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Cross-posted from Legal Planet. In September 2017 – that seems so long ago! – Eric Biber and I released a report assessing the state of play in environmental issues 200 days into the Trump administration, based on an earlier series of blog posts. As we end Trump's second year, it's time to bring that assessment […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. The Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment published a survey of state energy policies through 2017. The trend toward renewables has continued in 2018. Even after nearly two years of the Trump presidency, states haven't given up. Instead, they're moving forward aggressively. If anything, Trump seems to have stimulated these states […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. In my last post, I talked about how Obama's Clean Power plan was the right response to a changing grid. The grid is in the process of changing even more. It was designed for some relatively straightforward tasks. The main power plants, mostly burning coal (but sometimes natural gas or nuclear […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Click here for the follow-up post. If you've been reading this blog or otherwise keeping up with environmental law, you've probably heard this a hundred times: In rolling back Obama's signature climate regulation, the Clean Power Plan, the Trump administration is relying on the idea that EPA's jurisdiction stops at the fence line. That is, according to the Trump folks, EPA can impose measures on each plant, but not measures that go beyond the fence line like requiring more use of renewable energy of a coal or natural gas generator. I've blogged previously about why this argument might not even apply because reducing your operating hours is something you can accomplish without getting close to the fence, let alone crossing it.

Cross-posted from LegalPlanet. In its desperate effort to save the failing American coal industry, the Trump administration promised to use emergency powers to keep coal-fired power plants in operation even though they're not economically viable. That would have been the kind of disruptive change that Trump promised to bring to Washington. But the effort seems to […]

This post was originally published as part of a symposium on ACSblog, the blog of the American Constitution Society. Reprinted with permission. Until recently, you could be a very well-informed American – a lawyer, even – without ever having heard of the Chevron doctrine. That has changed enough that last month, The New Yorker had […]

Cross-posted from LegalPlanet. The Trump administration is moving toward the view, long popular in industry, that when it regulates a pollutant, EPA can consider only the health impacts of that particular pollutant – even when the regulation will also reduce other harmful pollutants. This idea is especially important in climate change regulation because cutting carbon emissions […]

Originally published in The Regulatory Review as part of a series on social justice and the green economy. Reprinted with permission. Despite noisy political claims to the contrary, the weight of the evidence suggests that regulation has a small impact on the total number of jobs. Still, regulation is bound to have some effect on who […]

This post is part of CPR’s From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report. Click here to read previously posted chapters. “No power, no water, no transport, roads were closed, many streets broken, houses destroyed and people crying.” Those were the words of Maria Meléndez, the mayor of Ponce, the largest city in southern […]