Energy and Utilities Law Commons^™

Shooting Stars And Dancing Fish: A Walk To The World We Want, Tony Oposa

Environmental Law Program Publications @ Haub Law

From the foreword by Durwood Zaelke, President, Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, Washington, DC.

“Since the beginning of time, human knowledge and culture have been passed down through stories. Short stories, songs, prayers, poems, even paintings can stick in your mind forever. These have always been the most powerful ways we learn and remember.

Tony is not only one of the world’s greatest lawyers, he is also one of the world’s greatest storytellers.

This book, in which he generously shares his experiences, his scars, and most importantly his humanity, is Tony’s gift to generations to come.

But he does …

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 …

Contractors’ State License Board, Mayra Castro, J. D. Fellmeth

California Regulatory Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Blood Biofuels, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Trust Or Bust: Complications With Tribal Trust Obligations And Environmental Sovereignty, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Paradoxes Of “Decarbonization”, David B. Spence

Brooklyn Law Review

Scholars and policymakers continue to debate the shape of a post-carbon world, and how fast the United States can “decarbonize” its energy sector. Recent trends—including the reduced costs of renewables, regulatory and market pressure on coal-fired power, and successful integration of large amounts of wind power into the grid—have fed optimism about the possibility of rapid and “deep” decarbonization. Unfortunately, however, encouraging ever-more substitution of renewables for fossil fuels creates unintended consequences—paradoxes—that stem in part from two sometimes unavoidable and under-appreciated truths. First, the three attributes we value in the electricity system—cost, reliability and environmental performance—are in tension with one …

Environmental Injustice And The Pursuit Of A Post-Carbon World: The Unintended Consequences Of The Clean Air Act As A Cautionary Tale For Solar Energy Development, Shannon Elizabeth Bell

Brooklyn Law Review

Most policy decisions aimed at improving the environment have been conceived and implemented without attention to issues of environmental justice, creating what sociologist Julian Agyeman calls an “equity deficit” in the discourse and practice of environmental sustainability. This article presents the unintended consequences of the Clean Air Act (CAA) and its amendments as a cautionary tale for what can happen when environmental regulations are enacted without adequately considering environmental justice concerns. Although the CAA has been responsible for much good in the United States as a whole—including significant reductions in acid rain and health-harming pollutants—it has also brought significant harm …

The Political Economy Of Decarbonization: A Research Agenda, Eric Biber, Nina Kelsey, Jonas Meckling

Brooklyn Law Review

Addressing climate change entails daunting policy challenges for nations seeking to decarbonize their energy systems. Current policies are inadequate to achieve the necessary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in major part because of political resistance to more aggressive policies. Academic policy research to date has primarily focused on what policies are economically optimal, or on what is politically feasible in the short-term. But given the long-term nature of the problem and the scale of the policy challenges, an essential question is how to improve the political landscape for aggressive climate policies over time. In this paper we outline a research …

Field Of Visions: Interorganizational Challenges To The Smart Energy Transition In Washington State, Scott Frickel, Daniela Wühr, Christine Horne, Meghan Elizabeth Kallman

Brooklyn Law Review

The smart grid promises an efficient, reliable, and sustainable energy system. Smart meters provide machine-to-machine communication capacity and are key elements of the smart grid. Smart meters allow utilities to improve system efficiency and reliability and allow electricity users to closely monitor, fine-tune, and reduce energy consumption and costs. For these and other reasons, positive expectations for the smart grid and smart meters run high among policymakers, regulators, engineering and computer science professionals, industrialists, environmentalists, and others. Even so, different organizations and stakeholders define and understand the technology in different ways. For some actors smart meters are a tool for …

Grassroots Innovation Systems For The Post-Carbon World: Promoting Economic Democracy, Environmental Sustainability, And The Public Interest, Shobita Parthasarathy

Brooklyn Law Review

This article uses a sociotechnical systems approach to advocate for an alternative way of thinking about the role of innovation in international development efforts, specifically those focused on environmental sustainability and a post-carbon world. This approach views technology and society as inextricably linked, highlighting how particular values, norms, individual rights and responsibilities, social practices and relationships, and aspects of political culture are embedded in the design, development, implementation, and use of technology. Using the example of clean cookstoves, this article argues that technologies customarily deployed to achieve international development goals are embedded in particular values, assumptions, and social structures that …

Life Cycle Analysis And Transportation Energy, Alexandra B. Klass, Andrew Heiring

Brooklyn Law Review

As government actors and the private sector attempt to decarbonize the economy, the role of life cycle analysis (also know as life cycle assessment or LCA) has become increasingly important. In this essay, we explore the use of life cycle analysis in the transportation sector to assess its influence in federal and state policy efforts to move to a low-carbon energy future. We first define life cycle analysis and explain its use in evaluating the environmental impacts of all stages of a product from production, to use, to disposal. We then review the use of life cycle analysis in considering …

Stranded Costs And Grid Decarbonizaiton, Emily Hammond, Jim Rossi

Brooklyn Law Review

Energy law is well equipped to facilitate the transition to a decarbonized grid. Over the past half century, energy law has endured many stranded cost experiments, each helping firms and customers adjust to a new normal. However, these past experiments have contributed to a myopic regulatory approach to past stranded cost recovery by: (1) endorsing a preference for addressing all stranded costs only after energy resource investment decisions have been made; and (2) fixating on the firm’s financial costs and protection of investors, rather than on the broader impacts of each transition for the energy system. The current transition to …

Legal Pathways To Deep Decarbonization: Lessons From California And Germany, John C. Dernbach

Brooklyn Law Review

In the December 2015 Paris Agreement, nations of the world agreed to reduce their net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by the second half of the century. For developed countries, accomplishing that goal requires a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by more than 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. As ambitious and even unachievable as that goal may seem, some developed countries have already made considerable progress in conceptualizing and even adopting legal approaches for achieving decarbonization. This paper describes the approaches being taken in two major developed country jurisdictions—California and Germany—and suggest lessons from that experience that could be …

Clean Electrification, Shelley Welton

Faculty Publications

To combat climate change, many leading states have adopted the aim of creating a “participatory” grid. In this new model, electricity is priced based on time of consumption and carbon content, and consumers are encouraged to adjust their behavior and adopt new technologies to maintain affordable electricity. Although a more participatory grid is an important component of lowering greenhouse gas emissions, it also raises a new problem of clean energy justice: utilities and consumer advocates claim that such policies unjustly benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, given the type of consumer best able to participate in the …

States Will Be Big Fans: A State Driven Regulatory Process For Offshore Wind Development Off U.S. Coastlines, Erin K. Benson

University of Baltimore Law Review

No abstract provided.

Improving Green Building: Comparing Leed Certification To The Fda And Its Private, Third Party Rating Approach, Patrick Kain

American University Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

Clean Electrification, Shelley Welton

University of Colorado Law Review

To combat climate change, many leading states have adopted the aim of creating a "participatory"g rid. In this new model, electricity is priced based on time of consumption and carbon content, and consumers are encouraged to adjust their behavior and adopt new technologies to maintain affordable electricity. Although a more participatory grid is an important component of lowering greenhouse gas emissions, it also raises a new problem of clean energy justice: utilities and consumer advocates claim that such policies unjustly benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, given the type of consumer best able to participate in the …

Beyond A Zero-Sum Federal Trust Responsibility: Lessons From Federal Indian Energy Policy, Monte Mills

Articles

The federal government’s trust relationship with federally recognized Indian tribes is a product of the last two centuries of Federal Indian Law and federal-tribal relations. For approximately the last 50 years, the federal government has sought to promote tribal self-determination as a means to carry out its trust responsibilities to Indian tribes; but the shadows of prior federal policies, based largely on notions of tribal incompetence and federal paternalism, remain. Perhaps no other policy arena better demonstrates the history, evolution, and promise for reform of the federal trust relationship than Federal Indian energy policy, or the range of federal statutes …

Energy Subsidies: Worthy Goals, Competing Priorities, And Flawed Institutional Design, David M. Schizer

Faculty Scholarship

The United States uses on targeted subsidies for both "green" energy and hydrocarbons. These subsidies pursue worthwhile goals. But unfortunately, many have design flaws that make them less effective or even counterproductive. The goal of this Article is to show how to do better.

Specifically, this Article focuses on three sets of issues. First, there often is tension between our environmental and national security goals. Unfortunately, the economics literature on energy largely ignores these trade-offs by omitting national security from the analysis. This Article takes issue with this approach and suggests ways to manage these trade-offs. Second, this Article argues …

Legal Pathways For A Massive Increase In Utility-Scale Renewable Generation Capacity, Michael Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Decarbonizing the U.S. energy system will require a program of building onshore wind, offshore wind, utility-scale solar, and associated transmission that will exceed what has been done before in the United States by many times, every year out to 2050. These facilities, together with rooftop photovoltaics and other distributed generation, are required to replace most fossil fuel generation and to help furnish the added electricity that will be needed as many uses currently employing fossil fuels (especially passenger transportation and space and water heating) are electrified. This Article, excerpted from Michael B. Gerrard & John Dernbach, eds., Legal Pathways to …