Environmental Law Commons^™

Tragedy Of The Energy Commons: How Government Regulation Can Help Mitigate The Environmental And Public Health Consequences Of Cryptocurrency Mining, Jeff Thomson

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

The use of cryptocurrencies in daily life has continued to rise over the last decade and shows no signs of slowing down. Although cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, provide numerous tangible benefits to society, the process of mining these cryptocurrencies is extremely energy intensive. Accordingly, a tragedy of the energy commons has resulted whereby the monetary incentive to mine cryptocurrencies has distorted our collective ability to care for our shared energy resources. The current system allows for industrious individuals to set up cryptocurrency mines in regions that have access to plentiful and cheap energy sources, utilize this energy to power their …

Greening The Old New Deal: Strengthening Rural Electric Cooperative Supports And Oversight To Combat Climate Change, Gabriel Pacyniak

Faculty Scholarship

New Deal cooperatives succeeded in electrifying rural America when for-profit utilities would not. Today, however, rural electric cooperatives are lagging behind when it comes to meeting the challenge of climate change. Cooperatives have collectively been slower to embrace the shift to low-carbon electricity than for-profit and municipal utilities and have served as a drag on state and federal clean energy and climate policies. This is partially because of the structural differences between cooperatives and other utilities, but also because of a weak and under-determined federal and state regulatory structure. A few cooperatives in Colorado and New Mexico are seeking to …

New York Can Lead World In Fighting Climate Change, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

New York State now has one of the strongest climate change laws in the world, and if we succeed in implementing it, the state will have demonstrated that it is possible to defeat what may be the greatest threat facing humanity.

Climate Risk In The Electricity Sector: Legal Obligations To Advance Climate Resilience Planning By Electric Utilities, Romany M. Webb, Michael Panfil, Sarah Ladin

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Electricity generation, transmission and distribution, and load are all impacted by weather patterns. Electric system assets have been designed for historic weather conditions, with the goal of ensuring reliability and quick recovery following extreme events. However, climate change is causing major shifts in historic weather patterns and more frequent and severe extremes, which are creating new risk profiles for the electric system. Proactive climate resilience planning by electric utilities to identify, respond, and rationally allocate these climate risks is thus increasingly salient. This paper argues that it is also legally required.

Recently published industry studies demonstrate that accurate, specific, and …

Climate Change, Ferc, And Natural Gas Pipelines: The Legal Basis For Considering Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under Section 7 Of The Natural Gas Act, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

As the federal agency charged with overseeing the interstate transportation of natural gas, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has recently faced growing criticism over its approval of new pipelines. Critics have lambasted FERC for failing to adequately consider the climate change impacts of pipeline development, particularly the greenhouse gas emissions associated with “upstream” natural gas production and “downstream” use. The D.C. Circuit recently weighed in, holding that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires consideration of downstream greenhouse gas emissions, at least in some circumstances. The precise scope of that requirement continues to be debated before FERC, in the …