The Hawaii Supreme Court affirmed a lower court order denying oil and gas companies' motions to dismiss a climate misinformation suit brought by the city and county of Honolulu and the Honolulu Board of Water Supply. Plaintiffs argued the companies knowingly misled the public about the dangers of bu...
More severe storm surges and rising sea levels along the coast of the United States pose a threat to coastal communities, infrastructure, and ecosystems.
The Ninth Circuit, 2-1, denied environmental groups' petition to review the Bonneville Power Administration's (BPA's) decision setting power rates for the 2022-2023 fiscal period. The groups argued BPA violated the Northwest Power Act (NWPA) by setting rates that failed to comply with its duty to pr...
The Sixth Circuit affirmed dismissal of a lawsuit concerning a dam collapse in Michigan. Property owners who live downstream of the dam argued the U.S. government negligently entrusted operation of the dam to an unfit operator. A district court held the government was entitled to sovereign immunity ...
The Second Circuit affirmed a district court order remanding to state court a climate liability lawsuit against an oil and gas company. The state of Connecticut initially sued the company in state court, alleging it engaged in a decades-long campaign of knowingly misleading and deceiving Connecticut...
The Ninth Circuit granted in part and denied in part a petition to review FERC orders that altered which facilities qualify for benefits under the Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act (PURPA) and how those facilities are compensated. An industry group and several environmental groups argued the orde...
The Inflation Reduction Act and other policies are pushing solar, wind, and other clean energy technologies into the marketplace. But these generators struggle to make the physical connection to the electricity market because interconnection is proving to be a bottleneck; over 2,000 gigawatts of capacity are waiting to connect to the grid. This Article examines the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC’s) regulations that govern the entry of new generation resources onto the grid.
A state court held unconstitutional a provision of the Montana Environmental Policy Act that prohibited state agencies from considering the impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on climate change in environmental reviews. A group of youths challenged the prohibition, arguing it was causing or co...
The Fifth Circuit, 2-1, granted a petition to review FERC orders it previously vacated and remanded, which instructed utilities in the WestConnect transmission planning region on how to implement a cost allocation scheme for grid improvements in the region. A utility company argued the orders, which...
This abstract is adapted from Danielle Stokes, Renewable Energy Federalism, 106 Minn. L. Rev. 1757 (2022), and used with permission.