Energy and Utilities Law Commons^™

“Statistics Are Human Beings With The Tears Wiped Away”: Utilizing Data To Develop Strategies To Reduce The Number Of Native Americans Who Go Missing, Lori Mcpherson, Sarah Blazucki

Seattle University Law Review

On New Year’s Eve night, 2019, sixteen-year-old Selena Shelley Faye Not Afraid attended a party in Billings, Montana, about fifty miles west of her home in Hardin, Montana, near the Crow Reservation. A junior at the local high school, she was active in her community. The party carried over until the next day, and she caught a ride back toward home with friends in a van the following afternoon. When the van stopped at an interstate rest stop, Selena got out but never made it back to the van. The friends reported her missing to the police and indicated they …

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 …

Renewable Portfolio Standards: Effectiveness And Carbon Implications, Alexander S. Albrecht

CMC Senior Theses

A renewable portfolio standard (RPS) policy is a popular regulatory tool implemented within the U.S. and abroad to limit energy sector emissions and incentivize renewable energy. Assessing their effectiveness and efficiency is a key component of achieving further reductions. We assess an energy market under an RPS using fixed-effects panel and 2SLS regression models to lend empirical credence to common theory-based concerns about RPS policy, namely (1) that they leave emissions unregulated once the RPS requirement is met and (2) that they do not incentivize full use of renewable energy resources. Our results show these to be valid concerns that …

Briggs V. Southwestern Energy Production: Hydraulic Fracturing And Subsurface Trespass, Thomas W. Merrill, Henry E. Smith

Faculty Scholarship

The tort of trespass to land has proven to be controversial as applied to airplane overflights (and more recently to drones) as well as to oil and gas production using hydraulic fracking technology. The key to applying trespass to intrusions above and below the surface of land is to distinguish between possession of land and the right to possess land. Surface owners have the right to possess the column of space above and below the surface (a kind of option value), but only to the extent that this space is subject to possible effective possession. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court in …

Nestlé V. Doe: A Death Knell To Corporate Human Rights Accountability?, Phillip Ayers

Seattle University Law Review

The Supreme Court in Nestlé v. Doe held that foreign plaintiffs who claimed to be victims of overseas tortious conduct by corporate defendants had no jurisdiction to sue in federal courts using the Alien Tort Statute. This Comment looks at the history of the Alien Tort Statute, from its inspiration, long dormancy, and recent reinvigoration beginning in the 1980s. The Comment then explores the background of Nestlé and its issues with child slavery in its cocoa supply chain. From there, the Comment analyzes the Nestlé v. Doe decision, and posits an alternative outcome. Finally, this Comment looks for a new …

Introduction To The Symposium On Networks, Platforms, And Utilities: Law And Policy, Morgan Ricks, Ganesh Sitaraman, Shelley Welton, Lev Menand

Faculty Scholarship

We are grateful to the Yale Journal on Regulation for hosting this symposium on our new law school casebook, Networks, Platforms, and Utilities: Law and Policy, and to the fantastic lineup of scholars who will be contributing to the symposium over the next couple of weeks.

In this brief symposium introduction, we seek to answer five questions about the book. What is it about? Why did we write it? How does its subject matter relate to other areas of legal study? Why is the time ripe for it? And, how does it differ from previous “regulated industries” textbooks?

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 …

The Corporate Governance Of Public Utilities, Aneil Kovvali, Joshua C. Macey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Rate-regulated public utilities own and operate one-third of U.S generators and nearly all the transmission and distribution system. These firms receive special regulatory treatment because they are protected from competition and subject to rate caps. In the past decade, they also have been at the center of high-profile corporate scandals. They have bribed regulators to secure subsidies for coal-fired generators and nuclear reactors. They have caused wildfires and coal-ash spills that resulted in hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in liability. Their failure to maintain reliable electric service has contributed to catastrophic blackouts. Perhaps most consequentially, they have emerged …

Corporate Governance And Gender Equality: A Study Of Comply-Or-Explain Disclosure Regulation, Aaron A. Dhir, Sarah Kaplan, Maria Arabella Robles

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Nasdaq Stock Market filed a proposal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeking permission to adopt a board diversity-related disclosure requirement for its listed companies. In 2021, the SEC approved the proposal, thus entrenching Nasdaq’s position as the most significant stock exchange to date to mandate listing rules that reflect the intention of diversifying corporate boardrooms. Nasdaq’s movement into the diversity space is not the first attempt to address homogeneous boards in the U.S. In 2009, the SEC adopted a rule requiring publicly traded firms to report on whether they consider diversity in identifying director nominees. …

Judicial Ethics And The Eradication Of Racism, Dontay Proctor-Mills

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Washington Supreme Court entrusted the legal community with working to eradicate racism from its legal system. Soon after, Washington’s Commission on Judicial Conduct (hereinafter the Commission) received a complaint about a bus ad for North Seattle College featuring King County Superior Court Judge David Keenan. Along with a photo of Judge Keenan’s face, the ad included the following language: “A Superior Court Judge, David Keenan got into law in part to advocate for marginalized communities. David’s changing the world. He started at North.” The Commission admonished Judge Keenan for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct, in part …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Why Corporate Boards Should Include Lgbtq+ People, Jeremy Mcclane, Darren Rosenblum

Seattle University Law Review

Corporate boardrooms sit at the heart of most of society’s most consequential decisions but fall far short of the diversity of our society. The current movement toward board diversification aims to remedy the underrepresentation of marginalized groups on corporate boards. More recently, some efforts have included LGBTQ+ people, even though the basis for their inclusion on corporate boards remains largely unstated. This Article examines both the normative and instrumental bases for LGBTQ+ inclusion in board diversity initiatives, articulating unspoken assumptions and linking LGBTQ+ people to the broader inclusion effort. In so doing, it begins to surface the unique issues LGBTQ+ …

Synthesizing Energy Transitions, Danielle Stokes, Nadia Ahmad, Uma Outka, Hannah Wiseman

Law Faculty Publications

This Article assesses the growing and cross-disciplinary literature on energy transitions to explore how it can guide law and policy reforms for the energy sector. The modern conception of energy transition centers primarily on clean energy—a shift away from fossil energy dependence. It also, however, incorporates equity as a core principle, as an increasing emphasis on energy justice and just transition seeks to create guiding norms for the energy sector’s current state of change. The concept of energy transition is critical for describing and giving meaning to a fundamental societal shift at the local, regional, national, and global scales, aligned …

Keeping All The Lights On: A Roadmap To Affordable, Universal Electricity Service In The Clean Energy Transition, Gabriel Pacyniak

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing reckoning with structural racism, and an emerging focus on justice in the clean energy transition have combined to spotlight utility disconnections and the related issues of energy access, affordability, and security. Recent empirical scholarship has demonstrated that electricity disconnections of lower-income people are relatively common, disproportionately affect people of color, and cause significant harm. This Article describes how a number of U.S. states are fashioning an emerging policy model that makes significant progress toward truly affordable and accessible electricity service for all. It also describes how these state actions are consistent with U.S. utility law …

Climate Choice Architecture, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

Personal choices drive global warming nearly as much as institutional decisions. Yet, policymakers overwhelmingly target large-scale industrial facilities for reductions in carbon emissions, with individual and household emissions a mere afterthought. Recent advances in behavioral economics, cognitive psychology, and related fields have produced a veritable behavior change revolution. Subtle changes to the choice environment, or nudges, have improved stake-holder decision-making in a wide range of contexts, from healthier food choices to better retirement planning. But the vast potential of choice architecture remains largely untapped for purposes of climate policy and action. This Article explores that untapped potential and makes the …

24/7 Clean Energy, Todd Aagaard

University of Colorado Law Review

In the face of the rapidly escalating climate crisis, the electricity sector is moving toward renewable energy. To date, policies and strategies have focused on increasing overall renewable energy generation, with little regard for timing and location. The result has been a misalignment of supply and demand in renewable energy markets. Renewable power projects produce energy when and where it is least expensive, leaving supply scarce at other times and places. Consumers, meanwhile, continue to use power when and where they need it. This mismatch increases the electricity grid’s dependence on fossil fuel–fired electricity to meet electricity demand at times …

Sovereign Lands, Brent D. Chicken, Amanda J. Dick

Oil and Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Journal

No abstract provided.

Wyoming, John R. Chadd

Oil and Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Journal

No abstract provided.

West Virginia, Andrew S. Graham

Oil and Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Journal

No abstract provided.

Virginia, Zachary H. Barrett

Oil and Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Journal

No abstract provided.