Biden Administration
Why the New Climate Reg for Coal is a Perfectly Normal EPA Rule
EPA’s approach isn’t a novel innovation. It’s just EPA applying its usual approach.
The problem isn’t that EPA’s new climate regulation for power plants will crush the coal-fired generation industry. It’s that much of the industry is so economically weak it can’t survive any kind of regulation.
CONTINUE READINGEPA’s New Power Plant Rules Have Dropped. What Happens Next?
Media battles. Lawsuits. Stay requests. And political mayhem.
The release of Biden’s new climate regulations for power plants will unleash a maelstrom of legal and political battles. One key question: Will the Supreme Court short circuit the litigation process by staying the rules.
CONTINUE READINGCould Trump Cancel the IRA?
Probably not. But also possibly yes.
The Inflation Reduction Act is Biden’s signature climate initiative. Trump has already called for repealing it, and so have some Republicans in Congress. Given the IRA’s huge cuts in carbon emissions, that would be a tragedy. Can he do that? He would certainly face some very significant barriers. Trump would need Republican majorities in the …
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CONTINUE READINGA New Era for Protecting Public Lands
The Bureau of Land Management has always prioritized extraction activities. Now the agency has announced a rule that could elevate conservation.
In August, 2021, I blogged on Legal Planet about a piece in Science I had co-authored arguing for an end to prohibiting “nonuse” rights to bid on public land use. The article helped popularize the issue and the Bureau of Land Management today announced a final rule that, as the BLM press release describes, “recognizes …
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CONTINUE READINGFilling in the Picture: The Latest From Kennedy about Climate
Here’s what Kennedy says about his campaign, its effect on the race, and climate change.
Some of RFK Jr.’s views about climate change may be what you expected. Others may surprise you, like his embrace of natural gas as a fuel and his reservations about regulating emissions.
CONTINUE READINGNo, EVs are Not Worse for the Planet
There’s an electric car culture war raging. It doesn’t hurt to say obvious things, like that electric cars reduce driving costs and pollute far less than gas-powered cars.
If you have somehow managed to escape the frenzied political headlines about electric vehicles, first I envy you and second, I must regrettably inform you that the EV has become an acronym of partisan rancor on par with IVF, DEI, and CRT. There’s a lot of reasons for this electric car culture war: President Biden …
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CONTINUE READINGWill the NEPA Amendments Speed Up Permitting?
Probably not much. If at all.
I’ve blogged quite a bit about the challenges of interpreting the NEPA amendments, which snuck through as part of last year’s debt ceiling bill. I haven’t said much about their impact. Given the amount of energy infrastructure we need to build in the near future, a streamlined permitting process would be great. Alas, I don’t …
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CONTINUE READINGCritical Insights on the Mineral Boom: Part III
On the rise of resource nationalism and building an equitable supply chain: Insights from the Emmett Institute’s “Powering the Future” symposium.
The topic of critical minerals and the energy transition is one of choices and priorities, at least according to author and journalist Ernest Scheyder, who spoke at the second panel in our recent “Powering the Future” symposium. This panel, Critical Minerals and Global Supply Chains, discussed some of the fundamental choices that governments, industry, and …
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CONTINUE READINGThe New EPA Car Rule Doesn’t Violate the Major Questions Doctrine
They both relate to climate, but West Virginia v. EPA involved a very different regulation raising very different issues.
In West Virginia v. EPA, the Supreme Court struck down the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. The heart of the ruling was that EPA had engaged in a power grab, basing an unprecedented expansion of its regulatory authority on an obscure provision of the statute. Conservative groups have claimed since then that virtually every government regulation …
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CONTINUE READINGCritical Insights on the Mineral Boom
In the race for critical minerals, the challenges, tradeoffs, and potential winners are becoming clear. Insights from the Emmett Institute’s “Powering the Future” symposium.
A couple hundred miles north of the Las Vegas strip at Rhyolite Ridge you’ll find a dusty yellow wildflower called Tiehm’s buckwheat that grows nowhere else in the world. But this flower sits atop a massive, untapped lithium reserve that would help the U.S. transition to cleaner energy. Now, what if you had to choose …
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