Chris Hunkeler, Wikimedia Commons In the West, the benefits of electricity market regionalization appear more attractive than ever. “Regionalization” refers to efforts to expand coordination between Western states to buy and sell wholesale electricity through centralized federal power markets. Increased coordination, made possible through regional transmission organizations (RTOs – independent non-profit organizations that operate the grid and oversee the operation of centralized energy markets), has the potential to enhance grid reliability while reducing costs and emissions. Currently, altho ..read more

Is it unconstitutional for the government to build a levee that reduces the risk of urban flooding but diverts the water to nearby farmlands?  The answer could be yes, unless the government pays for flood easements on the rural lands. But if the government doesn’t build the levee, it faces no liability from the urban landowners. That’s the adaptation dilemma: preparing for climate disaster is legally disfavored. The issue is created by a 2012 Supreme Court. Although temporary flooding was not previously considered to be a taking, the Court reversed its position on that issue in Arkansas ..read more

The Supreme Court is currently considering whether to overrule the Chevron doctrine. Chevron requires courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute.  We should know by the end of next month whether the current conservative super-majority on the Court will overrule Chevron. In the meantime, it’s illuminating to put the current dispute in the context of the last 80 years of judicial doctrine regarding deference to agencies on issues of law. As this timeline shows, the Supreme Court’s engagement with this issue has been long and complex. 1944. Skidmore v ..read more

There are many different ways that our global society has attempted to address environmental damage and climate change. We fund climate technology startups. We elect representatives that keep the climate in mind. We start nonprofits dedicated to reestablishing our collective sustainable relationships with earth systems. And we litigate in civil and federal courts at the national level when environmental rights have been violated. Yet the climate change clock continues to tick, and we are faced with the reality of this multifaceted and increasingly alarming problem: we need many different too ..read more

The bad news is that we’re not yet on track to avoid dangerous climate change. But there’s also good news: We’ve taken important steps that will ease further progress.  We should resist the allure of easy optimism, given the scale of the challenges. Neither should we wallow in despair. There’s a good basis for hope. To begin with, there’s been major progress in U.S. climate policy. The first half of Biden’s term saw the passage of three bills that collectively devote about half a trillion dollars to emission reduction: the Infrastructure Law’s support for emission cuts in transportation ..read more

In August of 2005 when Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi, the combination of torrential rain and flawed infrastructure proved deadly. More than 1,800 people died and the price tag for the damage quickly rose to the tens of billions of dollars. In the chaotic disaster response that followed, several communities were disproportionately vulnerable to discrimination during recovery. Among them: LGBTQ residents. They were often overlooked in local and national relief efforts, which routinely failed to recognize households of same-sex couples as “families.” Some LGBTQ fa ..read more

Is EPA’s new climate rule a sneaky effort to eliminate coal or a valid pollution standard?  Some new arguments made by EPA convince me that it’s pursuing a time-tested approach to  pollution control.  It’s not that EPA is trying to grind down the industry. It’s that the economics of coal-fired plants are so fragile that a mild breeze would give them pneumonia. Opponents are sure to legally challenge  EPA’s new rule to limit carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. And they are equally certain to argue that EPA is just trying to do indirectly what the Supreme Court sa ..read more

Electricity rate design is unavoidably technical. It also has huge implications for equity, climate change, and ensuring a grid that works. Rate design can be used to promote many different goals, from efficiency to bill stability, but it always entails distributive decisions. Rate design determines how we distribute the costs not just of electricity, but of the shared system that provides that electricity.   And though electricity rate design rarely grabs headlines, it’s been in the news a lot lately, thanks to controversy over the income-graduated fixed charge. That’s a new policy (re ..read more

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 Senate (very likely) and the House (less likely).  When Trump was in office before, the Republicans found it difficult to pass legislation, and today’s GOP House can barely manage to function.  Although they’ve expressed vocife ..read more

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 conservation as an essential component of public lands management, on equal footing with other multiple uses of these lands.” By way of quick background, our public resource laws were written with an explicit bias in favor of extractive activities. When the laws were passed almo ..read more