Environmental Law Commons^™

Building A Cleaner, More Resilient Energy System In Cuba: Opportunities And Challenges, Korey Silverman-Roati, Daniel Whittle, Romany M. Webb, Jeffrey P. Fralick, Lila Harmar

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Cuba’s energy sector is at a crossroads. The country’s mostly fossil fuel-fired energy system faces a number of longstanding and serious challenges, including breakdowns at aging power plants, decreasing fuel imports and fuel shortages, and the growing threat of climate change-related disruptions. In recent years, Cuba has seen frequent electric blackouts and brownouts that have affected residents, businesses, and government institutions island wide.

Compounding these problems, Cuba is facing a severe economic crisis. In 2022, year-on-year inflation was 39% (down from 77% in 2021). While inflation is estimated to have dropped to 30% in 2023, the price of food increased …

Energy Justice And Renewable Rikers, Rebecca Bratspies

University of Miami Law Review

Unsustainable energy practices generate the lion’s share of global carbon emissions as well as staggering levels of deadly particulate pollution. Replacing the current dirty, fossil fuel-based system with affordable, clean energy is both a human rights imperative and a climate change necessity. This transition, which has already begun, creates the opportunity to do things differently. By confronting the structural racism embedded in existing energy structures, we can build a just transition rather than just a transition. This Article uses New York City’s Renewable Rikers project as a case study to explore how we might take advantage of the intersections between …

Virtual Energy, Joel B. Eisen, Felix Mormann, Heather E. Payne

Faculty Scholarship

From employment to education, many areas of our daily lives have gone virtual, including the virtual workplace and virtual classes. By comparison, the way we generate, deliver, and consume electricity is an anachronism. And the electric industry’s outdated business model and regulatory framework are failing. For the last century-and-a-half, we have relied on ever larger power plants to generate the electricity we consume, often hundreds of miles away from the point of production. But the outsized carbon footprint of these power plants and the need to transmit their output over long distances threaten the electric grid’s reliability, affordability, and long-term …