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New and Notable Additions

LPDD December Newsletter

New External Resources

modelclimatelaws.org is being continually updated with new, external legal resources. Below is a selection of recently added resources:

  • **New FHWA Rules on GHG Reduction Planning for Federally Funded Projects:**In November, the Federal Highway Administration announced a greenhouse gas rule that will require state and local transportation officials to set declining emissions targets for road projects funded with federal money. The rule requires state transportation departments and local metropolitan planning organizations to measure and report the amount of heat-trapping pollution that highway projects would create, and set targets for reducing their emissions over periods of two or four years. The new approach could encourage state and local governments to invest in transit and access for bicyclists and pedestrians.
  • New Mexico Approves Advanced Clean Cars and Trucks: In November, New Mexico joined the wave of states approving a version of California's Advanced Clean Cars rule, albeit scaled-down in this instance. The rule calls for 43% of new cars and light-duty trucks delivered to New Mexico to be electric models by 2026 and 82% by 2032. At the same time, 15% to 20% of new, heavier-duty commercial trucks delivered to the state must be electric by 2026, and 40% to 70% must be zero emissions by 2034, depending on their class.
  • EPA Finalizes Oil and Gas Sector Methane Emissions Rules: In December, EPA issued a final rule to reduce emissions of methane and other harmful air pollution from oil and natural gas operations -- including, for the first time, from existing sources nationwide. The final action includes New Source Performance Standards to reduce methane and smog-forming volatile organic compounds from new, modified and reconstructed sources. It also includes Emissions Guidelines, which set procedures for states to follow as they develop plans to limit methane from existing sources. The new rules aim to prevent an estimated 58 million tons of methane emissions by 2038, equivalent to all the carbon dioxide emitted by the power sector in 2021.
  • Illinois Advances Permitting for Small Modular Reactors: In November, Illinois passed a law to create a regulatory structure for the construction of small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs. The law would allow companies to develop new nuclear power generation in the state for the first time since 1987. It limits the nameplate capacity of such reactors to 300 megawatts, about one-third the size of the smallest of the six existing nuclear power plants in Illinois. It also requires the state to perform a study that will inform rules for regulating SMRs, which would be adopted by regulators at the Illinois Emergency Management Agency by January 2026.
  • CFTC Guidance on Carbon Credit Derivatives: As carbon credits grow in popularity as a means for purchasers to claim they have offset their emissions, a growing market of derivatives based on carbon credits has emerged. However, the inability to verify carbon credits can make some of these derivatives products suspect or unreliable. To respond to this emerging problem, the Commodity Future Trading Commission has issued proposed guidance, laying out how the agency’s rules apply to this asset class. The proposed guidance outlines certain factors a CFTC-regulated exchange, or designated contract market, should consider when addressing requirements of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations that are relevant to the contract design and listing process. The CFTC will take public feedback on the proposal until Feb. 16, 2024.
  • New White House Guidance on Cost-Benefit Analysis in Regulation: In November, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs issued revisions to Circular A-4, the government-wide guidance on regulatory analysis, for the first time since 2003. The revisions cover a breadth of topics significant to determining the benefits and costs of regulations, including the valuation of future consequences, the distribution of a policy’s effects, the scope of effects to analyze, and the best way to account for effects that are difficult to monetize. These changes should better capture the value of climate regulations, particularly on future generations, and allow agencies to act more aggressively in regulating climate pollutants. Changes include lowering discount rates, or the amount by which future costs and benefits are discounted over present values in an analysis; guidance on performing distributional analysis, which assesses the impacts of regulations on specific populations that may vary by income or exposure to pollution, among other metrics; and accounting for how regulations that impact foreign interests may pose downstream effects on U.S. citizens and residents.
  • DOE Proposes New Exclusions from Environmental Review for Solar, Batteries, Transmission: In November, the Department of Energy proposed to offer "categorical exclusions" from otherwise required environmental reviews for certain energy storage, solar and rebuilt or upgraded transmission projects on federal land. Under the proposal, eligible projects would not require an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement. For solar, DOE proposed changing the current categorical exemption by removing a 10-acre limit for solar projects on already-developed land. For batteries, exclusions would apply to battery and flywheel energy storage systems built on or next to already disturbed land. For transmission, DOE proposed removing a 20-mile limit on the length of existing power lines that are eligible for the simplest form of environmental review. These changes would expand the pool of potential projects eligible for an expedited permitting pathway, and potentially speed the deployment of utility-scale renewables. Comments on the proposal are open until January 2, 2024.

Project Profiles

Every other month, we like to highlight attorneys working on this project, to recognize their service, and call attention to the quality of expertise and scholarship behind LPDD.

This month, we’re highlighting longtime project contributor Aoife O’Leary, the CEO and Founder of Opportunity Green, a U.K.-based NGO bringing together lawyers, economists, and policy experts to tackle climate change. In just two years, Aoife has built Opportunity Green into a thriving climate NGO with 14 employees, working internationally with a particular focus on aviation, shipping, and greenwashing.

Aoife’s involvement in the LPDD project began by authoring chapters on Aviation and Shipping in the 2019 text, Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States. Since then, she has provided peer review on all four of the model laws our project has produced under the Shipping pathway, including a trio on reducing emissions in the Arctic.

A lawyer and economist with deep environmental expertise, Aoife has extensive experience across a range of different environmental sectors, especially international transport. She is the Director of the Skies and Seas Hydrogen-fuels Accelerator (SASHA) Coalition which is bringing together shipping and aviation to ensure an adequate supply of green hydrogen goes to their sectors. Aoife is also a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at King’s College London’s Department of Political Economy.

Before founding and leading Opportunity Green, Aoife served as the Director of the Environmental Defense Fund Europe, advised the community energy sector as the COO of Pure Leapfrog, worked with ClientEarth, and served on the board of Rethinking Economics.

In the News

Sometimes, we come across news stories that highlight the value of the resources we already promote at modelclimatelaws.org. Here are a few from the last month:

Get Involved!

Not sure how to support our work? Check out our Get Involved page to see the many avenues by which lawyers can join us, and get in contact!

This update highlights and summarizes recent additions to the Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization (LPDD) website, which houses actual and model laws addressing the causes of climate change in the United States.

The Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization Model Law Project (LPDD-MLP) is a pro bono effort to draft model laws for use by legislators at the federal, state and local levels to support their efforts to achieve deep reductions in fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions. The project is based on recommendations from the groundbreaking book Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States (Michael Gerrard and John C. Dernbach, eds., 2019). The work is supported by Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and Widener University Commonwealth Law School’s Environmental Law and Sustainability Center. Dozens of law firms and individual lawyers are contributing to this pro-bono effort as drafters, peer reviewers or in reaching out to policymakers.

Our website, modelclimatelaws.org, contains 80 model laws that are a starting place for discussion and collaboration among elected officials, non-profit groups, and the private sector for enabling the U.S. to address climate change by reducing U.S. GHG emissions to zero by 2050 or earlier. The site includes several Top 10 lists for some of the key categories, like electric vehicles, PUC’s, buildings and other topics as a short-hand introduction. In addition, the site references hundreds of other actions that states and other governmental bodies have taken to move towards decarbonization more rapidly. By providing policymakers the tools to achieve deep decarbonization, the Project will help achieve a restructuring of the energy economy, thus alleviating the worst effects of climate change, which are disproportionately suffered by marginalized communities, while providing such positive benefits as economic security, social equity, and environmental justice (EJ).

Please contact us to talk about getting involved in drafting and peer reviewing legislation, to provide suggestions and feedback on the drafts and to talk about how we can help you support your climate change efforts.

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