Regulation
New Summary Report on California’s Law to Streamline Environmental Review of Infill Projects
As this blog has chronicled, California has undertaken some ambitious efforts to streamline environmental review for certain infill projects under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). One of the most recent and potentially far-reaching attempts, SB 226 (Simitian, 2011), creates an in-depth administrative process to define the standards for what constitutes a “good” infill project. …
CONTINUE READINGA Side-by-Side Comparison of Romney and Obama on Energy and Environment
I’ve put together a table of language from the issues sections of the official campaign websites dealing with energy and environment. I decided to use the candidate’s own language to avoid interposing my own views on the issues. Please keep in mind that the table uses their language, not mine. Not surprisingly, the candidates frame …
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CONTINUE READINGHow California could surpass $1 billion in cap-and-trade auction revenue by 2013
Last week I did a series of posts examining the amount and potential price ranges for allowances in California’s upcoming cap-and-trade auctions for greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Knowing the estimated auction clearing price plus the estimated number of allowances to be sold at auction tells us the estimated revenue from that auction. Several estimates of …
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CONTINUE READINGCould Self-Driving Cars Help The Environment?
As companies like Google pioneer technologies to allow cars to drive themselves, futurists have been imagining a world where autonomous vehicles rule the roadway. Using computer programs, map data, complex sensors, and soon the ability to “see” all vehicles within miles, these cars hold the promise of averting the vast majority of car accidents caused …
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CONTINUE READINGCould standing save CEQA?
One of the recent complaints about CEQA has been that the statute has been abused by various parties who have no interest in protecting the environment, but instead are simply interested in either (a) raising costs for competitors or (b) using the threat of CEQA litigation to extract payments from project proponents. Various horror stories …
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CONTINUE READINGAllowance distribution in California’s cap-and-trade program (Part II: Industry)
Yesterday I developed a basic overview of the different categories of allowances in California’s GHG trading program. As promised, this post considers the number of allowances that California will freely give to specific industries. Why do we care about industry allowances? First, allowances have value and the Air Resources Board (CARB) has chosen to give …
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CONTINUE READINGOn the risks of CEQA exemptions
In the course of a very good post about the benefits of environmental review statutes such as CEQA, Jonathan ascribed to me the position that “policymakers should [not] continue to look for useful exemptions to CEQA” based on a prior post that I had written opposing recent (now enacted) legislation creating limited exemptions from CEQA …
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CONTINUE READINGAllowance distribution in California’s cap-and-trade program (Part I)
Yesterday, I described California’s GHG cap-and-trade auction and the likely constraints on the auction clearing price. Today I want to switch gears to the allowance distribution. As summarized in our recent paper on California’s auction revenue, once you know the number of allowances available at auction and the auction clearing price, you can estimate revenue. …
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CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Law’s Lessons for the Health Care Mandate
The drafters of the health care reform law might have learned something from environmental policy makers when it comes to mandates and public opinion. When the five conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices expressed a visceral reaction against the government compelling citizens to buy health insurance last week, their distaste was not unlike the visceral reaction many …
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CONTINUE READINGAuction prices in California’s cap-and-trade program
This week, the Emmett Center released a new paper on the potential legal constraints on revenue generated from California’s upcoming greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade auction. In that paper, we provide a general overview of the cap-and-trade auction mechanism and discuss the potential revenue raised. I would like to expand on that discussion in a series …
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