The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law posted its Winter/Spring 2023 Semi-annual Report, which includes a summary of the Center’s key activities between January and June 2023.
It is available for download here.
Below are some highlights from the report:
- The Sabin Center launched two new online tools – the Inflation Reduction Act Tracker – which was co-developed with Environmental Defense Fund and catalogs the climate-related provisions in the IRA and tracks actions by federal agencies to implement the law; and the CLCPA Scoping Plan Tracker – a database tracking New York State’s implementation of the Climate Action Council’s Scoping Plan recommendations to meet the goals and requirements of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
- Michael Burger was featured among the “Power Players in Climate, Energy and Sustainability” in Politics NY.
- Sabin Center experts were widely quoted and interviewed by media outlets, including The New York Times, CBS News, The Brian Lehrer Show, and NPR, to name a few.
- Dr. Maria Antonia Tigre continued to build out the Sabin Center’s Peer Review Network of Global Climate Litigation, which currently includes 118 rapporteurs covering 116 jurisdictions. The Network also hosted a series of webinars on various climate litigation-related topics, featuring several national rapporteurs from the Network.
- The Center continued to maintain the Model Laws for Deep Decarbonization in the United States website. More than forty pro bono law firms are at work drafting additional model laws as part of this Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization (LPDD) project. The LPDD project has, to date, authored over seventy model laws applicable at the state, local, and federal levels.
- Romany Webb, Korey Silverman-Roati and Carolina Arlota were highly active within the Carbon Management and Negative Emissions space, frequently giving presentations on the legal issues relating to carbon dioxide removal research and deployment in the U.S. and internationally.
- The Renewable Energy Legal Defense Initiative continued to represent community groups and local residents who support renewable energy development in their communities and who face local opposition. Matthew Eisenson and Michael Gerrard, together with local counsel, filed a petition to intervene in an Ohio Power Siting Board proceeding on behalf of a community member who supports the proposed Oak Run Solar Project.
- Cynthia Hanawalt, Martin Lockman, Ilmi Granoff and Eleonor Dyan Garcia carried out a wide variety of activities within the Climate Law & Finance program area, including through the Initiative on Climate Risk and Resilience Law ( ICRRL), a joint initiative of the Sabin Center, Environmental Defense Fund, the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, and Vanderbilt Law School.
- Amy Turner advised dozens of local governments on how to achieve climate mitigation goals, as part of the Cities Climate Law Initiative.
- The Center filed an amicus brief on behalf of the League of Cities, the League of California Cities, and the California State Association of Counties, in California Restaurant Ass’n v. Berkeley.
- Andrea Nishi worked with WE ACT for Environmental Justice on a project to develop model legislation related to environmental justice, cumulative impacts analysis, and permit renewals for polluting facilities, among other EJ projects.
- The Center sponsored/co-sponsored numerous online and in-person events, conferences and published articles and books on a variety of topics, including:
- Hillary Aidun, Jacob Elkin, & Matthew Eisenson et al., Opposition to Renewable Energy Facilities in the United States (May 2023 Edition)
- Urban Climate Law, by Amy Turner and Michael Burger (forthcoming Oct. 2023 Columbia University Press; link to pre-order is available here)
- Ocean Carbon Dioxide Removal for Climate Mitigation: The Legal Framework, by Romany M. Webb, Korey Silverman-Roati, and Michael B. Gerrard (eds) (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023)
- Global Climate Change and U.S. Law, 3rd ed., edited by Michael B. Gerrard, Jody Freeman, and Michael Burger (ABA, 2023)
To learn more about the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law work, read the report here.
Tiffany is the Communications Associate at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.
