Energy Policy Commons^™

The Energy And Environmental Footprint Of Ai, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Ethan I. Thorpe, Jonathan M. Gilligan

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to create major economic and social benefits, but also to rapidly escalate electricity demand and its associated environmental impacts. Information availability has been a cornerstone of environmental law for half a century, and this Article argues that providing information to individual, corporate, and other users about the electricity demand and environmental impacts of AI can reduce those impacts without delaying development of the technology. Little is known about how different large language models (LLMs) compare on these metrics, though. To address whether users have access to the information necessary to address this shortcoming, the …

Availability Model To Evaluate Ai Data Centers’ Role In Grid Stability, Troy Mcsimov, Trevor S. Kunz, Jeffrey Billo

SMU Data Science Review

The United States has made it clear; it is imperative that the US wins the global AI race. This paper focuses on one of the most challenging puzzle pieces surfaced at the POWER Data Center conference (San Antonio, Sept. 30.); for Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) the limiting factor is not generation alone but the need to balance generation and load to preserve grid reliability.

The regulatory landscape fundamentally changed with the passage of Texas Senate Bill 6 in June 2025, which mandates new large loads must "contribute to the recovery of the interconnecting electric utility’s costs" (Texas Legislature, …

Analysis Of Policies And Incentives For The Successful Implementation Of Hydrogen-Fueled Medium-Duty And Heavy-Duty Vehicles In Humboldt County, California, Alka Verma

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The 21st century has seen a significant rise in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with the transportation sector contributing 23% of these emissions. Medium-duty and heavy-duty vehicles (MD/HD) are particularly impactful, accounting for over a quarter of transport-related emissions. In Humboldt County, California, transportation represents 53% of total emissions, with MD/HD vehicles being a major contributor. As light-duty vehicles shift to zero-emission alternatives, the MD/HD sector faces unique challenges. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles offer a promising solution, providing longer range, higher energy density, and quicker refueling compared to battery electric vehicles (BEVs). These features make hydrogen an attractive option for …

Powering The Machine, Draining The Planet: Whether U.S. Environmental Law Is Equipped To Regulate The Energy And Water Demands Of Ai Data Centers, Michael Marcu

Journal of Earth and Life Science

Artificial intelligence (AI) data centers have become one of the United States' fastest-growing and least-regulated sources of environmental stress. In 2024 alone, U.S. data centers consumed 183 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity more than the entire nation of Pakistan and consumed an estimated 17 billion gallons of water (IEA, 2025; Berkeley Lab, 2024). By 2030, electricity demand from these facilities is projected to reach 426 TWh, a 133% increase in six years (Pew Research Center, 2025). This paper examines whether the existing U.S. environmental regulatory framework put by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), and the …

Allocating Electricity, Alexandra Klass, Dave Owen

Articles

The U.S. electricity system is premised on the ideas that utilities have a duty to serve all customers in their service territories and that electricity supply should always meet demand. Until recently, there has been little reason to question these foundational premises. U.S. electricity demand has remained flat for over a decade, and during earlier periods of growth, new energy generation plants were relatively easy to build. Now, however, electricity experts predict massive load growth—most notably from data centers to power artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency—and building new power plants is no longer easy.

Major efforts are underway to increase electricity …

Who Owns The Wind: The Absence Of Community Wind Farms In California, Sky Berry-Weiss

Master's Projects and Capstones

Community ownership structures for wind farms have been around for decades, particularly in European countries, due to high socioeconomic benefits. Given these significant benefits, one might expect community wind to thrive in the United States—especially in a state like California, which prides itself on progressive climate policy and renewable energy leadership. Yet utility-scale community wind remains largely absent from research on California’s energy system, raising questions about its existence in the state. To pinpoint how many utility-scale community owned wind farms are in California, this study surveys every operational wind turbine in the state. After classifying each wind farm by …

Build Public Renewables, Again, Sandeep Vaheesan

Michigan Law Review

A review of The Price Is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet. By Brett Christophers.

The Real Story Of Nepa Litigation In Clean Energy Permitting, Anna Mance

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Environmental protections and the processes of the administrative state are under attack. In recent years, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has drawn outsized criticism from across the political and legal spectrum as a major impediment to climate friendly infrastructure and the clean energy transition. NEPA enables private groups to challenge development through litigation. Critics are moving to strip public oversight over federal permitting based on claims that these private groups bring largely frivolous environmental claims to court, driving up costs for developers and delaying progress responding to climate change. But is this really true?

Drawing on an original dataset …

Overcoming Obstacles To Equitable Energy Transitions And Promoting Energy Sovereignty For Us Tribal Nations, Don Lee

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This dissertation explores the potential of equitable energy transitions guided by the tenets of energy justice with a focus on Tribal energy sovereignty through renewable energy development. It contributes to the literature on the social acceptance of energy systems, public perceptions of renewable energy transitions, the ramifications of US federal Tribal law on Tribal energy development and sovereignty, and the implications of conforming to capitalist logics in the energy justice literature.

To understand the importance of building reciprocal and collaborative relationships, our team of researchers and Tribal members collaborated on the development of a methodology to survey respondents in a …

The Law Of Energy Abundance, Alexandra B. Klass, Matthew Appel

Articles

For the first time in decades, electricity demand in the United States is increasing due to the growth of data centers to power artificial intelligence, new manufacturing hubs, and transportation electrification. At the same time, coalfired power plants have been closing in response to competition from lower cost natural gas and renewable energy. Clean energy is being rapidly deployed to replace fossil fuels but not quickly enough to address concerns about demand growth and grid reliability. Accordingly, there is a growing imbalance between electricity supply and demand in many regions of the country that threatens to increase electricity prices and …

Reckoning With Social Policy In Utility Regulation, Alexandra B. Klass, Gabriel Chan

Articles

State public utility regulation in the energy sector is undergoing a rapid transformation driven by public and private investment in clean energy deployment, the corresponding threat to incumbent fossil fuel interests, and growing demands for energy justice. This transformation will impact many aspects of societal well-being—from energy insecurity in disadvantaged communities to dramatic shifts in energy-sector employment—so it is unsurprising that public utility commissions would engage with social policy concerns. However, for decades, state courts and utility stakeholders have admonished commissions that they are economic regulators and that their jurisdiction does not include social policy. This Article shows that state …

Shining Light On Policy: The Case For Solar Panel Mandates On New Construction Projects, Emily Glazier

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The note argues that solar panel mandates on new construction projects are a necessary and sensible approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving climate goals, but their implementation must include provisions to protect vulnerable communities and address environmental justice concerns. While such mandates face legal and political challenges, the benefits of decreased emissions and energy independence outweigh the costs, particularly when paired with measures like community solar systems, incentives, and exemptions.

Repurposed Energy, Alexandra B. Klass, Hannah Wiseman

Articles

Wildfires, weather extremes, and other conditions induced partially by climate change add urgency to the project of accelerating the clean energy transition from fossil fuels to zero-carbon energy infrastructure. Yet the hurdles to accomplishing such a massive industrial-scale transition are daunting. Indeed, large renewable energy generation projects regularly face denials or project-killing delays across the United States. This Article proposes a national policy to channel the bulk of new clean energy projects to targeted categories of both rural lands and urban, post-industrial lands that we define collectively as “repurposed energy” sites. Such lands will consist of marginal farmland, abandoned coal …

Three Essays On Energy Related To State Policies And Low Carbon Transitions, Pinky Thomas

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation consists of three essays on energy-related state policies and energy transition. Each paragraph below refers to the three abstracts for the three chapters in this dissertation, respectively.

The first essay is entitled: “Impacts of State Tax and Resource Ownership Policies on Extraction: Evidence from U.S. Natural Gas Production”. The innovation of combined use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing technologies during the 2000s has allowed natural gas producers in the United States to extract natural gas and liquids from deep shale formations in a cost-efficient manner. This essay evaluates whether unconventional gas production responds to tax changes, and …

U.S. Energy Information Administration Information Resources, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides information about the resources produced by U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration. These resources cover energy statistics for U.S., states, the United States, and foreign countries. They also cover energy products as varied as coal, natural gas, nuclear energy, petroleum, and renewable energy.

Meeting Clean Energy Goals Will Require The Grid Of The Future, Ken Berlin, Rob Gramlich, Alexandra B. Klass, Josiah Neeley

Articles

The transmission grid is the critical superhighway that connects energy supply and demand. But our grid was designed for the power plants of the past—not for the diverse range of resources and technologies of our clean energy future. Over 70 percent of the nation’s transmission infrastructure is more than 25 years old, and in many areas of the country constraints have already been an impediment to renewable power. To meet greenhouse gas reduction goals, we will need to expand electric transmission systems by 60 percent by 2030 and possibly triple the capacity of these systems by 2050. The Infl ation …

Regulating For Energy Justice, Alexandra B. Klass, Gabriel Chan

Articles

In this Article, we explore and critique the foundational norms that shape federal and state energy regulation and suggest pathways for reform that can incorporate principles of “energy justice.” These energy justice principles—developed in academic scholarship and social movements—include the equitable distribution of costs and benefits of the energy system, equitable participation and representation in energy decision making, and restorative justice for structurally marginalized groups.

While new legislation, particularly at the state level, is critical to the effort to advance energy justice, our focus here is on regulators’ ability to implement reforms now using their existing authority to advance the …

Path Towards Energy Sustainability: Amultidimensional Analysis Of Energypoverty In Philippine Households, Anna Katrina R. Ignacio, Maria Sofia Lei P. Puncia, Arlene B. Inocencio, Marites Tiongco, Mitzie Irene P. Conchada, Alellie B. Sobreviñas, Rens Adrian T. Calub

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

Measuring energy poverty to meet one’s basic needs is vital for household assessments concerning accessibility of energy, affordability of energy prices, usage of energy resources, and sufficiency of energy consumption. In this Policy Brief, we have listed recommendations and rationale to improve the energy conditions of Philippine households.

A Mixed-Methods Analysis Of Biofuels, Teresa Cristina Garcia

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Brazil has the largest sugarcane acreage in the world (FAOSTAT, 2020) and is the world leader in the production of sugarcane-based ethanol (Sousa Junior et al., 2017). Due to the technical experience in the production of biofuels and the availability of sugarcane straw and bagasse, the country has a great potential to commercially produce second-generation ethanol (E2G) (Nyko et. al., 2010). In 2017, Brazil enacted a new National Biofuels Policy, called RenovaBio, to expand the production and use of biofuels in the country. This dissertation combines three essays that explore biofuels law and policy with a special focus on Brazil. …

Live Local, Renew Local: Community Sourced Solar Energy In New Mexico, Alexandra Vk Iturralde, Elizabeth Brooke Holland, Coleman Piburn

2020 Award Winners

No abstract provided.

It's Always Sunny In Florida: Reexamining The Role Of Energy Monopolies After Recent Solar Ballot Initiatives, Lauren Gillespie

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

Dual Sovereignty Is Out, Time For Concurrent Jurisdiction To Shine, Scott Jacobson

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

U.S. Regulatory Regimes And Offshore Energy Production, Jeffery R. Ray

Buffalo Environmental Law Journal

This paper shows that offshore wind is an emerging key resource that should comprise a greater portion of our national energy fuel mix. Energy security, as a new process of security to our economic and military might in the modern world, has become an intrinsic issue of national security. This paradigm is constrained by the knowledge and experience regarding the harmful effects of producing energy. The harm not only to human health and safety, but also to substantive sections of the respective environment and ecology that is geographically situated in proximity to extraction or production locations. Perhaps the most relevant …

Getches-Wilkinson Center Newsletter, Fall 2017, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment

Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment Newsletter (2013-)

No abstract provided.

A Study On The United States Renewable Energy Policy Design And Outcomes, Dmitry Zelik

SJD Dissertations

Energy is essential for the existence of modem civilization, and the amount of energy consumed by society is constantly growing. In 2015, the United States alone generated about 4 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity. About 67% of the electricity generated was from fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, and petroleum). The United States' high dependence on fossil fuels leads to numerous problems, such as increased greenhouse gas emissions, urban air pollution, as well as geopolitical and military tensions. There are two primary ways that scholars and politicians are trying to address the problem of fossil-fuel consumption--either by reducing the population's dependence on …

Thorium’S Glow: Lighting The Way For Safe, Cheap Energy Production, Zachary Hawari

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.

Agenda: Flpma Turns 40, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment

FLPMA Turns 40 (October 21)

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers approximately 245 million acres of our public lands and yet, for most of our nation's history, these lands seemed largely destined to end up in private hands. Even when the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 ushered in an important era of better managing public grazing districts and "promoting the highest use of the public lands," such use of our public lands still was plainly considered temporary, "pending its final disposal." It was not until 1976 with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) that congress adopted a policy that …

Agenda: Winter, Wilderness & Climate: Threats & Solutions, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment, The Wilderness Society, Protect Our Winters

Winter, Wilderness, and Climate--Threats and Solutions (October 12)

In partnership with the Getches-Wilkinson Center, join The Wilderness Society and Protect Our Winters for an interactive presentation about energy development and climate impacts on public lands.

This event was held on Wednesday, October 12, 2016, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m., in the University of Colorado Law School, Wolf Law Building, Wittemyer Courtroom.

Slides: Winter, Wilderness & Climate: Threats & Solutions, Jim Ramey, Lindsay Bourgoine

Winter, Wilderness, and Climate--Threats and Solutions (October 12)

Presenters:

Jim Ramey, The Wilderness Society

Lindsay Bourgoine, Protect Our Winters

56 slides

Getches-Wilkinson Center Newsletter, Fall 2016, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment

Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment Newsletter (2013-)

No abstract provided.