The 30th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) reached a disappointing conclusion on Saturday. Just a few days earlier, things had looked promising. The COP President—Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago of Brazil—had proposed a draft decision recognizing the need for countries […]
Energy
307 posts
It is a basic principle of administrative law that, even after a jurisdiction enacts legislation, full implementation of the law typically depends on regulatory and other actions by executive branch agencies. This is particularly true in the context of environmental and climate change legislation, which are often especially complex and […]
In 2022, the United States Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), appropriating an unprecedented amount of money for climate spending programs. One of the IRA’s flagship investments was the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), a $27 billion program comprised of the National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), the Clean Communities […]
Introduction In recent years, the number of data centers in the United States and worldwide has grown rapidly, driven by the expansion of cloud computing, digital services, and artificial intelligence applications. These facilities consume substantial amounts of electricity. Projections indicate that data centers could account for about 4 – 5 […]
Last Friday, July 25, the Sabin Center filed an amicus brief on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) in support of the Plaintiff States in the case New York v. Trump. The case, brought by twenty-two states and the District of Columbia in the U.S. District Court for […]
At a July 10, 2025 meeting, Commissioner Judy Chang of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) argued that the United States needs to rapidly build more transmission capacity to bring new sources of electricity online. She explained that “transmission is the network that needs to support both generation and load, […]
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 […]
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 […]