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In what could turn out to be another loss for environmental protection in the Supreme Court, the Court is about to decide a major case about the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). The case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, has important implications for issues such as whether NEPA covers climate change impacts. The same groups that succeeded in drastically cutting back on federal wetlands jurisdiction a few years ago are hoping to do the same thing to environmental impact statements. This post will provide the key background on the case.

T.S. Eliot was wrong. April is not the “cruellest month.” June is. In slightly over two weeks at the end of June 2024, the United States Supreme Court made mass murder easier, criminalized homelessness, partially decriminalized insurrection, ignored air pollution and climate change by curtailing agency actions, made it more difficult to fine securities and investment frauds, and deregulated political corruption while failing to affirmatively protect women with possibly fatal pregnancies. To this list, add the Court’s July 1, 2024, ruling effectively giving Donald Trump a pathway to an authoritarian presidency by delaying his criminal trials and then, as extralegal protection, effectively immunizing him from the worst of possible crimes. How did we get here? Rena Steinzor's new book, American Apocalypse, makes an important contribution to the literature examining the Right by bringing together several movements that have landed us where we are today.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed June 24 to hear a case about whether environmental impact statements need to address climate change. To read the arguments made about the case, you’d think that this was a common law area where courts establish the rules. But as I discuss in a forthcoming article, recent amendments have put a lot of flesh on the previously barebones law. The bottom line: The Supreme Court shouldn’t give advocates of narrowing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) a victory that they were unable to get through the legislative process.

Deep in the heart of state and regional environmental and energy agencies, engineers, economists, scientists, and lawyers are working hard to develop comprehensive climate action plans (CCAPs). Created by the Inflation Reduction Act, EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grant (CPRG) program is funding a range of state and subnational planning and implementation measures, including the CCAPs, which are due in 2025. In our recent issue brief, Comprehensive Climate Action Plans: What’s a Greenhouse Gas Reduction “Measure”?, we explore a key question: What is the nature of the “actions” that planners should include in their climate action plans? Or, to use the program’s term, what’s a climate “measure?”

Since the passage of landmark legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law during the Biden administration, we’ve repeatedly heard that we’re at a critical junction: There is a need to expand and accelerate environmental, climate, and clean energy policy implementation and opportunities to do so, but the pathway toward this goal will be plagued by significant delays. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has become a common scapegoat in this fight, with critics charging that the sometimes lengthy and complicated environmental review process NEPA requires is the main thing holding up decarbonization and the clean energy transition. This has led to calls from across the political spectrum for “reforming” the statute. This assumption, however, misrepresents what happens on the ground.

My colleagues at the Center for Progressive Reform and I recently published a report and interactive map examining how local ordinances that restrict clean energy development can impose major obstacles in our efforts toward a just clean energy transition. Among the many important findings in our report, we highlighted the high degree of variability that exists between states in the way large-scale clean energy generation is regulated. In some cases, like Illinois and Michigan, governments have empowered state authorities to override local siting measures; other states have given local governments more decision-making powers to decide if and how renewable infrastructure can be built. Among the latter is Ohio.

A profound energy transition is sweeping the United States. In addition to mitigating dangerous greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, it means new economic opportunities and a safer and healthier environment for communities across the country. A better future is certainly within reach, or at least it is for some communities, which are the ones that will be able to capitalize on the green transition. But for many others, there is no guarantee that this clean energy transition will be a just and equitable one. Why is this the case? As we explore in a new report and interactive map, it turns out that one of the biggest obstacles is self-inflicted: local ordinances that restrict new renewable energy development projects, including wind, solar, and battery storage.

As North Carolinians continue to grapple with rolling blackouts and rising energy bills, yet another pending environmental catastrophe is developing in our backyards. Duke Energy, our state’s monopoly utility provider, has submitted filings for two new methane gas power plants — one at the current Roxboro coal plant in Person County and another at the Marshall plant on Lake Norman.

In the coming years, key decisions that will greatly impact state efforts to address climate change will be made by agencies that the public often thinks very little about. Public utility commissions (PUCs) are state agencies that regulate energy markets. They set electricity prices, plan energy resource development, and oversee the utility providers within their states. For decades, these agencies have advanced an energy policy that is informed by a straightforward need to provide dependable electricity to consumers at fair rates.