The Sabin Center’s newest publication, Enforcing Legacy Environmental Liabilities on the Outer Continental Shelf, examines legal strategies to hold the former owners of offshore oil and gas infrastructure, like rigs, wells, and pipelines, liable for the costs of “decommissioning” their facilities—plugging wells, removing offshore installations, and generally making the site […]
Martin Lockman
10 posts
A highly potent greenhouse gas, methane makes a significant contribution to climate change, but has historically received relatively little attention in climate mitigation discussions. That is now beginning to change. In addition to investigating new ways to control methane emissions, scientists are also researching the possibility of removing methane already […]
In November of 2022, when the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) proposed new rules to control venting, flaring, and leaks from oil and gas leases on federal land (the “Fossil Fuel Waste Rule”), they noted that these leasing rules would have an enormous ancillary climate benefit. […]
In the first months of 2024, legislators in four states—Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont—have pushed for legislation that would collectively require large fossil fuel producers and refiners to pay for hundreds of billions of dollars of state-level climate adaptation infrastructure. E&E News reports that similar legislation may soon be […]
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 directed the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to support the development of four regional “direct air capture hubs” (DAC Hubs)—networks that connect direct air capture projects with sequestration facilities and commercial users of captured carbon dioxide (CO2). To support these DAC Hubs, […]
On August 31, 2023, the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), as part of their broader Climate Law and Finance Initiative, published two reports analyzing legal and contractual regimes governing decommissioning of offshore oil and gas infrastructure projects and identifying decommissioning-related risks […]
On July 21, 2023, the Sabin Center launched its latest report, Modelling Climate Litigation Risk for (Re)Insurers. This report, which forms part of the Sabin Center’s broader Climate Law and Finance Initiative, provides a toolkit to help academics, attorneys, insurance practitioners, and industry regulators model (re)insurer climate litigation risk. Insurance […]
On Tuesday, May 9, the Sabin Center and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment launched Transferred Emissions are Still Emissions: Why Fossil Fuel Asset Sales Need Enhanced Transparency and Carbon Accounting. The increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) is driving global climate change on […]