded Costs And Grid Decarbonizaiton, Emily Hammond, Jim Rossi
Stranded Costs And Grid Decarbonizaiton, Emily Hammond, Jim Rossi
Brooklyn Law Review
Energy law is well equipped to facilitate the transition to a decarbonized grid. Over the past half century, energy law has endured many stranded cost experiments, each helping firms and customers adjust to a new normal. However, these past experiments have contributed to a myopic regulatory approach to past stranded cost recovery by: (1) endorsing a preference for addressing all stranded costs only after energy resource investment decisions have been made; and (2) fixating on the firm’s financial costs and protection of investors, rather than on the broader impacts of each transition for the energy system. The current transition to …
Legal Pathways To Deep Decarbonization: Lessons From California And Germany, John C. Dernbach
Legal Pathways To Deep Decarbonization: Lessons From California And Germany, John C. Dernbach
Brooklyn Law Review
In the December 2015 Paris Agreement, nations of the world agreed to reduce their net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by the second half of the century. For developed countries, accomplishing that goal requires a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by more than 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. As ambitious and even unachievable as that goal may seem, some developed countries have already made considerable progress in conceptualizing and even adopting legal approaches for achieving decarbonization. This paper describes the approaches being taken in two major developed country jurisdictions—California and Germany—and suggest lessons from that experience that could be …
The Legal Climate On Climate Change: The Fate Of The Epa's Clean Power Plan After Michigan And Uarg, Israel Katz
The Legal Climate On Climate Change: The Fate Of The Epa's Clean Power Plan After Michigan And Uarg, Israel Katz
Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law
One of the centerpieces of the United States’ effort to combat climate change is the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) controversial Clean Power Plan, which consists of the first-ever federal regulations requiring states to achieve massive carbon dioxide emissions reductions from existing fossil fuel-fired power plants. The regulations operate by setting interim and final emissions target dates for states to ultimately reach an aggregate 32% reduction in carbon emissions by the year 2030. This Note argues that the current regulations will not survive judicial scrutiny, because the U.S. Supreme Court has moved away from traditional administrative deference in instances where an …