General
“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 …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Harris-Trump Debate and Environmental Policy
In the ABC News debate, both candidates were asked directly, “What would you do to fight climate change?” Fracking and energy policy got most of the focus.
While abortion and immigration took center stage during last night’s presidential debate in Philadelphia, climate change and energy policy were referenced throughout the more than ninety minutes, in stark contrast to that Biden-Trump debate in June in which climate change was largely relegated to one question. From the very beginning of the debate, Trump attempted …
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CONTINUE READINGCommunity Solar: Local and Individual Benefits
Community solar offers a rich case study for how a diverse range of values can be integrated into the traditionally narrow scope of public utility commission decision-making.
Earlier this week, I published a blog post highlighting some of the systemwide benefits community solar programs can provide and exploring considerations for policy design prioritizing each benefit. Today’s post continues that project, this time focusing on several of the benefits community solar can generate at the local or community level and for individual households: …
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CONTINUE READINGCommunity 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 …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia Pulls Back On Sustainable Aviation Fuels
Air Resources Board abruptly withdraws proposal to mandate low-carbon jet fuel
California regulators had an opportunity this year to be a global leader on requiring airplanes to use low-carbon jet fuel. But the Air Resources Board announced earlier this month that it will back off from its earlier proposal to require jet fuel providers to decarbonize, through the agency’s landmark low carbon fuel standard program. Why …
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CONTINUE READINGClean 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 …
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CONTINUE READINGNew Report: Charging and Financing Electric Trucks
CLEE/UCLA Law report & webinar offers solutions to meet California’s zero-emission trucks goal
California has groundbreaking goals to require automakers to sell, and large fleets to purchase, zero-emission trucks and buses in increasing percentages, starting this year. But these goals will only be achievable if the state has sufficient charging infrastructure to fuel the vehicles, along with available financing to help truck owners purchase or lease them. To …
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CONTINUE READINGAssessing the First Decade of California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act
You’re Invited to “10 Years In: A SGMA Report Card”–A Conference at U.C. Davis Law School on 9/6
A decade ago, California stood out–and not in a good way–as the only Western state without comprehensive state laws monitoring and regulating groundwater pumping and use. But in 2014, following years of severe and protracted California drought, and both agricultural and urban water users compensating for depleted surface water flows by pumping groundwater in unprecedented …
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CONTINUE READINGWhat Does Project 2025 Mean for the Environment and Climate Change?
We Have Excerpted the Key Provisions
Project 2025 has received a good deal of media attention as a conservative vision for the future of the federal government. The document is 900 pages long, so not surprisingly, few people have read it all. A good portion of those 900 pages focus on energy, environment, and climate change, much of it designed to …
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CONTINUE READINGReflections from a Member of the SCoPEx Advisory Committee
Sharing my lessons
After many years of work, the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiments (SCoPEx) Advisory Committee concluded our work earlier this year after the research team at Harvard made the decision to cancel the experiment. I was a member of the Advisory Committee for much of its time, serving as chair and co-chair of the committee for …
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