Category: Volume 33
-
Federal vs. State Jurisdiction Over Net Metering Rates
Introduction Net energy metering (“NEM”) is an important tool used by states to promote residential solar energy and accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy. In simple terms, NEM is an electricity billing method that credits commercial or residential photovoltaic (“PV”) system owners for the electricity they provide to the grid.[2] The net metering rate…
-
Community Choice Aggregators, Biomass Energy, and California’s Just Transition: A Case Study of AB 843 and Responsible Biomass Procurement Principles
Introduction On September 23, 2021, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed twenty-four historic bills focused on climate and clean energy efforts, drought, and wildfire preparedness.[3] Included within that slate of bills was Assembly Bill (“AB”) 843, which allows Community Choice Aggregators (“CCAs”) to submit eligible bioenergy projects to the California Public Utilities Commission (“CPUC”) for cost…
-
The (Un)just Use of Transition Minerals: How Efforts to Achieve a Low-Carbon Economy Continue to Violate Indigenous Rights
Introduction For the last two decades, policy makers from around the globe have foreseen the need to derive and implement solutions to mitigate the effects of climate change. And the impetus for these solutions is confronting the world in real time. Recently the United Nations Secretary General referred to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…
-
Securitization of Coal Plant Retirements: Implications for Just Energy Transitions
Abstract Climate change and its destabilizing effects are already here. Yet there is a chance to prevent even worse scenarios if carbon emissions can be quickly and drastically reduced, especially in the carbon-intensive energy sector. While the need to transition to low-carbon, renewable sources of energy is urgent, many legal, political, and economic barriers stand…
-
The Rise of Critical Infrastructure Protest Legislation and Its Implications for Radical Climate Activism
Introduction The global crisis of climate change looms large over every aspect of our society today. It presents an increasingly potent existential danger to humanity, as the widespread consequences of rising global temperatures include increasing ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, more frequent heatwaves and droughts, and extreme and unseasonal natural disasters and weather events.[2] The…
-
The Clean Energy Dilemma: How the Push for Clean Energy Could Threaten Indigenous Communities and an Exploration of Potential Alternatives
Introduction The Biden Administration’s efforts to combat climate change by moving toward clean energy are poised to have an outsized impact on Indigenous communities if critical minerals slated for clean energy projects are obtained through new mining. This is because much of the untapped supply of these minerals is located near tribal land. The nation’s…
-
Where the NHPA and NEPA Meet: Failures of the Nexus of EIS and Section 106 Analyses
Introduction Picture Alaska’s largest caribou herd, wild salmon, eleven major rivers, and Alaskan Native communities’ spiritual, cultural, and historic lands.[2] Now picture a 211 mile-long road cutting through that ecologically diverse landscape to reach a mining district that could put the entire area in peril with little to no economic gain.[3] That is the Ambler…
-
COVID-19 Infects the Fishing Industry: The Rise of Illegal Fishing and the Waiver of Fishery Observer Requirements
INTRODUCTION In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic upended the world as we knew it. COVID-19 impacted almost every aspect of society and the planet—even ocean ecosystems. As global economies sunk into recession, the demand for seafood persisted. Yet, fishing vessels served as perfect vectors for the novel coronavirus because their confined spaces increased transmission of the…
-
Impact Fees, Bonding Reform, and Oil and Gas Development
Local and state governments use impact fees to pay for the costs of development. Impact fees improve economic efficiency by internalizing external costs such as the loss of open space and the increased truck traffic that compromises local public infrastructure. Colorado recently expanded the use of impact fees to cover the reasonably foreseeable direct…
-
Why Colorado Should Evaluate Clean Water Act Section 404 Program Assumption
I. INTRODUCTION “The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.” – Charles Kettering[2] For over four decades, Colorado, like virtually every other state, has been content to allow the federal government to regulate the discharge of dredged and fill material into the waters within its borders. During this…