Energy
Centralizing Environmental Reviews under NEPA’s New Section 107
Sec. 107 is the key permitting reform applying to major projects. Will it work?
The 2023 Amendments to NEPA tweak current regulations in various ways in the name of permitting reform. Those changes make it easier to exempt smaller projects or cover them with programmatic impacts statements. The key issue, however, is going to be the effectiveness of new section 107, the main provision aimed at large-scale projects like …
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CONTINUE READINGCEQ and Permitting Reform
The enactment of NEPA 2.0 presents a golden opportunity for the agency.
In the recent debt ceiling law, Congress extensively revamped NEPA, the law governing environmental impact statements. An obscure White House agency, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), will have the first opportunity to shape the interpretation of the new language. Much of the language in the new law is poorly drafted or vague, making CEQ’s …
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CONTINUE READINGUCLA Law Clinic Files Amicus Brief Seeking Review of Decision in Berkeley Gas Case
The Environmental Law Clinic joins other local, state, and federal governments, as well as NGOs, in urging the Ninth Circuit to take a second look at the case.
Yesterday, the UCLA Environmental Law Clinic filed a brief in the California Restaurant Association v. Berkeley case on behalf of seven law professors: our own William Boyd, Dan Farber and Sharon Jacobs at UC Berkeley, Jim Rossi at Vanderbilt, David Spence at UT Austin, Shelley Welton at UPenn, and Hannah Wiseman at Penn State. (The …
CONTINUE READINGThe IRA’s Implicit Cost of Carbon
Here’s a simple way to think about a hard problem.
The social cost of carbon is important in many regulatory decisions made by the executive branch. It basically measures the benefit of cutting one ton of carbon emissions. Figuring out the cost of carbon based on an analysis of climate impacts is very tricky. However, there’s another way to think about the problem: We might …
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CONTINUE READINGWho Will Own the Clean Energy Future?
In the latest push to finance renewable energy, we have allowed private actors to make substantial claims on public resources without asking for anything in return.
This post was first published at the Law & Political Economy blog as part of their ongoing series on climate, economics, and green capitalism. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has been hailed as the most significant piece of federal climate legislation ever enacted in the United States. Although it has not had much competition on …
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CONTINUE READINGThe New NEPA: A User’s Guide
The Debt Ceiling Law Rewrote NEPA. Here’s a map to the new statute.
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was passed over fifty years. It created a new tool for environmental protection, the environmental impact statements, It also created the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), which issued guidelines of implementing NEPA in 1978. Lawyers will need to retool quickly because of recent changes. Here’s a roadmap …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat’s Next in the Fight over Berkeley’s Natural Gas Ordinance
In a petition seeking review of the decision, the City of Berkeley says that the opinion from a Ninth Circuit panel takes federal preemption too far.
The City of Berkeley just filed a petition for en banc review in its long-running litigation in defense of an ordinance it passed that restricts natural-gas infrastructure in new construction. This litigation has been watched by many in the climate-policy world because of the popularity of laws like Berkeley’s; it took on new relevance for local-authority …
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CONTINUE READINGNEPA and the Debt Deal
Will the permitting sections of the debt ceiling bill undermine environmental reviews?
Prior to the release of the text of the debt ceiling bill Sunday night, press reports had mentioned only a couple of provisions relating to environmental impact statements. It turns out there’s a lot more. The bill would make numerous changes in the statute governing impact statements, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). …
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CONTINUE READINGDefault and the Environment
What are the environmental impacts of Uncle Sam’s failure to pay his debts on time?
A journalist asked me how a default might impact environmental law. As I thought about it, I realized that the answers were, “In one way, very little,” and “In another way, potentially a disaster.” The effects might not amount to much. Or we could be talking about multigenerational climate impacts. There’s a lot of uncertainty …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Biden Power Plant Rule and the Major Question Doctrine
The new rule has hardly any of the features that caused the Supreme Court to strike down the Obama rule.
We’ve already started to hear claims that the Biden power plant rule falls under the major question doctrine, which the Supreme Court used to strike down Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Are those claims plausible? Consider the aspects of the Clean Power Plan that the Supreme Court found objectionable. I’ve identified eight factors that the Court …
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