While federal policy can have a significant impact on renewable energy development, local policy—and local sentiment—can be just as consequential. Between 2018-2023, at least 30% of utility-scale wind and solar projects were cancelled during the siting process, largely because of community opposition, local ordinances, and zoning. For the last five […]
Energy
301 posts
In U.S. coastal and offshore waters, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico, tens of thousands of oil and gas wells pose a growing environmental and financial liability. Of these, more than 7,300 offshore wells remain idled and await decommissioning, which could cost as much as $70 billion. Without cleanup, these […]
The Sabin Center’s newest publication, Legacy Liabilities for Oil and Gas Wells under the Mineral Leasing Act, examines the laws and regulations that allow the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) to pursue the prior owners and operators of oil and gas wells on federal land for the costs of plugging those […]
This post is part of a new Climate Law Blog series, 100 Days of Trump 2.0, in which the Sabin Center offers reflections on the first hundred days of President Trump’s second term across a variety of climate-related topics. To read other posts from the series, click here. President Trump […]
Yesterday, the Department of the Interior published a press release announcing the establishment of emergency permitting procedures to facilitate the rapid development of fossil fuel resources. Interior takes this action to fulfill a White House directive to rely on any and all emergency authorities to spur domestic energy production in […]
Over the last five years, several states, including New York (2020), California (2022), Illinois (2023), and Michigan (2023) have adopted comprehensive permitting reforms that curtail the power of local governments to block development of large-scale renewable energy projects. In two states, New York and Michigan, local governments have sued to […]
Solar for All Implementation in 2025 Following his inauguration on January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to freeze the $7 billion Solar for All (SfA) program created via the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). SfA represents a massive investment in residential solar […]
It has been just a few weeks since President Donald J. Trump returned to the White House and, wow, what a whirlwind it has been. In the midst of the constitutional extreme event brought on by the administration, this blog post seeks to do one thing: review the emergency authorities […]