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Articles 1 - 14 of 14
Full-Text Articles in Law
Carbon Pricing For A Just Transition, Jeff Todd
Carbon Pricing For A Just Transition, Jeff Todd
University of Colorado Law Review
The legal tools to avoid the potential disasters of climate change are already available, at least according to economists. Economists overwhelmingly prefer carbon pricing tools like carbon taxes and cap-and-trade programs to combat climate change and guide the energy transition. Carbon pricing is more cost effective at lowering carbon and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) than other legal options such as efficiency standards, renewable portfolio standards, subsidies, and tax credits and deductions. Unlike those other options, carbon pricing targets both the supply of and the demand for GHG-emitting products and services; moreover, it gives firms and consumers flexibility in how best …
Legal Asynchrony: Constitutional “Bridges” Inverting Elemental U.S. Technology, Steven Ferrey
Legal Asynchrony: Constitutional “Bridges” Inverting Elemental U.S. Technology, Steven Ferrey
University of Colorado Law Review
The 2022 Biden Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) and the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (“IIJA”), together providing for an unprecedented $1.7 trillion in spending, were enacted to construct a sustainable legal U.S. exit ramp from what the Secretary-General of the United Nations recently described as a “highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.” This Article analyzes a critical legal missing link in these Acts that is now causing the U.S. economy to do the opposite of its intended climate change mitigation, given: • A necessary eight-fold increase in current renewable electric power, requiring adding the …
24/7 Clean Energy, Todd Aagaard
24/7 Clean Energy, Todd Aagaard
University of Colorado Law Review
In the face of the rapidly escalating climate crisis, the electricity sector is moving toward renewable energy. To date, policies and strategies have focused on increasing overall renewable energy generation, with little regard for timing and location. The result has been a misalignment of supply and demand in renewable energy markets. Renewable power projects produce energy when and where it is least expensive, leaving supply scarce at other times and places. Consumers, meanwhile, continue to use power when and where they need it. This mismatch increases the electricity grid’s dependence on fossil fuel–fired electricity to meet electricity demand at times …
Lumpy Social Goods In Energy Decarbonization: Why We Need More Than Just Markets For The Clean Energy Transition, Daniel E. Walters
Lumpy Social Goods In Energy Decarbonization: Why We Need More Than Just Markets For The Clean Energy Transition, Daniel E. Walters
University of Colorado Law Review
To avoid the worst consequences of global climate change, the United States must achieve daunting targets for decarbonizing its electric power sector on a very short timescale. Policy experts largely agree that achieving these goals will require massive investment in new infrastructure to facilitate the deep integration of renewable fuels into the electric grid, including a new national high-voltage electric transmission network and grid-scale electricity storage, such as batteries. However, spurring investment in these needed infrastructures has proven to be challenging, despite numerous attempts by regulators and policymakers to clear a path for market-driven investment. Unchecked, this problem threatens to …
Streamlining Or Steamrolling: Oil And Gas Leasing Reform On Federal Public Lands In The Trump Administration, Marcilynn A. Burke
Streamlining Or Steamrolling: Oil And Gas Leasing Reform On Federal Public Lands In The Trump Administration, Marcilynn A. Burke
University of Colorado Law Review
No abstract provided.
Electricity Competition And The Public Good: Rethinking Markets And Monopolies, Jonas J. Monast
Electricity Competition And The Public Good: Rethinking Markets And Monopolies, Jonas J. Monast
University of Colorado Law Review
The United States electricity sector is engaged in a long-term experiment regarding the proper role of market competition. Many states that transitioned to competitive electricity markets in the early 2000s are again reconsidering the relationship between market competition and public policy goals. Low natural gas prices, falling costs of renewable energy and energy storage, and improvements in efficiency are causing early retirements of coal and nuclear power plants and thus affecting environmental policy goals and economic interests. States that continue to rely on monopoly utilities for electricity are also reconsidering the role of competition, but from a different angle. Rather …
Clean Electrification, Shelley Welton
Clean Electrification, Shelley Welton
University of Colorado Law Review
To combat climate change, many leading states have adopted the aim of creating a "participatory"g rid. 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 …
Distributed Reliability, Amy L. Stein
Distributed Reliability, Amy L. Stein
University of Colorado Law Review
For the past century, electric utilities and grid operators have both owned and operated resources to maintain the reliability of the grid. This reliability has been controlled through investments in generation, transmission, and distribution assets. Today, a growing number of previously passive customers are much more involved in generating their own electricity. But this customer involvement does not stop with generation. Customers are also contributing energy storage and demand response (DR) to the grid, reliability resources that are an essential component of supporting intermittent, renewable energy. This Article draws upon economic analyses of industrial organization and principal agent theory to …
Intrastate Preemption In The Shifting Energy Sector, Uma Outka
Intrastate Preemption In The Shifting Energy Sector, Uma Outka
University of Colorado Law Review
The United States energy sector is in a state of transition, at once moving toward cleaner energy resources, but also expanding the use of fossil fuels with new access to oil and gas plays. Although federalism concerns have dominated the literature, I argue here that the state-local relationship and intrastate preemption are shaping energy policy in important and under-examined ways. The energy transition to date has been marked by growth centered on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and commercial wind development, both of which are mostly regulated at the state level. Local governments have exerted authority over both forms of energy production, …
Compromise In Colorado: Solar Net Metering And The Case For "Renewable Avoided Cost", Alexander D. White
Compromise In Colorado: Solar Net Metering And The Case For "Renewable Avoided Cost", Alexander D. White
University of Colorado Law Review
No abstract provided.
Risk And Response In Fracturing Policy, Hannah J. Wiseman
Risk And Response In Fracturing Policy, Hannah J. Wiseman
University of Colorado Law Review
An oil and gas extraction technique called hydraulic fracturing (also called fracing, fracking, or hydrofracking) has swept the country and has raised the stakes of the energy policy debate. As operators drill thousands of new wells and inject water and chemicals down these wells in order to fracture underground shale and tight sandstone formations, concerned citizens' groups and the media have pointed to flaming tap water and have worried about chemical contamination; at the same time, industry representatives and many state regulators have sworn that the practice has never contaminated groundwater. The outpouring of attention to injection-just one stage of …
Like Water For Energy: The Water-Energy Nexus Through The Lens Of Tax Policy, Roberta F. Mann
Like Water For Energy: The Water-Energy Nexus Through The Lens Of Tax Policy, Roberta F. Mann
University of Colorado Law Review
Water is essential for life. Inadequate potable water supplies lead to poverty, disease, starvation, and civil strife. Climate change is likely to put more pressure on the world's supply of fresh water. Rising sea levels will introduce salt into some fresh water systems. As high mountain snow cover and glaciers decline, they will store less fresh water. As regions heat up, droughts will become more persistent. Producing energy uses water. How much water is used depends on the source of the energy. Yet in the rush to transition to a renewable energy economy, policy makers have paid little heed to …
Keeping Pace?: The Case Against Property Assessed Clean Energy Financing Programs, Prentiss Cox
Keeping Pace?: The Case Against Property Assessed Clean Energy Financing Programs, Prentiss Cox
University of Colorado Law Review
Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) is a method of public financing for energy improvements through special assessments on local government property taxes. Interest in PACE exploded since its inception in 2008, with almost half the states rapidly enacting legislation enabling local governments to use their property collection power to finance residential energy investments. The growth in PACE has been suspended and existing programs have been put on hold in the face of opposition from the federal secondary mortgage market regulators. Governments and environmental advocates supporting PACE have initiated litigation against federal mortgage and banking regulators and are seeking passage of …
Trust And The Green Consumer: The Fight For Accountability In Renewable Energy Credits, Kelly Crandall
Trust And The Green Consumer: The Fight For Accountability In Renewable Energy Credits, Kelly Crandall
University of Colorado Law Review
Renewable energy credits ("RECs")--commodities representing a megawatt-hour of renewable electricity but tradable separately from the electricity itself-developed to encourage renewable energy investment and to allow individuals and corporations without direct access to renewable energy to subsidize its construction. RECs can be sold voluntarily or applied to state-imposed renewable energy purchase obligations. These state mandates, known as renewable portfolio standards, have contributed dramatically to the demand for RECs. Yet, despite their popularity, RECs are regulated inconsistently: neither federal nor state consumer protection law fully mitigates the opportunities they create for deceptive advertising. This Comment critiques the existing regulatory scheme (or lack …