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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Rethinking Grid Governance For The Climate Change Era, Shelley Welton Jan 2021

Rethinking Grid Governance For The Climate Change Era, Shelley Welton

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The electricity sector is often appropriately called the linchpin of efforts to respond to climate change. Over the next few decades, the U.S. electricity sector will need to double in size to accommodate electric vehicles, at the same time that it transforms to run entirely on clean energy. To drive this transformation, states are increasingly adopting 100% clean energy targets. But fossil fuel corporations are pushing back, seeking to maintain their structural domination of the U.S. energy sector. This article calls attention to one central but under-scrutinized way that these companies impede the clean energy transition: Incumbent fossil fuel companies …


The Bounds Of Energy Law, Shelley Welton Jan 2021

The Bounds Of Energy Law, Shelley Welton

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U.S. energy law was born of fossil fuels. Consequently, our energy law has long centered on the material and legal puzzles that bringing fossil fuels to market presents. Eliminating these same carbon-producing energy sources, however, has emerged as perhaps the most pressing material transformation needed in the twenty-first century—and one that energy law scholarship has rightfully embraced. Yet in our admirable quest to aid in this transformation, energy law scholars are largely writing into the field bequeathed to us, proposing changes that tweak, but do not fundamentally challenge, last century’s tools for managing the extraction, transport, and delivery of fossil …


Environmental Soft Law As A Governance Strategy, Cary Coglianese Oct 2020

Environmental Soft Law As A Governance Strategy, Cary Coglianese

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Soft law governance relies on nongovernmental institutions that establish and implement voluntary standards. Compared with traditional hard law solutions to societal and economic problems, soft law alternatives promise to be more politically feasible to establish and then easier to adapt in the face of changing circumstances. They may also seem more likely to be flexible in what they demand of targeted businesses and other entities. But can soft law actually work to solve major problems? This Article considers the value of soft law governance through the lens of three major voluntary, nongovernmental initiatives that address environmental concerns: (1) ISO 14001 …


The Quiet Undoing: How Regional Electricity Market Reforms Threaten State Clean Energygoals, Danny Cullenward, Shelley Welton Jan 2018

The Quiet Undoing: How Regional Electricity Market Reforms Threaten State Clean Energygoals, Danny Cullenward, Shelley Welton

All Faculty Scholarship

In a series of largely unnoticed but extremely consequential moves, two regional electricity market operators are pursuing reforms to make it more difficult for states to achieve their clean energy goals. The federal energy regulator, FERC, has already approved one such reform and ordered a second market operator to go farther in punishing state-supported clean energy resources than it had initially proposed. This disturbing trend highlights a shift in energy governance that threatens to destabilize the field’s delicate cooperative federalist model. Over the past several decades, states have increasingly ceded control over energy dispatch and grid planning to private market …


Public Energy, Shelley Welton Jan 2017

Public Energy, Shelley Welton

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Many scholars and policy makers celebrate cities as loci for addressing climate change. In addition to being significant sources of carbon pollution, cities prove to be dynamic sites of experimentation and ambition on climate policy. However, as U.S. cities set climate change goals far above those of their federal and state counterparts, they are butting up against the limits of their existing legal authority, most notably with regard to control over energy supplies. In response, many U.S. cities are exercising their legal rights to reclaim public ownership or control over private electric utilities as a method of achieving their climate …


Grid Modernization And Energy Poverty, Shelley Welton Jan 2017

Grid Modernization And Energy Poverty, Shelley Welton

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Grid modernization holds the alluring promise of rationalizing electricity pricing, saving consumers money, and improving environmental quality all at the same time. Yet, we have seen only limited and patchwork regulatory initiatives towards significant grid modernization in the United States. Outside of a few leading states, state energy regulators appear loath to embrace full-throated versions of the project. This article argues that the under-discussed problem of energy poverty in the United States is a critical contributing factor in the gap between grid modernization’s possibilities and our regulatory reality. Only by explicitly understanding how the issues of grid modernization and energy …


Assuming The Risk: Tort Law, Policy, And Politics On The Slippery Slopes, Eric Feldman, Alison I. Stein Jan 2010

Assuming The Risk: Tort Law, Policy, And Politics On The Slippery Slopes, Eric Feldman, Alison I. Stein

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Prominent jurists and legal scholars have long been critical of the doctrine of the assumption of risk, arguing that it is logically flawed and has sown confusion in the courts. This article takes a fresh look at the assumption of risk by focusing on legal conflicts over ski accidents in three ski-intensive states—Vermont, Colorado, and California. It argues that the tort doctrine of the assumption of risk remains vital, and highlights the way in which powerful political and economic actors with links to the ski industry have lobbied aggressively for state laws that codify the assumption of risk. The result …


Lessons Learned: Transferring The European Union's Experience With Energy Efficiency Policy To China, Shelley Welton Jan 2009

Lessons Learned: Transferring The European Union's Experience With Energy Efficiency Policy To China, Shelley Welton

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The European Union (EU) has been at the vanguard of passing forward-thinking energy efficiency policies over the past two decades, although it is still grappling with achieving full implementation of these policies. More recently, China has also been active in making energy efficiency a part of its national energy strategy. However, China has struggled to craft effective energy efficiency laws and to achieve implementation of these laws throughout the country. If successful, the potential for improvements and energy savings in China is tremendous. China has begun to decouple its GDP and its growth in energy consumption over the past twenty …


The Nature Of Blacks' Skepticism About Genetic Testing, Dorothy E. Roberts Jan 1997

The Nature Of Blacks' Skepticism About Genetic Testing, Dorothy E. Roberts

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No abstract provided.


Biology, Justice, And Women's Fate, Dorothy E. Roberts Jan 1996

Biology, Justice, And Women's Fate, Dorothy E. Roberts

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Genetic Tie, Dorothy E. Roberts Jan 1995

The Genetic Tie, Dorothy E. Roberts

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Crime, Race And Reproduction, Dorothy E. Roberts Jan 1993

Crime, Race And Reproduction, Dorothy E. Roberts

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No abstract provided.