This post was originally published on Legal Planet. Reprinted with permission.
On Wednesday, Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed a package of four clean energy bills. These bills move the state to the forefront of climate action. They ban new fossil fuel plants and set aggressive targets for the state's two major utilities, requiring emission cuts of 80 percent by 2030, 90 percent by 2035 and 100 percent by 2040. This is not only a major step forward for the state; it should also clear the path to closer collaboration among Washington State, Oregon, and California on climate issues.
In signing the bills, Brown observed, "As we have all been experiencing, climate change is no longer a distant threat. It is here. In Oregon, and across the West, we are feeling its impacts every day."
The bill setting the state's aggressive targets passed the Oregon Senate on the day of the hottest recorded temperature in the state's history. This has been a tough summer for Oregon. Over a hundred Oregonians were killed during the late June heatwave. The Bootleg fire has burned over 400,000 acres and is less than half contained.
Here are a few details about the four bills:
House Bill 2021 creates the emission reduction mandate. It's a complex piece of legislation, and I'll only mention some of the provisions. The cuts are measured from a 2010-2012 baseline. By 2022, the utilities must file Integrated Resource Plans, which will detail their strategies for making the cuts. Utilities must convene advisory groups containing representatives of environmental justice and low-income communities. Costs are capped annually at a 6 percent rate increase. There are additional provisions relating to rooftop solar and to communities electing to become community choice aggregators. The law also contains provisions addressing wages and benefits for workers on renewable energy projects.
House Bill 2165 addresses electrical charging for vehicles. It calls for an add-on charge to all retail customers in order to collect 0.25 percent of the utilities' annual revenue, with the proceeds to be devoted to charging infrastructure. As far as I can figure out, that's about $7.5 million per year. HB 2165 also sets up a special rebate program for low- and medium-income purchasers of electric vehicles.
House Bill 2475 is aimed at controlling rate burdens on customers. It directs the Public Utility Commission to make special provisions for rates to take into account the needs of "low-income customers and other economic, social equity or environmental justice factors." The bill obviously reflects concerns that rate increases from decarbonization may pose a disparate burden on less affluent communities.
House Bill 3141 is the final piece of the package. It modifies an existing public service charge intended to support energy efficiency and clean energy, and it targets a quarter of the funds to low-income and moderate-income customers.
In her brief signing statement, Governor Brown said:
"If other states follow Oregon's lead, 2021 can be a year of climate action for this country. Unfortunately, under the prior administration, we lost four precious years.
"There is no time to lose."
Amen to that.
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Daniel Farber | July 30, 2021
On Wednesday, Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed a package of four clean energy bills. These bills move the state to the forefront of climate action. They ban new fossil fuel plants and set aggressive targets for the state's two major utilities, requiring emission cuts of 80 percent by 2030, 90 percent by 2035 and 100 percent by 2040. This is not only a major step forward for the state; it should also clear the path to closer collaboration among Washington State, Oregon, and California on climate issues.
Clarissa Libertelli | July 29, 2021
President Joe Biden has invited four CPR scholars — leaders in climate and energy justice, natural resources, and environmental law — to serve in his administration.
Joel A. Mintz | July 22, 2021
Recent events have dramatized the urgent need for prompt and bold action to respond to climate change. Raging rivers in Germany and Belgium, unheard of "heat domes" over large sections of North America, and uncontrolled wildfires and flooding around the globe, have made it absolutely clear that humankind must quickly limit the emission of greenhouse gases and adapt to the increasingly calamitous consequences of climate disruption. In view of this situation, what is and ought to be the substance of environmental leadership?
Karen Sokol | July 22, 2021
On the last day of June, an entire village in Canada was engulfed in a wildfire after the country recorded its highest temperature ever. That same day, Greenpeace UK's investigative team published a striking tape of two Exxon senior employees' candid accounts of the fossil fuel industry's surreptitious lobbying efforts to undermine climate action.
James Goodwin | July 21, 2021
The Biden administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently seeking public input on its efforts to revamp an important Clean Air Act program called the Risk Management Plan (RMP) rule for facilities that produce, store, or use large amounts of dangerous chemicals. It is meant to prevent catastrophes -- like the 2017 Arkema explosion in Crosby, Texas -- which not only put human lives and health in danger (especially for the communities of color that are disproportionately overrepresented in the shadows of these facilities), but also cause costly disruption for local economies.
David Driesen | July 20, 2021
Environmentalists have complained for years about presidential control of the administrative agencies charged with protecting the environment, seeing it as a way of thwarting proper administration of environmentally protective laws. But the U.S. Supreme Court in two recent decisions -- Seila Law v. CFPB and Collins v. Yellen -- made presidential control over administrative agencies a constitutional requirement (with limited and unstable exceptions) by embracing the unitary executive theory, which views administrative agencies as presidential lackeys. My new book, The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power, shows that the unitary executive theory is not only bad for environmental policy, but a threat to democracy’s survival, upon which environmental policy and all other sensible policy depends.
Colin Hughes | July 19, 2021
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan recently announced that $50 million from the American Rescue Plan will go toward environmental justice programs at the agency. This award will be accompanied by another $50 million to enhance air quality monitoring to target health disparities. This funding will double the amount of grant dollars for EPA’s environmental justice programs by adding $16.7 million in grants and funding for other programs such as school bus electrification, expanded environmental enforcement, and drinking water safety improvements.
Alina Gonzalez, Minor Sinclair | July 15, 2021
President Joe Biden is breaking the status quo: He has pledged to write a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change. Unlike any other president, he has outlined specific and aggressive targets to reduce carbon emissions and has backed them up with a $2 trillion plan to fight climate change. In the meantime, our climate continues to change rapidly and dramatically, raising the ever more urgent question: Will the politics of climate change shift in time to curb its worst effects, including in states like Georgia? We think it will.
Karen Sokol | July 13, 2021
"When you are at the verge of the abyss, you must be very careful about your next step, because if the next step is in the wrong direction, you will fall." So warned United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in a recent interview on NBC Nightly News. He was calling on the world's wealthiest nations to meet their obligations under the Paris climate accords to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels and to help developing countries to transition and to adapt to threats that can no longer be averted. Wealthy nations simply must meet these obligations to achieve the Paris goal of holding global temperature rise to a sustainable level.