Recent growth in rooftop solar energy has caught the attention of utilities. Every customer who generates her own electricity is a customer who is not buying it (or at least as much of it) from the power company. Indeed, if she lives in one of the many states that permit or require such arrangements, the utility may have to buy back any excess electricity that her solar system produces.
Notwithstanding the technical merits of distributed generation, state incentives for and regulation of the power sector have come under significant legal attack during the past five years. In 23 constitutional challenges to state sustainable and distributed energy regulation, the states lost at some level in 17 of the 23 cases, or the cases were settled in favor of the challengers; five were dismissed on procedural grounds or are still pending. States that lost legal challenges can be ordered to pay plaintiffs’ legal fees into the millions of dollars.
Climate change, resource scarcity, and environmental degradation demand a paradigm shift in urban development. Currently, too many of our cities exacerbate these problems: they pollute, consume, and process resources in ways that negatively impact our natural world. Cities of the future must make nature their model, instituting circular metabolic processes that mimic, embrace, and enhance nature. In other words, a city must be a regenerative city or, as some say, an “ecopolis.”
In the wake of Massachusetts v. EPA, lower federal courts have been called upon to apply Article III standing rules in lawsuits featuring a variety of plaintiffs seeking to combat climate change in many different ways. In this Comment, the authors have created a chart that provides a comprehensive snapshot of how these courts have ruled in cases where the standing analysis was documented in a written opinion. The chart is organized by the theory of standing advanced and the type of injury claimed for standing purposes, rather than by legal claim.
Municipal wastewater and stormwater utilities are increasingly incorporating green infrastructure (GI) into their wet-weather management plans. GI can be a cost-effective alternative for communities in lieu of traditional gray infrastructure, and also can provide significant community benefits such as redevelopment and green space creation. Regulators support its use, but green concepts are relatively new and questions remain about how GI will be monitored, assessed, and credited and whether, ultimately, it will be effective.
Confidentiality clauses in settlement agreements have become so commonplace that they seem like benign contractual terms. In reality, however, confidentiality clauses have formidable power to silence even the most outspoken plaintiffs, and to shield repeat environmental defendants from public scrutiny. This Article examines the effects of settlement confidentiality in the context of claims related to hydraulic fracturing, and recommends that courts align settlement bargaining with U.S. law and policy trends toward openness.
In September 2014, a federal district court invalidated a U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) regulation delisting wolves in Wyoming. This Article details the background and history of that litigation, arguing that the court correctly rejected DOI’s conclusion that Wyoming had adequately explained how the promised wolf population buffer would be managed, and correctly supported DOI’s conclusion that there is sufficient genetic connectivity among wolf populations in the Northern Rocky Mountains.
Constitutional challenges to new state energy policies have been mounting in state and federal courts.
Texas has again become the national leader in an emerging area of energy production. As it did with oil in the 1940s, Texas in 2006 surpassed California and became the nation’s leading producer of wind power, with an installed generating capacity of 2,736 megawatts (MW). State wind power production increased nearly fivefold in the eight years since. In the first quarter of 2014, Texas had an installed wind power capacity of 12,354 MW, more than twice as much as any other state and over one-fifth of the total U.S. installed capacity.
The year 2014 witnessed major achievements in Chinese environmental law, particularly the revision of the basic environmental protection legislation. These achievements were based in part on recent policy developments by the Communist Party of China (CPC). In its 18th National Congress, held in 2012, the CPC proposed the notion of “a beautiful China” and emphasized environmental protection. The 18th CPC Central Committee convened its third plenary session, known as the Third Plenum, in November 2013 in Beijing.