Energy
Regulating Interstate Ozone Pollution: EPA Nears the Finish Line
The regulatory history is dauntingly convoluted. This sixteen year regulatory saga has lessons for climate policy.
EPA issued a rule last week that will significantly improve air quality, particularly on the East Coast. This is EPA’s fourth and final iteration of a rule-making process to control interstate air pollution that began in 2005. Reflecting this history, this fourth rule is a second and presumably final revision of an update to an …
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CONTINUE READINGIf Liberals Were the Ones Who Favored Fossil Fuels. . .
Here’s what the conservative response might look like.
Conservatives often come to the defense of fossil fuels and disdain renewable energy. Is that really consistent with their principles? Let’s imagine what conservatives might say if the table were turned, Suppose liberals proposed government support for fossil fuels. The conservative response might look something like this: Another Liberal Boondoggle Now they want to prop …
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CONTINUE READINGKeeping It All In the Ground?
Exploring legal options for congressional and executive actions to terminate existing fossil fuel leases on federal lands.
The Biden Administration has set aggressive goals for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the United States. And a necessary component for any long-term plan to address greenhouse gas emissions from the United States is reducing and ultimately eliminating the emissions from fossil fuels produced on federal lands. Why is this such a critical …
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CONTINUE READINGWhere “Old King Coal” Still Holds Court
Use of coal is dwindling across the country, but very unevenly. We need to give it a good shove.
The NY Times ran a story last week about a coal area in Wyoming that is embracing renewable energy as its economic future. Residents of Carbon County, WY, aren’t necessarily happy about it but they recognize that the times are changing. As one county commissioner said, “You can stand at the tracks when the train …
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CONTINUE READINGInstitutional Capacity Building for the Energy Transition
State agencies will need help to deal with a fast-changing energy system.
The COVID pandemic has provided a vivid picture of what happens when ill-prepared governments are suddenly hit with huge responsibilities. Underfunded state and local public health agencies were overwhelmed, while governors and local officials found themselves struggling to obtain and distribute vital supplies, from respirators to vaccines. Efforts to accelerate the transition away from carbon, …
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CONTINUE READINGThree Ways of Dodging Responsibility
After disaster strikes, there are some tried-and-true ways of avoiding responsibility.
In the wake of the Texas blackouts, we’re seeing a number of familiar moves to deflect blame by the usual suspects–politicians, regulators, and CEOs. These evasive tactics all begin with a core truth: Eliminating all risk is impossible and would be too expensive even if it weren’t. But then they spin that truth in various …
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CONTINUE READINGGetting Down to the Nitty Griddy
The Texas Blackout and the Politics of Price Making
As has been widely reported over the past week, some Texas electricity customers are now facing astronomically high electricity bills as a result of the recent power grid crisis. Under the Texas system, which is as close to a fully deregulated system of electricity provisioning as we have in the U.S., retail customers are allowed …
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CONTINUE READINGNew Report: Improving Access to Energy Data
Policy solutions to support the data needed for resilient decarbonization
Today, the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) at Berkeley Law and the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA Law are releasing a new report, Data Access for a Decarbonized Grid, which highlights key policy solutions to expand access to the energy data needed to operate a fully decarbonized …
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CONTINUE READINGHow Much Should Texas Invest in Grid Resilience?
The Texas blackouts provide a case study in how to think through resilience issues.
As we begin to think through the long-term response to the Texas blackout, there’s a lot we don’t yet know. The ultimate issues are how much resilience we need against events like this and how we should obtain it. It’s helpful to lay out the kinds of questions we need to be asking as we …
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CONTINUE READINGA Tale of Two Blackouts
Learning from the Texas and California Power Grid Failures
The Texas blackouts earlier this week have reminded us once again of the vital importance of electricity as part of the basic infrastructure of everyday life and the terrible consequences that ensue when the grid fails. Recent reports indicate that dozens of people have died as a result of the extreme weather and blackouts and …
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