AB 32
California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard: Before the Supreme Court
Will the Justices Choose to Decide the LCFS’s Constitutionality?
You might think that the U.S. Supreme Court, having decided the Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA Clean Air Act case on Monday, was done for the current Term when it comes to environmental law and policy. Think again. Today the justices met in conference to decide whether to grant review in a large number of pending …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia, climate change, and 111d
Four things the Golden State will note about EPA’s power plant proposal
Here are four aspects of the 111d proposal of particular note to Legal Planet’s home state. (1) California played a key role in helping to inspire — and to justify as lawful — EPA’s building-blocks approach to setting state goals. EPA frequently refers to California’s suite of successful greenhouse gas mitigation programs as a partial model for …
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CONTINUE READINGWould Californians be Better Off with a Fuel Tax instead of Cap-and-Trade?
Steinberg’s surprising proposal for California climate regulation
Climate regulation drama! Sen. Darrell Steinberg is floating a proposal that would change California law to take transportation fuels out of the cap-and-trade program, and to enact a new fuels tax instead. As background, distributors of those fuels are slated to join the cap-and-trade program in 2015, meaning they would need allowances to cover their …
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CONTINUE READINGWyoming Wind Power and California Electricity
Supporting renewable energy in Wyoming makes political sense
A company wants to build a lot of wind power in Wyoming. A lot. 3,000 megawatts. The size of three nuclear reactors. And ship all of the power to California. None of it will be used in Wyoming, where electricity primarily comes from coal, and where the state has been strongly resistant to various policies …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat are California Legislators Thinking About Cap-and-Trade?
CA Senate Hearing at UCLA Focuses on Ways to Spend Auction Revenue
Today, UCLA’s Emmett Center and IOES hosted a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Climate Change and AB 32 Implementation with Senators Pavley, Correa, de Leon, deSaulnier, Lieu, and Assemblymember Bloom attending. The hearing featured testimony on climate science, on AB 32 implementation, and on opportunities to invest revenue from the state’s cap-and-trade auctions in ways that …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Enacts Nation’s First Comprehensive Fracking Law—And Everyone’s Unhappy
Controversial But Promising, SB 4 Constitutes Tangible Progress on the Fracking Front
Late last month the California Legislature passed, and Governor Jerry Brown signed into law, the nation’s first comprehensive system of regulating hydraulic fracturing, the oil and gas drilling technique more commonly known as “fracking.” It turns out that no one–the oil and gas industry, surface landowners or environmentalists–is particularly happy with the new law. And …
CONTINUE READINGBreaking News: Ninth Circuit Upholds California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard
Does California’s life cycle analysis of the carbon intensity of transportation fuel facially discriminates against out-of-state ethanol?
In a sweeping victory for the California Air Resources Board, the Ninth Circuit today issued an opinion in Rocky Mountain Farmers Union v. Corey upholding the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) and reversing a lower court ruling that the LCFS facially discriminated against interstate commerce in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The court also vacated the …
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CONTINUE READINGWhy coal cares about FERC
I’ve written before about how fossil fuel industries have a strong incentive to kill (or at least stop the rise of) renewable energy now, so that it doesn’t become a powerful political force. If renewable energy does become a strong enough political force, then there is a risk that it might provide support for ending …
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CONTINUE READING(Tentative) ruling in cap-and-trade case looks good for CA: ARB has auction authority
It’s never over till it’s over, but for now California is breathing a little easier as it defends its cap-and-trade allowance auctions from two high-profile industry challenges. The cases, which Ann has discussed here and here, were filed by the California Chamber of Commerce and the Pacific Legal Foundation, and they make both statutory and …
CONTINUE READINGGuest Blogger Ken Alex: 2030 is Calling
Ken Alex is a Senior Advisor to Governor Jerry Brown and the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. The views expressed in this blog post are his own. California’s AB 32 is the most important climate change law in the country. We are in full implementation mode to meet the requirement that …
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