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Full-Text Articles in Law
Carbon Taxation By Regulation, Jim Rossi
Carbon Taxation By Regulation, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article argues that, even though a carbon tax remains politically elusive, a carbon taxation by regulation has begun to flourish as a way of financing carbon reduction. For more than a century, energy rate setting has been used to promote public good and redistributive goals, akin to general financial taxation. Various non-tax subsidies in customer energy rates have enormous untapped potential for promoting low-carbon sources of energy, while also balancing broader economic and social welfare goals. While carbon taxation by regulation offers many benefits, regulators' narrow fixation on consumer protection and economic goals has hobbled realization of its potential. …
In Defense Of Ecosystem Services, J.B. Ruhl
In Defense Of Ecosystem Services, J.B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
The path of ecosystem services as a theme in environmental law and policy spans my practice (1982-1994) and academic (1994-present) careers. The importance of nature to human well-being seems so obvious one would think it has been front and center in environmental law and policy since the beginning, but, until recently, that has not been the case. Lately, however, the ecosystem services framework has catapulted this theme into prominence, if not dominance, in environmental discourse.
Federal Preemption And Clean Energy Floors, Jim Rossi, Thomas Hutton
Federal Preemption And Clean Energy Floors, Jim Rossi, Thomas Hutton
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Federal policies regarding renewable and clean energy often lack clear definition, are incomplete, and are scattered across multiple statutes and agencies. Yet at the same time, recent decisions of both federal agencies and courts have attributed a preemptive effect to federal statutes that threatens to hobble innovation in renewable and clean energy policy by subnational regulators. One consequence of this approach is that most significant policies promoting clean and renewable energy are channeled toward subsidies from the federal fisc, rather than diverse policies undertaken independently by state governments or regional customers and suppliers. This Article argues that, contrary to many …
Supply And Demand: Barriers To A New Energy Future, Jim Rossi, Michael P. Vandenbergh, J. B. Ruhl
Supply And Demand: Barriers To A New Energy Future, Jim Rossi, Michael P. Vandenbergh, J. B. Ruhl
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Like many fields, energy law has had its ups and downs. A period of remarkable activity in the 1970s and early 1980s focused on the efficiencies arising from deregulation of energy markets, but the field attracted much less attention during the 1990s. In the last decade, a new burst of activity has occurred, driven largely by the implications of energy production and use for climate change. In effect, this new scholarship is asking what efficiency means in a carbon-constrained world. Accounting for carbon has induced scholars to challenge the implicit assumption of the early scholarship that the price of energy …
Lessons From The Procedural Politics Of The "Comprehensive" National Energy Policy Act Of 1992, Jim Rossi
Lessons From The Procedural Politics Of The "Comprehensive" National Energy Policy Act Of 1992, Jim Rossi
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
This Article examines the political and procedural history of the EPAct in order to arrive at some general lessons and recommendations regarding congressional formation of energy policy. At least two commentators on the EPAct praise it as the "second generation" of federal energy policy, based in laws that achieve "their mandates more by consensus than coercion." The EPAct's history, however, was far from smooth. Procedural obstacles, such as filibuster, inter-committee conflict, and inter-chamber conflict, led many to declare the EPAct dead on several occasions prior to its passage.