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After the hottest summer on record, the world continues to witness extreme weather fueled by the burning of fossilfuels. We need to stop burning fossilfuels immediately. Thankfully, we are in the midst of a much-needed transition away from fossilfuels and towards a future powered by more renewables.
Production and combustion of fossilfuels imposes enormous costs on society, which the industry doesn’t pay for. The closest we’ve ever come to a carbon tax is a limited fee on methane emissions under the new IRA law. A more promising alternative might be a clean-up tax on the fossilfuel industry.
You don’t have to look beyond the front pages of newspapers , or beyond rooftops in your neighborhood to know that we are in the midst of a clean energy revolution, with renewable energy technologies dramatically decreasing in price and increasing in availability.
Since companies and policymakers do not want to pay a lot to ensure reliability, they both subscribe to the theory that the law of supply and demand will provide an adequate supply at a low cost. The same scenario has played out with the power plants that use fossilfuels, predominantly methane (“natural”) gas, delivered by pipelines.
Heres a taste, from US projects, technologies, electrons, and investment, to happenings in the world as a whole. Policy drivers State leadership has been important in driving the development and adoption of clean energy for decades, and remains key to accelerating the move toward clean energy and away from fossilfuels.
Energy law used to be an obscure niche subject. Utilities were famously set in their ways, using nineteenth century technologies to produce and deliver their products. Energy law is a hot topic. Law students are thronging to the field, seeing an opportunity to combine social relevance with good-paying jobs.
In preparing to teach a course on climate law, I was really struck by how broad and rich the field has become. Back in the day, it was nearly all international law, but nowadays there’s a huge amount of U.S. domestic law. and international law. and international law. climate policy. Here goes: I. Cross-cutting A.
Monterey County Oil Field (credit: Monterey County Weekly) For the first two decades of this century, and under the able leadership of former Chief Justices Ronald George and Tani Cantil-Sakauye, the California Supreme Court was quite active in interpreting and shaping California environmental law. Well, break’s over.
In 1976, the California legislature passed a law that effectively bans new nuclear power plants. To be more specific, the law forbids the California Energy Commission from issuing a permit to any new nuclear fission power plants until theres a way to dispose of toxic and long-lived nuclear waste. There are three reasons.
In an unforeseen turn of events, a pivotal climate litigation case unfolded in Montana , where 16 young environmental advocates challenged the state’s fossilfuel policies. A Montana judge declared those state laws unconstitutional. A new focus: Fossilfuel phaseout cases.
The rest of the spending was through a variety of programs designed to fund the development and commercialization of ‘clean technology’ for the oil and gas sector, run through various agencies and funds. million for other categories of support to fossilfuels. Cleaning up is the law. 420 million in COVID support .
This decision , reached with a 6-3 majority led by Chief Justice John Roberts, marks a significant shift in administrative law and has profound implications for environmental regulations and climate accountability. the EPA or FDA), staffed with experts, to interpret and implement laws within their purview effectively.
The majority 6–3 decision sharply curtails the EPA’s authority to set standards based on a broad range of flexible options to cut carbon emissions from the power sector—options such as replacing polluting fossilfuels with cheap and widely available wind and solar power coupled with battery storage.
Dan Farber recently posted at Legal Planet on "Jim Crow and the FossilFuel Industry" : This being Black History Month, I thought it would be worthwhile looking at the fossilfuel industry’s racial history. Those bottom rungs were decimated by new technology. Blacks were nearly excluded from the industry.
By Liu Lican On November 8, China issued its first Energy Law , which aims to support the development and utilisation of renewable energy and increase the proportion of non-fossil energy consumption. However, the law also states that there will be “rational development and clean and efficient use” of fossilfuels.
Some of those, such as the public health and climate benefits, depend on the clean energy displacing the dirty stuff—avoiding increases in fossilfuel generation or, even better, displacing existing generation. Renewables up, coal down More renewable energy is desirable for a lot of reasons.
Climate models are the main tool scientists use to assess how much the Earths temperature will change given an increase in fossilfuel pollutants in the atmosphere. Behind climate models today lie decades of both scientific and computer technological advancement. But how exactly did climate models come to be?
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about geoengineering – the various scientific theories and governance ideas that could eventually lead to technological interventions to help cool the planet. This is largely a problem with stories that seek to present two sides –supporters standing on one side and opponents way over on the other.
By Anders Lorenzen Jim Ratcliffe, the UK’s richest man and the founder and CEO of Ineos , the petrochemical giant, who perversely pays little UK tax as he resides in the tax haven of Monaco, has won UK government backing from a giant fossilfuel project which campaigners have labelled as climate wrecking.
The document should be required reading for everyone from corporate marketers to policymakers to law students learning how to build a compelling narrative from complex facts. In recent years, ExxonMobil has deceptively touted its “advanced recycling technology” as a proprietary “breakthrough in recycling technology,” says the complaint.
The article quotes a range of economists and other climate policy experts to the effect that subsidies and regulations are superior to carbon pricing because they can address equity issues, and that they can move investment in decarbonization technology more quickly than carbon pricing. But I want to add a couple key points.
Last week, the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled that an initiative measure that would have imposed severe restrictions on oil and gas development in Monterey County is preempted by state law and therefore invalid. The decision came in the case of Chevron U.S.A., County of Monterey. Measure Z never took effect.
So for my last Climate Law and Policy class at UCLA Law this semester, I once again asked my students to tell me what they are thinking about the future of climate policy in light of today’s global circumstances, keeping in mind lessons we’ve learned through the semester. –Richard Diaz, Master of Public Policy candidate, 2022.
I don’t mean to imply that technological progress will automatically fix things. Cheaper renewable energy attracts private investment and makes limits on fossilfuels more feasible. We will still need major efforts to phase out fossilfuels and create the physical and institutional infrastructure for a net-zero economy.
Municipal zoning laws, meanwhile, allowed companies to build power plants and other industrial facilities in those same neighborhoods. There’s a wide range of solutions, including integrating solar, wind and other renewable technologies; investing in new transmission; and reducing demand with efficiency measures.
However, China will also have to fix problems that have led to an underuse of renewable capacity and a preference for fossilfuel generation on the grid. China has become the dominant manufacturer of clean energy technologies. How is China’s commitment to clean energy impacting other countries? auto sector.”
Renewable energy generation increases faster than any other technology. Generation from renewable technologies more than covers the increase in electricity demand, also making up for coal and nuclear plant retirements. Source: US Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2022 (AEO2022).
March was a tight competition between fossilfuel pipeline, extraction, and oil and gas production companies for who could get the most face time with the federal government. Fossilfuel transportation firm Pembina Pipeline Company had the most lobby meetings in March. and Enbridge Inc. with 10 meetings each.
Another actor with immense political power and influence played a role in this shift: the fossilfuel industry. Fossilfuel companies wanted to make sure that regulation of their products, and as a result the heat-trapping emissions that come from producing and using fossilfuels, were kept out of international agreements.
Upcoming research from my colleague Dave Cooke shows that electric delivery trucks can reduce climate-warming emissions from driving by up to 92 percent and reduce lifecycle public health impacts by up to 85 percent compared to today’s average fossil-fueled delivery trucks.
By expanding renewable power, phasing out fossilfuels, electrifying as much of the economy as possible, and deploying other technologies, the U.S. Technologies like biofuels and hydrogen, while necessary, come with potential drawbacks. can achieve its climate goals by 2050—and a new report from UCS shows how.
Gretchen Whitmer is expected to sign into law tomorrow. Even so, it is concerning that legislators included fossil gas in the definition of clean energy given the risk of continuing our reliance on fossilfuels and the impact of emissions from gas production, transportation, and combustion. What Still Needs to be Done?
An ambitious law that promises to accelerate the state’s clean energy transition, CEJA provides a detailed framework for greater utility transparency and accountability to update electricity distribution infrastructure to ensure a clean energy future. The ICC will review the plans and issue a decision by end of 2023.
Fossilfuels as the name suggests had their beginning in the fossil age. The pressing and urgent issue of climate change which, for the past two weeks, world leaders have been working to deal with even though, of course, eventually the world will run out of fossilfuels.
5060 ), titled An Act Driving Clean Energy and Offshore Wind, into law on Thursday August 11, 2022. The law keeps the required procurement total at 5.6 Reduction of FossilFuels. The post Massachusetts Passes Climate Bill Focused on Clean Energy and Offshore Wind first appeared on Law and the Environment.
An equitable and people-centered transition of this nature will require changes that go beyond the necessary technological shifts and must focus on overcoming significant social, institutional, and behavioral barriers. In other words, technological solutions are necessary but not sufficient. How do we make this transformation happen?
This needs some thought, as both the laws of physics and the principles of supply and demand will apply, even if legislatures and regulators have not yet spoken about allocating costs and resources related to data center energy demands. Dominion Energy can’t address the laws of physics, or even the laws of supply and demand, by themselves.
Statement by Emilia Belliveau, Energy Transition Program Manager Ottawa | Traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg People – At today’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development (ENVI), Members of Parliament grilled the fossilfuel industry about their climate pollution. Jun 6, 2024.
The obstacles to new technology and more effective investments need to be addressed. Smaller, decentralized growth in electric heat pumps for buildings, and electric transportation replacing fossilfuels also require more access to electricity and a modern grid. Texas went first in 2005, with a law called SB 20.
CARB’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) seeks to incentivize the production and sale of alternative, lower emissions transportation fuels in order to displace conventional fossilfuels. To identify which fuels should be promoted, CARB calculates the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions from transportation fuels.
Federal government releases new policy aimed at ending international public financing for fossilfuels, next step is ending domestic financing . This new policy will end a significant portion of EDC’s support for fossilfuels and redirect those funds to support the clean energy transition.
The IRA gave us effective tools for cleaning up the power sector through dedicated support for the rapid and widescale deployment of renewable resources and the technologies that support them. Which means the consequences of these polluters unabashedly continuing to pollute aren’t just severe—they’re compounding.
The bipartisan infrastructure law provided up to $7.5 billion in investments to support the buildout of a nationwide charging network through the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Grant Program and the National EV Infrastructure (NEVI) program. When you’re falling behind, is slowing down really the right answer?
Most prominently, because the approach is changing from rewarding specific technologies to rewarding anything that meets the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions threshold of “clean”—hence the “tech-neutral” label—exactly how the government goes about determining whether or not something is actually eligible will be enormously important.
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