Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
- Keyword
-
- Climate change (7)
- Electricity (6)
- Energy (6)
- Climate Change (3)
- Energy Policy (3)
-
- Wind (3)
- Airspace (2)
- Building (2)
- Calabresi (2)
- Decarbonization (2)
- Electric Utilities (2)
- Electrification (2)
- Energy justice (2)
- Energy law (2)
- Environmental Law (2)
- Environmental justice (2)
- Governance (2)
- Land use (2)
- Landowner (2)
- Melamed (2)
- Net metering (2)
- Public utility (2)
- RTOs (2)
- Renewable Energy (2)
- Rule four (2)
- Sustainable (2)
- Wind Power (2)
- Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) proposed rule; Paris Climate Agreement; US House of Representatives; US Senate; 2018 US midterm election results (1)
- American Electric Power v. Connecticut (1)
- Behavior (1)
Articles 1 - 25 of 25
Full-Text Articles in Law
Rethinking Grid Governance For The Climate Change Era, Shelley Welton
Rethinking Grid Governance For The Climate Change Era, Shelley Welton
Faculty Publications
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
The Bounds Of Energy Law, Shelley Welton
Faculty Publications
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 …
Decarbonization In Democracy, Shelley Welton
Decarbonization In Democracy, Shelley Welton
Faculty Publications
Conventional wisdom holds that democracy is structurally ill-equipped to confront climate change. As the story goes, because each of us tends to dismiss consequences that befall people in other places and in future times, “the people” cannot be trusted to craft adequate decarbonization policies, designed to reduce present-day, domestic carbon emissions. Accordingly, U.S. climate change policy has focused on technocratic fixes that operate predominantly through executive action to escape democratic politics — with vanishingly little to show for it after a change in presidential administration.
To help craft a more durable U.S. climate change strategy, this Article scrutinizes the purported …
The Quiet Undoing: How Regional Electricity Market Reforms Threaten Clean Energy Goals, Shelley Welton, Danny Cullenward
The Quiet Undoing: How Regional Electricity Market Reforms Threaten Clean Energy Goals, Shelley Welton, Danny Cullenward
Faculty Publications
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. In this Essay, we bring to light the ways in which the intricate, technical reforms underway in regional electricity markets threaten state climate change objectives and the durability of FERC’s regional market constructs. If FERC allows private market …
The Brave New World Of Energy And Natural Resources Development, Donald N. Zillman
The Brave New World Of Energy And Natural Resources Development, Donald N. Zillman
Faculty Publications
The world of energy and natural resources development has changed a great deal over the past 30 months, perhaps more so than in the preceding 30 years. Beginning with the June 2016 vote in the United Kingdom to leave the European Union and continuing through today, there are global signs of increasing emphasis on protecting national sovereignty and less on world efforts to address major environmental and energy issues. Admittedly, the United Nations-based effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions continues to move forward. However, more than a few nations are hinting that they may not live up to their commitments …
Clean Energy Justice: Charting An Emerging Agenda, Shelley Welton, Joel Eisen
Clean Energy Justice: Charting An Emerging Agenda, Shelley Welton, Joel Eisen
Faculty Publications
The rapid transition to clean energy is fraught with potential inequities. As clean energy policies ramp up in scale and ambition, they confront challenging new questions: Who should pay for the transition? Who should live next to the industrial-scale wind and solar farms these policies promote? Will the new “green” economy be a fairer one, with more widespread opportunity, than the fossil fuel economy it is replacing? Who gets to decide what kinds of resources power our decarbonized world? In this article, we assert that it is useful to understand these challenges collectively, as part of an emerging agenda of …
President Trump, The New Chicago School And The Future Of Environmental Law And Scholarship, Sarah B. Schindler
President Trump, The New Chicago School And The Future Of Environmental Law And Scholarship, Sarah B. Schindler
Faculty Publications
Recent presidents including Bill Clinton, G. W. Bush, and Barack Obama have refined how environmental law has been enacted and carried out. Under President Trump, the scope of public environmental law will most certainly narrow. It seems likely that the future of environmental law will depend not upon traditional federal command-and-control legislation or executive branch maneuvering, but instead upon activating environmentalism through expanded substantive areas and innovative regulatory techniques that fall outside the existing, traditional norms of environmental law and legal scholarship. This chapter is an attempt to acknowledge this monumental change, recognizing that these barriers to traditional environmental regulation …
Electricity Markets And The Social Project Of Decarbonization, Shelley Welton
Electricity Markets And The Social Project Of Decarbonization, Shelley Welton
Faculty Publications
Decarbonization is the process of converting our economy from one that runs predominantly on energy derived from fossil fuels to one that runs almost exclusively on clean, carbon-free energy. If pursued on the scale that experts believe necessary to prevent dangerous climate change, the infrastructure changes required to decarbonize the United States will have significant social and cultural implications. States aggressively pursuing decarbonization have adopted policies reflecting their under-standing that decarbonization is a social project implicating numerous value choices. Various state decarbonization policies combine the aim of decarbonization with job promotion, economic development, income redistribution, urban revitalization, open-space preservation, and …
Grid Modernization And Energy Poverty, Shelley Welton
Grid Modernization And Energy Poverty, Shelley Welton
Faculty Publications
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 fullthroated versions of the project. This article argues that the underdiscussed 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 …
Public Energy, Shelley Welton
Public Energy, Shelley Welton
Faculty Publications
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 …
Clean Electrification, Shelley Welton
Clean Electrification, Shelley Welton
Faculty Publications
To combat climate change, many leading states have adopted the aim of creating a “participatory” grid. In this new model, electricity is priced based on time of consumption and carbon content, and consumers are encouraged to adjust their behavior and adopt new technologies to maintain affordable electricity. Although a more participatory grid is an important component of lowering greenhouse gas emissions, it also raises a new problem of clean energy justice: utilities and consumer advocates claim that such policies unjustly benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, given the type of consumer best able to participate in the …
Property Rights And Modern Energy, Troy A. Rule
Property Rights And Modern Energy, Troy A. Rule
Faculty Publications
This short article, written for a joint program of the Natural Resources and Energy Law and Property Law Sections of the American Association of Law Schools at the Association’s 2013 Annual Meeting, offers some general guidelines for adjusting property rights regimes to accommodate new energy innovations. This article suggests that, when feasible, policy actions that merely clarify ambiguities in existing law are often the simplest and most cost-effective way to respond when important technological advancements place pressure on longstanding property structures. When such policies are inadequate or unavailable, the most equitable and efficient adjustments to property arrangements tend to be …
Airspace In A Green Economy, Troy A. Rule
Airspace In A Green Economy, Troy A. Rule
Faculty Publications
The recent surge of interest in renewable energy and sustainable land use has made the airspace above land more valuable than ever before. However, a growing number of policies aimed at promoting sustainability disregard landowners' airspace rights in ways that can cause airspace to be underutilized. This article analyzes several land use conflicts emerging in the context of renewable energy development by framing them as disputes over airspace. The article suggests that incorporating options or liability rules into laws regulating airspace is a useful way to promote wind and solar energy while still respecting landowners' existing airspace rights. If properly …
Encouraging Private Investment In Energy Efficiency, Sarah B. Schindler
Encouraging Private Investment In Energy Efficiency, Sarah B. Schindler
Faculty Publications
Combating the negative effects of climate change requires finding ways to increase energy production while reducing energy demand. Every New England state has programs in place to encourage home and business owners to improve the energy efficiency of their buildings. Despite the clear fmancial benefits and environmental benefits that result from energy efficiency upgrades, most New Englanders have not taken advantage ofthe programs being offered by their states.
The Supreme Court Disposes Of A Nuisance Suite: American Electric Power V. Connecticut, Jonathan H. Adler
The Supreme Court Disposes Of A Nuisance Suite: American Electric Power V. Connecticut, Jonathan H. Adler
Faculty Publications
In American Electric Power v. Connecticut the Supreme Court confronted climate change litigation for the second time. Whereas Massachusetts v. EPA was a closely divided court decision with dramatic and far-reaching legal and policy implications, AEP was a narrow, unanimous opinion that hewed closely to well-settled precedent. In AEP the Court side-stepped difficult jurisdictional questions and rejected an ambitious effort to turn the federal common law of nuisance into a judicially administered environmental regulatory regime. While not erecting any new barriers to future climate suits, the Court’s opinion raised cautions about trying to make climate change policy through the judiciary. …
Following Industry's Leed : Municipal Adoption Of Private Green Building Standards, Sarah B. Schindler
Following Industry's Leed : Municipal Adoption Of Private Green Building Standards, Sarah B. Schindler
Faculty Publications
Local governments are beginning to require new, privately constructed and funded buildings to be “green” buildings. Instead of creating their own, locally-derived definitions of green buildings, many municipalities are adopting an existing private standard created by members of the building industry: LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). This Article explains and assesses the privately promulgated LEED standards. It argues that the translation of LEED standards, which were intended to be voluntary, into law raises several theoretical and practical problems. Specifically, private green building ordinances that rely on LEED do not ensure a reduction in the negative local environmental impacts …
Shadows On The Cathedral: Solar Access Laws In A Different Light, Troy A. Rule
Shadows On The Cathedral: Solar Access Laws In A Different Light, Troy A. Rule
Faculty Publications
Unprecedented growth in rooftop solar energy development is drawing increased attention to the issue of solar access. To operate effectively, solar panels require un-shaded access to the sun’s rays during peak sunlight hours. Some landowners are reluctant to invest in rooftop solar panels because they fear that a neighbor will erect a structure or grow a tree on nearby property that shades their panels. Existing statutory approaches to protecting solar access for such landowners vary widely across jurisdictions, and some approaches ignore the airspace rights of neighbors. Which rule regime for solar access protection best promotes the efficient allocation of …
Renewable Energy And The Neighbors, Troy A. Rule
Renewable Energy And The Neighbors, Troy A. Rule
Faculty Publications
Small wind turbines and rooftop solar panels are a highly attractive energy option, capable of generating clean, renewable power without the need for transmission lines across vast stretches of rural land. State and federal incentive programs have made these devices increasingly affordable for landowners in recent years, generating an unprecedented level of interest in “distributed” renewable energy.Unfortunately, small wind turbines and solar panels are often far less attractive in the eyes of neighbors, who fear that the systems will erode neighborhood aesthetics and property values. Despite aggressive state and federal programs aimed at promoting renewable energy systems, land use controls …
Harmonious Federalism In Support Of National Energy Goals – Increased Wind Renewable Energy, Ronald H. Rosenberg
Harmonious Federalism In Support Of National Energy Goals – Increased Wind Renewable Energy, Ronald H. Rosenberg
Faculty Publications
American energy policy has slowly begun to change the mix in the sources of supply of electricity to residences, industry, and businesses. Renewable sources of electricity have been promoted as future contributors of large portions of the nation's electricity consumption. Wind power has been identified as a potentially substantial future electricity source contributing up to 20% of American demand 2030. To achieve these optimistic goals, there must be: (1) cost-effective, reliable energy technology; (2) sufficient investment capital to finance new construction; and (3) the existence of supportive governmental policies at all levels government. This article discusses the importance of inter-governmental …
Collaborative Governance: Lessons For Europe From U.S. Electricity Restructuring, Charles H. Koch Jr.
Collaborative Governance: Lessons For Europe From U.S. Electricity Restructuring, Charles H. Koch Jr.
Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
A Downwind View Of The Cathedral: Using Rule Four To Allocate Wind Rights, Troy A. Rule
A Downwind View Of The Cathedral: Using Rule Four To Allocate Wind Rights, Troy A. Rule
Faculty Publications
The rapid pace of U.S. wind energy development is generating a growing number of conflicts over competing wind rights. The “wake” of a commercial wind turbine creates turbulence and unsteady wind flow that can reduce the productivity of other wind turbines situated downwind. Existing law is unclear as to whether a landowner who installs a wind turbine on its property is liable for the lost productivity of a downwind neighbor’s turbine resulting from such wake effects. Legal uncertainty as to how competing wind rights are shared among neighbors can induce wind energy developers to abandon otherwise lucrative turbine sites situated …
Diversifying America's Energy Future: The Future Of Renewable Wind Power, Ronald H. Rosenberg
Diversifying America's Energy Future: The Future Of Renewable Wind Power, Ronald H. Rosenberg
Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Collaborative Governance In The Restructured Electricity Industry, Charles H. Koch Jr.
Collaborative Governance In The Restructured Electricity Industry, Charles H. Koch Jr.
Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
The Role Of State Government In Nuclear Power Regulation: Jurisdictional Conflicts In The Us, Donald N. Zillman
The Role Of State Government In Nuclear Power Regulation: Jurisdictional Conflicts In The Us, Donald N. Zillman
Faculty Publications
The regulation of nuclear power in the United States provides ample opportunity for conflicts over jurisdiction. The Maine Yankee case demonstrates the complications that arise as a result. The article concludes, however, that state involvement in the federal process can be both useful and collaborative.
Energy Trade And The National Security Exception To The Gatt, Donald N. Zillman
Energy Trade And The National Security Exception To The Gatt, Donald N. Zillman
Faculty Publications
Three topics combine in this paper: international trade, national security, and energy. The specific focus of the paper is the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the "essential security interests" exception contained in Article XXI. The provisions of the GATT set out the structure of a system to encourage international trade by reducing tariffs and other trade barriers. More broadly, many aspects of international trade in energy have developed outside the structure of GATT or with the implied assumption that Article XXI or another GATT exception would take them out of normal GATT arrangements. National security matters have …