The Supreme Court Stay of the Clean Power Plan and the Paris Pledges
The Supreme Court’s unprecedented, unexpected and unexplained action yesterday staying implementation of the Clean Power Plan is one of the most environmentally harmful judicial actions of all time....
View ArticleUnprecedented Program Leads To Unprecedented Response
I am a terrible predictor of what cases the Supreme Court will hear and what the Court will decide on those matters it chooses to hear. For example, I wrongly predicted that the Supreme Court would...
View ArticleSupreme Court Puts Clean Power Plan on Hold, but Clean Agriculture Can Move...
The Supreme Court's unexplained stay of the clean power plan was "one of the most environmentally harmful judicial actions of all time," writes Michael Gerrard of Columbia Law School in a recent,...
View ArticleThe Supreme Court Doesn’t Think Much of Paris in the Springtime
For us gray hairs, the phrase used to be “Dateline”, now it’s “Tweetline” . . . Flash!. . . President Obama @POTUS “. . . Addressing climate change takes all of us, especially the private...
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A Substantive Due Process Right to Climate Change Regulation? What’s a Lonely...
Late last week, Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin concluded that the most recent public trust case, which seeks an injunction requiring the United States to take actions to reduce atmospheric CO2...
View ArticleChildren’s Crusade to Combat Climate Change Continues
As reported by Seth Jaffe in this space, a federal magistrate judge in Oregon has kept alive the dreams of a group of young plaintiffs—aided by environmental advocacy groups—to compel government action...
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Big Changes With Little Fanfare: The FHWA Proposes to Use GHG Emissions as a...
This week, the Federal Highway Administration issued a Noticed of Proposed Rulemaking to promulgate performance measures to be used in evaluating federal funding of transportation projects. The...
View ArticleEPA Gets the Black Flag on Clean Air Act Racing Exemption
In auto racing, the black flag is the ultimate sanction, signaling that a competitor has been disqualified and has to leave the race. That’s what happened to EPA recently, when it withdrew a...
View ArticleKeystone XL Pipeline Goes To Court
In January TransCanada sued the Obama Administration over its denial of a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline to cross the US-Canada border. In its lawsuit TransCanada asserts that the President...
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The Global Warming Solutions Act Requires MassDEP to Promulgate Declining...
On Tuesday, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (SJC) ruled that MassDEP had violated the Global Warming Solutions Act by failing"To promulgate regulations that address multiple sources or...
View ArticleLandfills Stink – So Let’s Have More
In 1991, Iowa passed a law prohibiting the delivery of yard waste to landfills. It was during a time when there was a general panic that landfills were filling up too fast. Twenty-two states have...
View ArticleShould the Federal Social Cost of Carbon be Used in Site-Specific Resource...
Since 2010, EPA and other federal agencies have used the Federal Social Cost of Carbon (“FSCC”) to estimate the climate benefits of federal rulemakings. The FSCC is an estimate of the monetized damages...
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Minnesota May Not Prohibit Power Sales That Would Increase Statewide CO2...
If you needed any further proof that energylaw is very complicated, Wednesday’s decision in North Dakota v. Heydinger should convince you. The judgment is simple – the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals...
View ArticleLEAKS And PUMPS And TANKS, Oh My!!!
In May 2016, EPA finalized updates to its New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for the oil and gas industry which amended 40 CFR Part 60, Subpart OOOO and added new requirements (Subpart OOOOa) to...
View ArticleLNG Global Impacts Not FERC’s Problem
In companion cases, on June 28 the DC Circuit Court of Appeals held that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, in its environmental impacts analysis of two Gulf Coast LNG terminals, need not assess...
View ArticleFINDING LEGAL PATHWAYS TO DEEP DECARBONIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES
On December 12, 2015, in Paris, France, the parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change—a total of 196 countries—unanimously agreed to a goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the...
View ArticleHOW ACOEL AND THE WHITE HOUSE MAKE (SOME) HISTORY
Back in the early days of the College, then-incoming President Brad Martin had asked interested Members to work with Lexis Nexis in developing some treatises on a range of topics. Indeed, years later...
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A Lumber Mill Biomass CoGen Need Not Consider Other Fuels In Its BACT...
Ever since EPA began considering how BACT analysis would be applied to greenhouse gas emissions, there has been concern that EPA would use its BACT authority to “redefine the source” – with the...
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RGGI Is a Success Story. When Will It Be Obsolete?
When RGGI was first implemented, I heard Ian Bowles, then Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs in Massachusetts, say more than once that the purpose of RGGI wasn’t really to reduce greenhouse...
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Stop the Presses: Nuclear Power Still Does Not Emit Greenhouse Gases
On Monday, the TVA announced that Watts Bar Unit 2 had successfully completed what is known as its final power ascension test. It is now producing 1,150 MW of power in pre-commercial operation....
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