Law Commons^™

Rebutting 33 False Claims About Solar, Wind, And Electric Vehicles, Matthew Eisenson, Jacob Elkin, Andy Fitch, Matthew Ard, Kaya Sittinger, Samuel Lavine

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Achieving the United States’ ambitious emissions reduction goals depends in large part on the rapid adoption of wind and solar energy and the electrification of consumer vehicles. However, misinformation and coordinated disinformation about renewable energy is widespread and threatens to undermine the transition. In this report, the Sabin Center identifies and examines 33 of the most pervasive false claims about solar energy, wind energy, and electric vehicles, with the aim of promoting a more informed discussion.

Building A Cleaner, More Resilient Energy System In Cuba: Opportunities And Challenges, Korey Silverman-Roati, Daniel Whittle, Romany M. Webb, Jeffrey P. Fralick, Lila Harmar

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Cuba’s energy sector is at a crossroads. The country’s mostly fossil fuel-fired energy system faces a number of longstanding and serious challenges, including breakdowns at aging power plants, decreasing fuel imports and fuel shortages, and the growing threat of climate change-related disruptions. In recent years, Cuba has seen frequent electric blackouts and brownouts that have affected residents, businesses, and government institutions island wide.

Compounding these problems, Cuba is facing a severe economic crisis. In 2022, year-on-year inflation was 39% (down from 77% in 2021). While inflation is estimated to have dropped to 30% in 2023, the price of food increased …

The Minerals Challenge For Renewable Energy, Mark Squillace

Publications

One potential obstacle to a successful energy transition involves the critical minerals used in production of photovoltaic solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, and batteries. A substantial portion of these will have to come from new and expanded mining operations around the world. But mining is controversial, in part due to the past failures of operators to protect communities and the environment. This Article considers how nations can responsibly identify, source, and process these minerals, and then deploy them in renewable energy products. Its scope is global, but U.S. laws and policies take center stage with a nod to the …

On The Line: Reforming Ocsla As A Mechanism For Fisheries Compensation In The Offshore Wind Era, Madeleine Fenderson

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Virtual Energy, Joel B. Eisen, Felix Mormann, Heather E. Payne

Faculty Scholarship

From employment to education, many areas of our daily lives have gone virtual, including the virtual workplace and virtual classes. By comparison, the way we generate, deliver, and consume electricity is an anachronism. And the electric industry’s outdated business model and regulatory framework are failing. For the last century-and-a-half, we have relied on ever larger power plants to generate the electricity we consume, often hundreds of miles away from the point of production. But the outsized carbon footprint of these power plants and the need to transmit their output over long distances threaten the electric grid’s reliability, affordability, and long-term …

Community Benefit Sharing And Renewable Energy And Green Hydrogen Projects: Policy Guidance For Governments, Perrine Toledano, Chris Albin-Lackey, Maria Diez Andres, Martin Dietrich Brauch

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

The massive and rapid expansion of renewable energy is needed to limit global warming, so its social acceptance must be assured. While not a silver bullet, well-designed and governed benefit-sharing arrangements can lead to beneficial outcomes in ways that speak to affected communities’ needs and interests.

In partnership with the Green Hydrogen Organization and to support the efforts of the Planning for Climate Commission, this report offers high-level guidance to governments that seek to ramp up the development of renewable energy projects, including power generation and grid infrastructure. The report emphasizes that governments need a strong and coherent policy approach …

Opposition To Renewable Energy Facilities In The United States: May 2023 Edition, Matthew Eisenson

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Achieving lower carbon emissions in the United States will require developing a very large number of wind, solar, and other renewable energy facilities, as well as associated storage, distribution, and transmission, at an unprecedented scale and pace. Although host community members are often enthusiastic about the economic and environmental benefits of renewable energy facilities, local opposition often arises. This report updates and considerably expands two previous Sabin Center reports, published in September 2021 and March 2022, and documents local and state restrictions against, and opposition to, siting renewable energy projects for the period from 1995 to May 2023. Importantly, the …

Enabling A Just Transition: Protecting Human Rights In Renewable Energy Projects: A Briefing For Policymakers, Hansika Agrawal, Laura El-Katiri, Kimathi Muiruri, Sam Szoke-Burke

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

This briefing provides guidance to policy- and decision-makers (hereafter, “policymakers”) on the benefits of and strategies for taking a human rights-based approach to renewable energy policy. It highlights the various impacts of utility-scale renewable energy projects on peoples and communities, associated risks for policymakers, and explains how national, regional, and global policies can help mitigate those impacts and risks. The briefing addresses different agents of policy- and decision-making: Host states, where renewable energy projects are proposed or located; Home states where corporations pursuing renewable energy investments, especially investments abroad, are based; Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) financing renewable energy investments, especially …

Using Federal Public Lands To Model A New Energy Future: Why The Biden Administration Should Prioritize Renewable Energy Development On Public Lands, Meghen Sullivan

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

Oil and gas extraction on public lands and waters is responsible for twenty percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. If American public lands were their own country, they would be the fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world. As of 2020, only twenty percent of total U.S. electricity generation came from renewable energy sources. While renewable energy development on public lands has increased, most renewable energy comes from private lands. However, public lands contain immense renewable energy potential; for example, it is estimated that half of this country’s geothermal resources are found on public lands. Despite underutilized renewable energy potential …

Pedal Into The Future, Elliot Wiley

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

Congress severely weakened the Electric Bicycle Incentive Kickstart for the Environment Act (E-Bike Act) when the bill was absorbed into the Build Back Better Bill. Electricity is the future, yet Congress has defanged a bill that could create significant progress in making bicycling a more accessible option for commuters.

Offshore Wind Energy Or Domestic Seafood? How The Department Of The Interior Can Facilitate Both Through Self-Binding Procedures, Adele Irwin

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

The United States has many identities, including that of a coastal nation. With the largest Exclusive Economic Zone (“EEZ”) in the world, the United States has jurisdiction over more human activity in the ocean than any other country. Like people in most coastal nations, Americans are drawn to the ocean. Almost forty percent of the population lives in coastal counties that constitute less than ten percent of the nation’s land mass, and 58.3 million jobs and more than $9.5 trillion of gross domestic product are attributable to ocean resources annually. These figures have increased over time.

The diverse industries …

Power Play: The President's Role In Shaping Renewable Energy Regulation And Policy, Luke Bartol

Honors Projects

With the impacts of climate change becoming more and more apparent every day, finding means of effective action to mitigate its effects become increasingly critical. While localized work can play an important role, federal action is necessary to have the most widespread and effective impact, especially on interconnected issues such as clean energy. Congressional action is the avenue of change at this level, however in an increasingly partisan and divided environment, progress on this front is far short of what is needed.

Looking to the president is logical here, both as a single actor more insulated from partisan fights, but …

Deals In The Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, And How Law Can Help, Christiana Ochoa

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Informed by original empirical research conducted in the Midwestern United States, this Article provides a rich and textured understanding of the rapidly emerging opposition to renewable energy projects. Beyond the Article’s urgent practical contributions, it also examines the importance of formalism and formality in contracts and complicates current understandings.

Rural communities in every windblown and sun-drenched region of the United States are enmeshed in legal, political, and social conflicts related to the country’s rapid transition to renewable energy. Organized local opposition has foreclosed millions of acres from renewable energy development, impeding national and state-level commitments to achieving renewable energy targets …

In California And Europe, A New Dawn For Corporate Climate Disclosure, Magali Delmas, Michael B. Gerrard, Eric Orts

Faculty Scholarship

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to finalize a new rule this month to cover required corporate climate disclosures by public-reporting companies. But the bigger news is that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has announced that he will soon sign into law two climate change disclosure bills passed by the state Legislature.

Who Decides Where The Renewables Should Go?: A Response To Danielle Stokes’ Renewable Energy Federalism, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

One of the central tasks in addressing the climate crisis is transitioning from an energy system based on fossil fuels to one that mainly uses renewable energy. In her article “Renewable Energy Federalism,” Professor Danielle Stokes has highlighted one of the key impediments to this transition — delays in state and local permitting of renewable energy facilities. She has proposed a new approach that would give more authority to the federal government. Stokes’ approach has much to commend it. However, I differ on some aspects.

I will begin by describing the magnitude of the problem — the amount …

A Time For Triage, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

The world is desperately behind in the energy transformation needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Catching up requires a massive buildout of wind and solar power and associated infrastructure, but in the United States many impediments stand in the way. Among them, ironically enough, are environmental laws. Here I argue that we must accept difficult tradeoffs, sacrificing some of what we consider precious in order to avoid far worse impacts.

Community Empowerment In Decarbonization: Nepa’S Role, Wyatt G. Sassman

Washington Law Review

This Article addresses a potential tension between two ambitions for the transition to clean energy: reducing regulatory red-tape to quickly build out renewable energy, and leveraging that build-out to empower low-income communities and communities of color. Each ambition carries a different view of communities’ role in decarbonization. To those focused on rapid build-out of renewable energy infrastructure, communities are a potential threat who could slow or derail renewable energy projects through opposition during the regulatory process. To those focused on leveraging the transition to clean energy to advance racial and economic justice, communities are necessary partners in the key decisions …

Tightening The Legal ‘Net’: The Constitution’S Supremacy Clause Straddle Of The Power Divide, Steven Ferrey

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

This article analyzes Constitutional Supremacy Clause tensions in preempting state law that addresses climate change and the rapid warming of the Planet. Net metering laws, enacted in 80% of U.S. states, are a primary legal mechanism to control and mitigate climate warming. This article analyzes three recent federal court decisions creating a preemptive Supremacy Clause stand-off between federal and state law and presents a detailed state-by-state analysis of which those 80% of states’ laws could be preempted by legal challenge.

If state net metering laws affected only ordinary technologies, this issue would not be front and center with global warming. …

Held V. State, Alec D. Skuntz

Public Land & Resources Law Review

On March 13, 2020, a group of 16 Montana children and teenagers filed a complaint in the First Judicial District, Lewis and Clark County against the State of Montana and several state agencies. These young Plaintiffs sought injunctive and declaratory relief against Defendants for their complicity in continuing to extract and release harmful amounts of greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change. Plaintiffs premised their argument on the Montana Constitution’s robust environmental rights and protections. The Defendants filed a motion to dismiss which the District Court granted in-part and denied in-part. Held provides a roadmap for future litigation by elucidating …

Covid-19'S Impact On Renewable Energy, Joel B. Eisen

Law Faculty Publications

"In keeping with this Symposium's focus on accelerating clean energy growth and nations' ability to meet climate goals, this Article examines recent trends during the COVID-19 pandemic that at least temporarily set back the pace of growth, although conditions have rebounded somewhat since a disastrous spring of 2020. This Article supports several near-term policy prescriptions aimed at promoting a speedier return to the upward trajectory renewable energy enjoyed before the pandemic. These include extending the tax policies that support renewables beyond their short-term extensions in pandemic relieflegislation and establishing robust programs to help workers in renewable energy industries who have …

Cities Climate Law: A Legal Framework For Local Action In The U.S., Amy E. Turner, Michael Burger

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

In the last several years, cities around the world have taken on a leading role in advancing policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the United States, dozens of cities have set goals targeting ambitious greenhouse gas emission reductions by a date certain (80% or "net zero" by 2050 are common formulations), and many more have pledged to achieve a 100% renewable or carbon-free energy supply.

Many U.S. cities are still determining the policies that would best achieve their climate commitments. In addition to political, financial, and technical considerations, these cities must consider how to structure their policies to comport …

How Biden’S Environmental Policies Will Affect New York, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan

Faculty Scholarship

As this column has previously discussed, President Joe Biden’s environmental policies are a sharp reversal of those of former President Donald Trump. Today’s column spotlights how this change will affect New York state and New York City.

Mtsun, Llc V. Mont. Dep't Of Pub. Serv. Regulation, Ryan W. Frank

Public Land & Resources Law Review

MTSUN, LLC initiated negotiations for a power purchase agreement with NorthWestern Energy in September of 2015 for a potential solar energy facility in eastern Montana. In December of 2016, at an impasse in contract negotiations with NorthWestern, MTSUN filed a petition with the Montana Public Service Commission requesting that the agency exercise its statutory authority to set the terms of the contract for the proposed project. Following MTSUN’s petition, the PSC issued a series of orders and reconsiderations which ultimately reconfigured the entirety of the agreement, including the terms that the parties had previously agreed upon. After exhausting its administrative …

Climate Change, Coming Soon To A Court Near You – Report Two: Climate Litigation In Asia And The Pacific And Beyond, Briony Eales, Ama Francis, Michael Burger, Romany M. Webb, Jessica A. Wentz, Dena Adler, Gregorio Rafael P. Bueta, Francesse Joy J. Cordon-Navarro

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Climate change in Asia and the Pacific is deadly and impacts communities now. Regional climate litigation seeks relief in increasingly urgent ways and judges need a tool kit to respond. Report Two of this four-part series is a comprehensive review of the growing number and variety of climate lawsuits in Asia and the Pacific. It underscores the unique flavor and voice of regional jurisprudence and compares it with global approaches. No one can solve climate change alone and neither can any particular judiciary. Judges can, however, learn from each other, taking judicial excellence and applying it to the case before …

New York’S New Statute On Siting Renewable Energy Facilities, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan

Faculty Scholarship

As part of a massive budget bill signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on April 3, New York has adopted the Accelerated Renewable Energy Growth and Community Benefit Act (AREGCBA). It completely revamps the process under which large-scale renewable energy facilities and associated transmission lines receive state and local approvals.

Global Investor-Director Survey On Climate Risk Management, Kristin Bresnahan, Jens Frankenreiter, Sophie L'Helias, Brea Hinricks, Nina Hodzic, Julian Nyarko, Sneha Pandya, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

Changes in the global climate are having profound impacts on business operations, governance, and organizational management around the world. Boards of directors are searching for ways to account for these changes as they help guide their organizations, and investors are increasingly concerned about how these changes might impact their portfolios. This global survey, conducted by a team of researchers at the Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership at Columbia Law School and experts at LeaderXXchange, seeks to understand how – if at all – institutional investors and board directors incorporate climate-related issues in their investment decision …

Climate Recommendations For A New Democratic President And A New Congress: A Compilation, Clara Grieder, Jordan Gerow

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Congress has not enacted a major new environmental law since 1990, when President George H.W. Bush signed the Clean Air Act Amendments and the Oil Pollution Act. He also supported, and the Senate ratified, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. The administration of President Bill Clinton supported the Kyoto Protocol, which was designed to achieve the objectives of the Framework Convention, but could not secure Senate ratification. President George W. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol and many other actions on climate change. President Barack Obama supported action on climate change; when he was unable to secure …

What Happens When The Green New Deal Meets The Old Green Laws?, J. B. Ruhl, James Salzman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The multi-faceted infrastructure goals of the Green New Deal will be impossible to achieve in the desired time frames if the existing federal, state, and local siting and environmental protection statutory regimes are applied. Business, labor, property rights, environmental protection, and social justice interests will use them to grind the Green New Deal to a snail's pace. Using the renewable energy transition as the infrastructure case study, this Essay is a call to arms for the need to design New Green Laws for the Green New Deal. Part I briefly summarizes what we are learning about the pace and magnitude …

New York Environmental Legislation In 2019, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan

Faculty Scholarship

In 2019, with the Democrats newly in full control of the State Senate, the Assembly and the Governor’s office, New York adopted more environmental legislation than it had in more than a decade. This included a sweeping climate change statute, a new environmental justice article in the Environmental Conservation Law, and a statewide ban on plastic carryout bags. This annual survey reports on these developments and numerous other laws targeting environmental concerns.

Market Segmentation Vs. Subsidization: Clean Energy Credits And The Commerce Clause's Economic Wisdom, Felix Mormann

Felix Mormann

The dormant Commerce Clause has long been a thorn in the side of state policymakers. The latest battleground for the clash between federal courts and state legislatures is energy policy. In the absence of a decisive federal policy response to climate change, nearly thirty states have created a new type of securities—clean energy credits—to promote lowcarbon renewable and nuclear power. As more and more of these programs come under attack for alleged violations of the dormant Commerce Clause, this Article explores the constitutional constraints on clean energy credit policies. Careful analysis of recent and ongoing litigation reveals the need for …