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Energy and Utilities Law

Selected Works

2016

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Law

Enhancing Public Engagement On Offshore Wind Energy Using Genius Loci: A Case Study From A Lake Michigan Coastal Community, Erik Edward Nordman, Daniel O'Keefe, Erika Arndt Sep 2016

Enhancing Public Engagement On Offshore Wind Energy Using Genius Loci: A Case Study From A Lake Michigan Coastal Community, Erik Edward Nordman, Daniel O'Keefe, Erika Arndt

Erik Edward Nordman

We describe a novel approach to public engagement on offshore wind energy based on genius loci (“spirit of a place”). North America lacks offshore wind farms but they could be viable in the Great Lakes. Cultural ties between coastal Michigan, USA and the Netherlands offered opportunities to learn from the Dutch offshore wind experience. Residents from a Lake Michigan coastal community with Dutch heritage videoconferenced with a Dutch tourism specialist regarding the Egmond aan Zee offshore wind farm. Important differences and similarities between the regions emerged, including the clustering of technological expertise, tourism effects, and perspectives on working seascapes. Michigan …

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Appliance Efficiency, David R. Hodas Aug 2016

Appliance Efficiency, David R. Hodas

David R. Hodas

Refrigerators, computers, clothes washers and dryers, air conditioners, office equipment, and heating consume huge amounts of electricity. Although energy growth varies considerably among nations and economic sectors, every nation should improve the energy efficiency of its new stock of electric appliances and commercial equipment, which generally can be done at a cost far lower than building new generation facilities, before incurring the large capital expense and adverse environmental consequences of increasing generation and transmission capacity. Appliance efficiency labels that accurately inform consumers of the electricity the appliance will require, and appliance efficiency standards that set minimum efficiency requirements for appliances …

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Protecting States’ Interests In The Brave New World Of Energy Federalism, Daniel Lyons Aug 2016

Protecting States’ Interests In The Brave New World Of Energy Federalism, Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons

No abstract provided.

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California Climate Law---Model Or Object Lesson?, Daniel A. Farber Aug 2016

California Climate Law---Model Or Object Lesson?, Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A Farber

In the invitation to this Symposium on Reconceptualizing the Future of Environmental Law, the organizers explained that the Symposium “focuses on the continued expansion of environmental law into distinct areas of the law, requiring an increasingly multidisciplinary approach beyond that of traditional federal regulation.” In short, the question posed is about the future proliferation of environmental measures outside the previous domains of federal environmental statutes. At the risk of being guilty of local parochialism, I would like to discuss how the future described by the organizers has already arrived in California--both in the sense that a great deal is happening …

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Demand Response And Market Power, Bruce R. Huber Jun 2016

Demand Response And Market Power, Bruce R. Huber

Bruce R Huber

In her article, Bypassing Federalism and the Administrative Law of Negawatts, Sharon Jacobs educates her readers about the concept of demand response, and then describes its propagation in recent years while making the broader argument that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) — the federal government’s principal energy regulator — has engaged in a strategy of “bypassing federalism” that may entail more costs than benefits. Professor Jacobs is right to call attention to demand response and to FERC’s approach to matters of jurisdictional doubt. While I share many of her concerns about boundary lines in a federal system, I argue …

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Cracking The American Climate Negotiators’ Hidden Code: United States Law And The Paris Agreement, David A. Wirth Mar 2016

Cracking The American Climate Negotiators’ Hidden Code: United States Law And The Paris Agreement, David A. Wirth

David A. Wirth

The United States’ position in, and conduct of, the negotiations leading to the Paris Agreement, as with almost all international diplomacy leading to reciprocal international undertakings conducted by that country, reflected not only internal politics, but also the constraints of domestic law. The United States is not unique in this respect, but it is unusual in the extent to, and manner in which, its municipal law constrains the creation of international commitments. This article disaggregates US international and domestic climate policy as it developed prior to the Paris negotiations and analyses how those dynamics played out on the multilateral stage, …

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The Natech: Right-To-Know As Space-Time Puzzle, Gregg P. Macey Dec 2015

The Natech: Right-To-Know As Space-Time Puzzle, Gregg P. Macey

Gregg P. Macey

Federal environmental law began with a plea: that agencies and other parties consider, and mitigate, the environmental impacts of their work. The task remains unfulfilled given the nature of those impacts: They feature system effects, nonlinear interactions, feedback loops, discontinuous and threshold dynamics, and uncertain boundaries. The administrative state has limited means to address them. It relies on artificial constructs to assess and respond to impacts, such as worst-case scenarios, reasonable foreseeability, and scales that are either inappropriately narrow (“linked” projects) or large and vague (“program-level”). Right-to-know laws share this shortcoming, a product of the disasters that led to their …

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