Search Results for: feed

Arctic Futures: White Shield or Blue Economy

Grounded Berg, Beechey Island, 1994 (Arctic)

Multiplying proposals for ice restoration face geopolitical obstacles

Ice-thickening. Glacier curtains. Cloud brightening… Proposals for Arctic climate interventions seem to be multiplying by the day. The changing climate is not only shrinking ice caps and ice sheets, but also bringing much greater than average temperature rises in polar regions. These impacts particularly disrupt the lives and livelihoods of Arctic Indigenous Peoples. Arctic impacts …

CONTINUE READING

Community Solar: Compensation

Who gets the money? Compensation mechanisms are where a lot of the power of these programs resides, but naturally, also the debate.

This post is co-written by Naomi Caldwell (J.D. ’24, UCLA School of Law). Two recent posts explored community solar through the lens of its many potential benefits. (Part One on systemwide benefits and Part Two on local and individual benefits.) Today’s post follows the money, exploring community solar compensation mechanisms. The question of who makes …

CONTINUE READING

Electric Shared Mobility:

Program Design Elements Can Produce More Equitable, Durable, and Successful Projects

Shared mobility—an umbrella term for any transportation mode shared among multiple passengers—has the potential to accelerate transportation electrification, air quality, and greenhouse gas reduction goals, meet the needs of underserved communities that most lack mobility access, and advance broader mobility equity goals. CLEE’s report, Electric Shared Mobility: California Lessons Learned for Equity in Program Design, …

CONTINUE READING

“Salt Lakes in Crisis: Legal Responses to Ecological Catastrophes”

Upcoming U.C. Davis Law Review Symposium To Provide Interdisciplinary Focus On Threatened Western U.S. Lakes

On Friday, September 20th, the student-run U.C. Davis Law Review will host a most timely conference examining an environmental crisis facing many of the American West’s iconic “terminal lakes.” That term refers to lakes that have no natural outlet.  For many years, protracted droughts and human diversions from freshwater rivers and streams feeding those lakes …

CONTINUE READING

Community Solar: The Systemwide Benefits

The debates over community solar program design are fascinating sites of struggle over which values should drive decision-making.

Electricity regulation has traditionally been defined by a relatively narrow public interest prerogative: ensuring just and reasonable rates for reliable electric service. The call to decarbonize, however, has injected a new diversity of values into the conversation. Transforming the electric power system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is opening new opportunities to elevate values like …

CONTINUE READING

Clean Air and the Turbocharged Shadow Docket

Guest Contributors Sean Donahue & Megan Herzog write that coal advocates offer troubling new grounds for the Supreme Court to stay EPA’s carbon pollution standards.

The Supreme Court is currently considering eight emergency (or “shadow docket”) requests from coal advocates (coal-mining companies, coal-burning electricity generators, and allied State attorneys general led by West Virginia) to bar implementation of new EPA rules limiting carbon pollution from coal- and gas-burning power plants while legal challenges to the rules proceed—what is known as …

CONTINUE READING

Interview with a Yale “JD”

The climate is changing rapidly, but not as fast as some people’s views have U-turned.

Climate denial on the GOP ticket: “I’m skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man. The climate’s been changing, as others have pointed out, for millennia.”

CONTINUE READING

California Year In Fire Report

A Multi-Dimensional View of Wildfire Impacts

On behalf of CLEE and the Climate and Wildfire Institute (CWI), and with additional support from the Moore Foundation, I am pleased to announce publication of the California Year in Fire Report.  Wildfire and the risk of wildfire impact far more than acres burned.  This Report is an effort to provide a more multi-dimensional view …

CONTINUE READING

A New Strategic Plan for California Offshore Wind

The California Energy Commission has published a draft including strategies for impacted communities, but CBAs deserve more emphasis.

For those following offshore wind development in California, January 19, 2024, marked an important moment—the release of the long-awaited Draft Assembly Bill 525 Offshore Wind Strategic Plan from the California Energy Commission (CEC). Some important foundations for offshore wind, a new but growing industry in California, had already been laid. Assembly Bill 525 (AB 525, …

CONTINUE READING

Evaluating Voluntary Agreements in the Bay-Delta Watershed

Satellite image of California, centered on the Bay-Delta watershed. The Central Valley shows up prominently, with green agricultural fields rimmed by drier brown land, surrounded by mountains.

by Nell Green Nylen, Felicia Marcus, Dave Owen, and Michael Kiparsky

Updates to flow and other regulatory requirements for California’s Bay-Delta watershed are long overdue.  For much of the last 12 years, state political leadership has prioritized efforts to develop voluntary agreements (VAs) with water users over completing updates to the watershed’s water quality standards.  Now the State Water Resources Control Board has restarted the regulatory …

CONTINUE READING

Join Our Mailing List

Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.

TRENDING