Energy and Utilities Law Commons^™

Massachusetts Lobstermen’S Association V. Ross, Daniel Brister

Public Land & Resources Law Review

President Obama established the first––and only––national monument in the Atlantic Ocean on September 15, 2016. Located 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and comprised of 4,913 square miles of marine ecosystems rich in biodiversity, the protected area includes four underwater mountains and three submarine canyons. Plaintiff commercial lobster and fishing associations, seeking to overturn the designation, asserted that the Antiquities Act does not permit a president to establish marine national monuments. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia disagreed, upholding a president’s authority to protect offshore areas and vast ecosystems as objects of scientific interest, and dismissing …

Clean Energy Justice: Charting An Emerging Agenda, Shelley Welton, Joel Eisen

Faculty Publications

The rapid transition to clean energy is fraught with potential inequities. As clean energy policies ramp up in scale and ambition, they confront challenging new questions: Who should pay for the transition? Who should live next to the industrial-scale wind and solar farms these policies promote? Will the new “green” economy be a fairer one, with more widespread opportunity, than the fossil fuel economy it is replacing? Who gets to decide what kinds of resources power our decarbonized world? In this article, we assert that it is useful to understand these challenges collectively, as part of an emerging agenda of …

Energy And Eminent Domain, James W. Coleman, Alexandra B. Klass

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article examines the growing opposition to the use of eminent domain for energy transport projects such as oil pipelines, gas pipelines, and electric transmission lines. Such projects were protected from the state legislative reforms that restricted eminent domain following the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in Kelo v. City of New London in 2005 but are now under increased scrutiny. This Article evaluates why U.S. energy transport projects have become so controversial and suggests how states and the federal government should evaluate the need for eminent domain for these projects and enact appropriate reforms. We first detail the significant changes …

Trump, Energy Policy, And Hard Look Review, Lincoln L. Davies, Tyler Hubbard, Christopher Sanders

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

For those concerned about climate change, the Trump administration’s energy policy is alarming. It aims to unravel every corner of the Obama administration’s climate legacy, consistent with an overall sweep of deregulation. Substantively, the Trump policy also departs starkly from the approach of the last decade, embracing traditional energy sources—fossil fuels and nuclear power—above all else. The Trump administration’s moves on energy beg the question: What limits, if any, does this policy approach face? This chapter begins to answer that question. Employing the lens of arbitrary and capricious, or “hard look,” review from administrative law, the chapter outlines principles that …

Life Becoming Hazy: The Withdrawal Of The United States From The Paris Agreement And How The Youth Of America Are Challenging It, Anne Ustynoski

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

This Comment covers the ways in which each presidential administration has viewed the United States’ role and responsibilities in combating climate change. It discusses the ways in which the Clean Air Act has evolved and changed, as well as the ways in which the United States has been involved in environmental protection initiatives undertaken by the United Nations. The Comment also examines the ways in which individual states and groups have taken the initiative to combat climate change. Finally, this Comment discusses alternative approaches to combating climate change. For example, it focuses on how youths in America are arguing that …

Sustainable Development Arrested By U.S. Criminal Law, Steven Ferrey

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Electricity Competition And The Public Good: Rethinking Markets And Monopolies, Jonas J. Monast

University of Colorado Law Review

The United States electricity sector is engaged in a long-term experiment regarding the proper role of market competition. Many states that transitioned to competitive electricity markets in the early 2000s are again reconsidering the relationship between market competition and public policy goals. Low natural gas prices, falling costs of renewable energy and energy storage, and improvements in efficiency are causing early retirements of coal and nuclear power plants and thus affecting environmental policy goals and economic interests. States that continue to rely on monopoly utilities for electricity are also reconsidering the role of competition, but from a different angle. Rather …

Microgrids For Micro-Communities: Reducing The Energy Burden In Rural Areas, Julie C. Michalski

Michigan Technology Law Review

Rural communities currently face some of the highest energy costs and lowest reliability in the country, due in part to long transmission distances and low population densities. The North American Supergrid (“NAS”) has been proposed as a solution for increased grid stability, resiliency, and renewable generation with decreased carbon emissions and energy cost across the lower 48 states. Although the NAS could help with these energy goals, it is likely that benefits of the NAS would bypass many rural or isolated communities outside of the transmission step-down points. As the NAS will not help rural communities, states can take regulatory …

An Analysis Of Mandatory Hookup Law: Cases & Statutes, Jesse Richardson

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Pipelines & Power-Lines: Building The Energy Transport Future, James W. Coleman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The United States is in the middle of three profound energy revolutions — with booming production of renewable power, natural gas, and oil. The country is replacing coal power with renewable and natural gas power, reducing pollution while saving consumers money. And it has dramatically cut its oil imports while becoming, for the first time in half a century, an important oil exporter. The U.S. is on the cusp of an energy transformation that will provide immense economic and environmental benefits.

This new energy economy will require massive investment in energy transport — especially power lines to bring wind and …

Strictly Leakage: How Minnesota Export Subsidies Pay For Climate Pollution, Hudson B. Kingston

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Clean Energy Justice: Charting An Emerging Agenda, Joel B. Eisen, Shelley Welton

Law Faculty Publications

The rapid transition to clean energy is fraught with potential inequities. As clean energy policies ramp up in scale and ambition, they confront challenging new questions: Who should pay for the transition? Who should live next to the industrial-scale wind and solar farms these policies promote? Will the new “green” economy be a fairer one, with more widespread opportunity, than the fossil fuel economy it is replacing? Who gets to decide what kinds of resources power our decarbonized world? In this article, we frame these challenges as part of an emerging agenda of “clean energy justice.” Mapping this agenda highlights …

Energy Competition: From Commodity To Boutique & Back, James W. Coleman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Energy products such as power, gas, and oil have long been the world’s premier commodities. Consumers demand that power and fuel are available when they want it and they prefer to pay less for it. Few know or care where their fuel or power comes from. So for years energy companies believed that efforts to differentiate their products were mostly ineffective — they were re-signed to compete on price in fierce global commodity markets. But in recent years, a new focus on regulating how energy commodities are produced has begun to splinter previously integrated energy markets, creating markets for boutique …

Introduction: What You Don't Know Does Protect You, Rebecca Roose

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Property In Ecology, Jonathan H. Adler

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Counter-Intuitive Climate Forcing: Post Paris Agreement Corporate Incentives, Steven Ferrey

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

This article applies a micro-level lens to details of disincentives embodied in the new U.S. tax law effective in 2018, affecting corporate action to address climate change, and applies a macro-level assessment of how corporate action is affecting U.S. realization of its climate change goals and requirements. The article examines and offers several state law options that can substitute as alternative incentives, and an unrelated ‘Opportunity Zone’ provision in the new federal tax law, all of which can provide alternative legal paths.

Comprehensive Rezonings, Sara C. Bronin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Of all powers given to local governments, the power to zone is one of the most significant. Zoning dictates everything that gets built in a locality—and thus effectively dictates all of the key activities that take place within it. Nationwide, most zoning codes were adopted in the first half of the twentieth century. Many, including the zoning codes of New York City and Chicago, were significantly revised in the 1960s. While these codes have been revised piecemeal, just a few American cities have undergone a comprehensive revision: replacing the old code with a completely new one.

A comprehensive rezoning can …

Sustainable Development: Energy, Justice, And Women, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

This article will first offer a functional synopsis relevant to its remit, of the concept of sustainable development (SD) embodied in international law and policy that reflects a tension between economic and social claims as contrasted with environmental protection. While the dominant place acquired by the economic and social dimensions of SD will be recognized, it will argue consistent with the predicate of justice discussed in the article, that the protection of the human environment encompasses the plight of the energy poor and their women and children. Second, the article will delineate the contours of one of the great developmental …

The Statutory Separation Of Powers, Sharon B. Jacobs

Publications

Separation of powers forms the backbone of our constitutional democracy. But it also operates as an underappreciated structural principle in subconstitutional domains. This Article argues that Congress constructs statutory schemes of separation, checks, and balances through its delegations to administrative agencies. Like its constitutional counterpart, the “statutory separation of powers” seeks to prevent the dominance of factions and ensure policy stability. But separating and balancing statutory authority is a delicate business: the optimal balance is difficult to calibrate ex ante, the balance is unstable, and there are risks that executive agencies in particular might seek expansion of their authority vis-à-vis …

Energy Re-Investment, Hari M. Osofsky, Jacqueline Peel, Brett H. Mcdonnell, Anita Foerster

Faculty Scholarship

Despite worsening climate change threats, investment in energy — in the United States and globally — is dominated by fossil fuels. This Article provides a novel analysis of two pathways in corporate and securities law that together have the potential to shift patterns of energy investment.

The first pathway targets current investments and corporate decision-making. It includes efforts to influence investors to divest from owning shares in fossil fuel companies and to influence companies to address climate change risks in their internal decision-making processes. This pathway has received increasing attention, especially in light of the Paris Agreement and the Trump …