Law Commons^™

Dr. Carb Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying About The Feds And Love States’ Rights, Dan Strong

Washington and Lee Journal of Energy, Climate, and the Environment

Climate change is one of the largest environmental problems the world is currently facing. At the forefront of the climate change issue is the problem of carbon emissions. Environmentalists were hopeful that a national regulatory structure would be created with the enactment of the Clean Air Act in the 1970s. Since its enactment, however, it is clear the Clean Air Act was not the solution to the national carbon emissions problem environmentalists were hoping for. With the federal government failing to act, states have taken it upon themselves to regulate carbon emissions. California, with its enactment of the California Low …

The State Response To Climate Change: 50 State Survey, Laura Jensen, Kelly Nishikawa, Benjamin Lowenthal

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This survey accompanies Global Climate Change and U.S. Law, Second Edition (Michael B. Gerrard and Jody Freeman, eds, 2014). It compiles state legislation, rules and executive orders that specifically address climate change as of the end of April 2014. It also includes a wide variety of state activities that may have an impact on greenhouse gases including legislation related to energy efficiency and renewable energy. The focus of this material is to provide readers with an understanding of the range of state activity that may contribute to greenhouse gas reduction and climate change. Some types of energy efficiency, alternative fuels …

Executive Power And Regional Climate Change Agreements, Conor J. Walline

Pace Environmental Law Review

This Article explores the potential for such agreements to address climate change on a regional level by analyzing the parallels between the agreements, the nature and limits of the executive power used to create them, and the scope of enforcement available under them. Section II briefly examines the present state of climate warming and its attendant impacts, while Section III highlights the relative failure of current national and international approaches to mitigating climate change. Section IV focuses on the recent rise of environmental regional agreements in the United States, specifically those agreements to which the State of New York has …

A Legal Approach To The Improvement Of Energy Efficiency In Europe And The United States: Greening The Existing Building Stock, Teresa -. Parejo

Teresa - Parejo

In large cities buildings are responsible for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions in the EU, and 70% of energy consumption and 40% of CO2 emissions in the US. Hence, improving the energy performance of buildings is a very cost-effective way to fight against climate change.

Most of the potential for energy savings is in existing buildings so they provide the greatest opportunities and challenges, but the measures adopted until today to improve energy efficiency, despite some innovative proposals, have been insufficient and mainly focused in new buildings. All the actions developed either by the EU and …

Options For Adaption To Climate Change, Richard L. Ottinger, Pianpian Wang, Kristin M. Motel

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In order to tackle climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) provided a portfolio of measures: mitigation, adaptation and constant research. Although Article 10 of the Kyoto Protocol underlined the importance of adaptation, adaptation to climate change had been obtained limited attention in the early negotiations of climate talks. In 2010, Cancun Session of Conference of Parties (“COP”) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“UNFCCC”) highlighted the equal importance of adaptation just as mitigation. Since then, increasing attention has been drawn to adaptation practice by the international society. Typically, adaptation can be broken down into …

Innovative Financing For Renewable Energy, Richard L. Ottinger, John Bowie

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Carbon pollution from fossil-fuel combustion is the largest contributor to climate change worldwide. Renewable energy can materially help to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and their principal cause, worldwide dependence on carbon fuels. If our goal is to remain at or below 1990 numbers, then fossil fuels must be phased out of the global energy portfolio.

While other factors such as energy inefficiencies in buildings, appliances and transportation, for example; deforestation, farm animal excretion, pipeline leakage, HFCs for refrigeration, black soot and changes in land use also contribute to increased emissions, finding new, innovative ways to empower people to seize …

Beyond Tax Credits: Smarter Tax Policy For A Cleaner, More Democratic Energy Future, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

Solar, wind, and other renewable energy technologies have the potential to mitigate climate change, secure America’s energy independence, and create millions of green jobs. In the absence of a price on carbon emissions, however, these long-term benefits will not be realized without near-term policy support for renewables. This Article assesses the efficiency of federal tax incentives for renewables and proposes policy reform to more cost-effectively promote renewable energy through capital markets and crowdfunding.

Federal support for renewable energy projects today comes primarily in the form of tax incentives such as accelerated depreciation and, critically, tax credits. Empirical evidence reveals that …

Slides: Regulating Oil And Gas Emissions In The Denver Julesberg Basin, Garry Kaufman

Water and Air Quality Issues in Oil and Gas Development: The Evolving Framework of Regulation and Management (Martz Summer Conference, June 5-6)

Presenter: Garry Kaufman, Deputy Director, Colorado Air Pollution Control Division

25 slides

Regulation Of Greenhouse Gases And Other Air Pollutants In The First Obama Administration And Major Air Issues For The Second Term, Patricia Mccubbin

Patricia Ross McCubbin

President Barack Obama has made addressing climate change the centerpiece of his environmental policy. Most recently, on June 25, 2013, the President gave a groundbreaking speech detailing the steps his administration will take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the United States. Of great controversy, the President directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to limit emissions of greenhouse gases from both new and existing power plants, which represent 40% of total U.S. carbon emissions. The President’s call to action – in his June 2013 speech and throughout his first term – stands in stark contrast to Congress’s inability to …

Public Utility And The Low-Carbon Future, William Boyd

Publications

Substantial reductions in global power sector emissions will be needed by midcentury to avoid significant disruption of the climate system. Achieving these reductions will require greatly increased levels of financing, technological innovation, and policy reform. In the United States, the scale and complexity of the overall challenge have raised important questions regarding prevailing regulatory and business models, with much scrutiny directed at the traditional practice of public utility regulation. Recognizing the many valid criticisms leveled against public utility regulation and the important questions raised about the viability of traditional utility business models, particularly in the face of substantial growth in …

Green Go! - The Military's Sustainability Mission, Felix Mormann

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Sun Also Rises: Prospects For Solar District Heating In The United States, Adam L. Reed, John S. Mccartney

Kevin L Doran

Renewable thermal energy remains a largely untapped resource in the United States, despite its low costs and growing popularity in many other countries and the pressing need to rapidly deploy and scale carbon-free energy sources in order to mitigate anthropogenic climate change. In this article, an energy attorney and a civil engineer collaborate to examine the prospects in the United States for solar district heating (SDH), a thermal technology that leverages economies of scale to provide zero-carbon, round-the-clock space and water heating (on average, the two largest components of building energy demand) to neighborhoods and commercial zones at costs competitive …

Beyond Tax Credits: Smarter Tax Policy For A Cleaner, More Democratic Energy Future, Felix Mormann

Articles

Solar, wind, and other renewable energy technologies have the potential to mitigate climate change, secure America's energy independence, and create millions of green jobs. In the absence of a price on carbon emissions, however, these long-term benefits will not be realized without near-term policy support for renewable energy. This Article assesses the efficiency of federal tax incentives for renewables and proposes policy reform to promote renewable energy more cost-effectively through capital markets and crowdfunding.

Federal support for renewable energy today comes primarily in the form of accelerated depreciation and, critically, tax credits. Empirical evidence reveals that only a fraction of …

Fundamental Principles Of Law For The Anthropocene?, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

A wide array of questions arises from global change to confront environmental law. The IPCC has examined social decisions affecting the climate in the design of human settlements, transport systems, industrialisation, agriculture and silviculture, waste management, provisions for energy, and virtually all other socio-economic dimensions of human life. The AR-5, too, cannot avoid raising issues of human ethics and values at local and regional scales. Such issues reach environmental policy and law directly. The IPCC’s AR-5 report furthers widespread public debate about the human dimensions of climate change, and how social theory relates to environmental change. Already, climate change has …

A Step By Step Look At Uarg V. Epa: A New Layer Of Greenhouse Gas Regulation, Kevin O. Leske

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.